Word Portals

  What is Narrative Design in a nutshell? Narrative Design is where the ‘rubber meets the road’ so to speak. It’s the meshing of the written word with the mechanics and systems of the game. It’s where extrapolation happens and Narrative Designers work with other parts of the team to bring the vision to life in various ways such as how the player will encounter and interact with parts of the story and the NPCs living in the game world. What if I don’t have examples? Writing for games takes a plethora of skills and studios often want to see what you can do up front before ever even speaking with you. This can be easier said than done these days (especially in the current state of the game industry and the rampant layoffs and short term work). If you are like me and have had the misfortune of working on great projects that either never saw the light of day due to cancellations, or are no longer available due to studio closures so you can’t direct people to them and NDAs often prevent ...

I’m not an all knowing guru and these are more musings and thoughts than guidelines. Feel differently? Leave a comment. Let’s discuss. I love discussing this stuff. When anyone mentions Narrative Design or Game Writing, I can’t help but have a flurry of thoughts and emotions go rippling through my brain. It’s such a vast subject and is so much more than just dialogue, lore, descriptions or any other number of things that our writerly words are used for. What do I mean by that? Let’s take a deeper look. When it comes to telling a compelling story in a video game, we have to not only hook the player via an immersive and believable story, but also through enjoyable gameplay mechanics, visuals that fit the theme and vision of the overall story, audio effects and music that enhance the story and gameplay, and (if applicable) cut scenes that enthrall the player as opposed to making them use that time to bio break, get a snack or outright roll their eyes because the cutscenes don’t match up w...