To my knowledge, most areas of game development are reasonably well established. There are undoubtedly overlaps and nuances, particularly in the “AA” and indie spheres, but the disciplines and associated roles tend to be consistently defined. For example, level design is concerned with designing the areas the player passes through the interactions therein. UI artists strive for aesthetically pleasing yet intuitive user interface elements. Environmental lighting artists work magic I don’t even remotely understand to bring environments to life. But narrative design? Well, it’s about… story… stuff. Right?
I’ve worked in the games industry for eight years as a game writer and narrative designer. I can’t speak for my peers, but there are two reasons why I usually give both titles. First, they are distinct, even if there is significant overlap. Second, the industry often conflates the two roles, so it’s wise to include both.
Perhaps this conflation of game writing and narrative design is indicative of why the latter is so inconsistently defined. In essence, it reflects a lack of understanding. But even amongst those of us who call ourselves narrative designers, an elegant, widely agreed definition remains elusive. I’ve come across more attempts at defining narrative design than I care to remember. Some are overly simplistic, failing to adequately capture the marriage of story and design elements. Others come across as pretentious, making narrative design out to be some grand unifying concept around which all modern game development is structured. Some are frustratingly verbose, others curiously stunted and vague.
I’m in no rush to take a stab at my own definition of narrative design, adding to the pile. Instead, I thought it may be interesting and even a little illuminating to discuss what the discipline isn’t.
First off, narrative design isn’t solely concerned with crafting and writing a game’s story. Often that’s part of the brief, but I’d suggest it’s more useful to think of this element as, well, game writing. That’s not to diminish or devalue the herculean task of creating a compelling video game story in any way. Crafting an undulating structure, defining resonant story beats, creating interesting characters and writing engaging dialogue, is no mean feat. It’s an art form in of itself, one that many writers spend a lifetime studying.
Narrative design, however, is more concerned with how the story elements are implemented into the game and engage the player. For example, is one of the key story events delivered via an in-game cutscene or through a playable encounter with enemies? If the game features dialogue, what sort of system is desirable to maximise the story potential while complementing the gameplay? What sort of tone is a certain location supposed to evoke, and how would this serve the story?
Narrative design is concerned with how the story elements are implemented into the game and engage the player.
Because narrative elements permeate through much of modern video games, narrative design calls for collaboration with other areas of development to ensure a consistent narrative vision is realized. This may include game design, art and audio, for example. It shouldn’t be an isolated, lone wolf discipline. But, in my experience, all-too-often narrative design is segregated from other areas of development. Perhaps the reason is the aforementioned lack of understanding of its remit and potential benefits. At best, this division causes development inefficiencies. Worse, it jeopardizes the game’s quality, as lack of communication inevitably leads to team members pulling in different directions.
Narrative design’s extensive interaction with other disciplines, however, has its risks. Most prominently, other areas of development may feel threatened or at least irritated by narrative’s involvement in “their” work. After all, nobody likes having their toes trodden on.
I’m not sure if there’s an easy answer to this. In my opinion, it all comes back to understanding narrative design’s scope. It is concerned with leveraging the game’s story elements as elegantly and impactfully as possible. It isn’t, however, about telling other disciplines what to create, but rather ensuring they’re sufficiently informed with a high-level brief to avoid design disharmony. Also, it isn’t concerned with other areas not immediately relevant to the story. For example, narrative design may have some input into how a currency system may look and how affluent an area should be. But how that system works, ensuring balanced quantities, and so on, lies in the realm of game design. Similarly, it may be important to the story that an urban area is a rabbit warren of claustrophobic, dilapidated streets, but how that’s realized is up to level designers and environmental artists, amongst others.
To conclude, I believe that it’s precisely because narrative design lies at the interface between design and storytelling that makes it so hard to define and understand. It requires collaboration with many areas of game development, potentially resulting in friction with other disciplines if not approached with sufficient tact.
But, if this industry is to produce more narratively engaging video games, we must better understand narrative design’s domain. It isn’t supposed to dive to the mechanical depths of game design, nor necessarily soar to the artistic highs of exemplary storytelling. Instead, it’s a highly collaborative field, not only concerned with creating and enacting ideas to most effectively convey story elements, but humbly working with other disciplines to strengthen a game’s narrative.
Narrative design should ensure the “game” part of game stories is leveraged, making the most of the medium’s unique narrative potential, while conveying the story elements as impactfully as possible. Actually, that sounds perilously close to a definition, the very thing I swore to avoid at the start. So, I think I’ll leave it there by saying that I greatly welcome any thoughts and discussions about this topic.