4. Chapter One

What Is Narrative Design?

Ask any Narrative Designer what Narrative Design actually is and you’re liable to get a different answer each time. This is typical of a fledgling industry like ours, where everyone is still trying to figure it all out. Add in the fact that the technologies needed to tell interactive stories advance each year, and you’ve got a field that is somewhat difficult to define.

But define it, we must.

Why? Because by putting a concise definition together – an industry standard if you will – we can unite ourselves under one banner and take the first step in establishing a replicable system of tools for those who come after us. Although it’s a new path, Narrative Design is becoming more and more important with each passing year. This kind of work is increasingly in demand all across our culture – often in places you’d never expect.

Personally, I’ve worked (or know of others working) as a Narrative Designer for digital games, street games, immersive theatre, live events, social and political activations, therapies for mental health care, as well as branding and workplace culture design for businesses. Narrative Design can also be found in the film and TV industries – particularly in franchise world-building.

Our craft allows the world to encounter new, heart-changing ideas through the medium of character and play. We are moving away from an era of passive engagement with story and into an experiential, interactive one. For most of the modern era, stories have existed as objects that readers or audiences consume in the same way a baby might consume a bottle of milk. Whether it’s a book, a film, a tv show of a piece of theatre, we’ve traditionally sat in our seats and let the steady flow of story fill us up as we gaze upon the action. But this is no longer the case, thanks to our post-modern, post-digital society. We are now stepping into an age of experience. This is why content creation apps like Vine and after it, TikTok have become so popular with younger generations – our palettes for storytelling have become more complex. We now demand ways in which we can interact with and change the pathway of story. One need only to look at the way in which directors, producers, actors and writers are engaging with their audiences on social media, allowing their input into the creative process, as evidence of this shift. This is the future of story-driven media, and the future of Narrative Design.

With all that being said, what is Narrative Design? Is it the same as Game Writing? Is it something entirely different? Is it somehow inclusive of both? To answer that, we must first ask, what is it that makes a story? When we ask that question, several key concepts immediately spring to mind:

• Characters

• Setting

• Drama

• Suspense

• Action

• Conflict

• Plot

You’d be correct in thinking that story equals all these things, but I think we can simplify them down even more into a nice one-liner.

Story is Character responding to conflict.

At least… traditionally.

Video games and the increasing interactivity of media has turned this definition on its head. Now, audiences expect more complexity in what they engage with. The success of shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead tell us that fans are seeking stories in which we have multiple protagonists - who are often in conflict with each other. They are looking for vast worlds - fictional settings in which there is more going on than just what they are shown on screen. They’re looking for stories of moral ambiguity where the evil characters do what they do for a reason, a reason which we can, at times, get behind and support ourselves. Lastly, we’ve learnt from the final (horrible) season of GoT, that audiences want their voices to be heard, interpreted, and then contextualized into the story itself. Fans of that show developed an expectation for all the complex aspects I’ve just mentioned above, making it known on social media platforms what they hoped would happen. Then, as if buckling under the pressure, the writers took a sharp left turn in that final season, pulling away from the vast, complex geo-political tale they’d constructed, instead reverting back to a more traditional “chosen one” vs the “villain” narrative. They turned a beloved character intoa genocidal maniac and awkwardly tied-off all the loose ends they’d been building for years. The result? A universally panned final season with very little redeeming qualities, and a ravenous fanbased demanding even to this day, a rewritten re-filmed season eight.

The knee-jerk reaction from writers to this sort of a situation is typically to grumble about how authorial control of a story is important, and how we as writers shouldn’t be at the whim of audiences when it comes to developing our art. And while there is an element of truth to that statement, it kind of misses the forest for the trees: audiences are changing - whether you like it or not - and they will continue to change. If an artist creates “commercial” art that nobody wants, then what’s the point? Instead, let’s embrace this shift from the passive to the interactive, from the linear to the non-linear. The way to do this is by learning about and engaging with Narrative Design as a discipline.

Narrative Design is a three-pronged trident. Each prong is just as important as the last. But you need all three to spear a fish. These prongs are:

• Non-linear world building

• Game writing, and…

• Ludo-narrative cohesion

Non-Linear World Building

Unlike a traditional novel, film or TV show, this new form of storytelling places a much stronger focus on world building. In fact, with video games in particular, world building is perhaps more important than plot or characters. It also needs to be non-linear: players should be able to engage with this world in any order they desire. We need to consider that while something important plot-wise might be happening in one corner of a room, the play has complete freedom to gawk at a painting hanging on the opposite wall instead. They might listen to a quest-giver wax poetically about what needs to be done to free the land from a vicious tyrant, or they might decide to attack the quest-giver, or simply leave, and head straight for that final boss, ignoring all the steps in between. This freedom of movement means that as world builders, we need to design a series of loosely connected elements that, yes, can subtly direct a player along a certain path, but also makes perfect sense of the player decides to forsake that path and go it their own way.

Game Writing

This is the act of content writing - dialogue, item descriptions, in-game texts (like books, letters, journal entries, plaques etc.) and “barks” (one-liners uttered by NPCs or the Player Character themselves.) Like the world building aspect, game writing needs to be non-linear too. Players could come across a book of lore at the very start of the game, or at the very end, so whatever’s in it, needs to make some sort of sense at any given point in time. Dialogue also needs to be complex and interactive - choices should be available on how a player responds to a character’s question. Players should also be able to effect plot outcomes periodically through the course of play, with those outcomes being nuanced so as to avoid massive divergent (and hard to keep track of) versions of the story. A quick note: While many (if not all) Narrative Designers I’ve met do this sort of content writing as part of their job, Game Writing is also, at times considered its own discipline entirely. Plenty of AAA studios will make a point to differentiate between a Game Writer job position and a Narrative Designer job position. While these are often considered to be two separate roles, the Narrative Designer, often through necessity, will find themselves engaging in both from time to time.

Ludo-Narrative Cohesion

Lastly, we have the most important element of Narrative Design, and perhaps its most defining feature. If you’ve engaged with narrative in the games industry before, you might be aware of the ludological vs narratological debtate. If not, this is basically an argument between those that think games should be considered as a form of literature, and those that think it should be considered purely based off its elements of play - rules, point scoring, etc.

In recent years, this debate seems to be slowing down as more discussion is held around the commonalities between story and gameplay as well as the introduction of Narrative Design and two key concepts: Ludo-Narrative Dissonance vs. Ludo-Narrative Cohesion.

Ludo-Narrative Dissonance is a term used to describe a situation where narrative themes are in direct oppoistion to the core interactivity of a game, resulting in a disconnect between the two. You might have a game where the story explores the horrors of war, and the detrimental effects it has on the human psyche, but if your gameplay encourages and rewards the player for killing Nazis in increasingly violent and bloodthirsty ways, then you have a disconnect - you have Ludo-Narrative Dissonance. The overall message of the game becomes muddled. Conversely, if that same game explored the detrimental effects of war on the human psyche through a protagonist traumatized by what they’ve seen and done to survive, then the gameplay should consist of finding non-violent means to achieve your goals. The player doesn’t have to always succeed in this, but placing the focus on gameplay that mirrors the story is an important step towards Ludo-Narrative Cohesion. Ludo-Narrative Cohesion is really the crux of all Narrative Design. It is an act in which the writer marries core interactive elements of the game to core themes of its story.

When both play and story are reflected in each other, then everything else opens up for the player to explore a deeper sense of immersion in the world you’ve created. And in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? This is why people play games - to lose themselves in an alternate reality, to indulge in fantasies where they can control and effect the world around them on a large scale. There are many ways for the Narrative Designer to reach this unity between play and emotional truth, and to be clear, I' am far from advocating my way as the only way. What I am saying is that in my studies and practical experience in the industry, I’ve found that exploring and understanding folklore, and then using the underlying engines that flow through these ancient stories, has been the best way for me to achieve powerful results.