At the conference DevGAMM Minsk 2014 I gave a talk titled “Narrative design: bringing gameplay and story together.” You can download the presentation here.

Watch the video on its original platform



The main points, briefly:
1. Narrative has existed in games for thousands of years.
2. We all work on narrative games.
3. A good mechanic can be spoiled by a story, and a good story can be spoiled by a mechanic.
4. Narrative designers are needed to prevent this.
5. A narrative designer is not a scriptwriter. They do not invent the story; they tell it.
6. A scriptwriter can be a narrative designer, especially once they see what happens to their work.
7. We do not have dedicated narrative designers: every team member takes on this role.
8. A plot can be broken down into the questions Where? Who? What? How? Why? When?
9. The foundation of a story is its setting, which defines what is and is not possible in the game universe.
10. If a game does not involve role-playing, the player character should have a personality to explain their motivation.
11. If a game allows role-playing, the player character should not have a personality of their own that interferes with it.
12. Linear stories without choices are not a bad thing.
13. To pass as intelligent, non-player characters should be able to go about their business, talk, react to their surroundings, and have opinions, desires, and a past of their own.
14. To make the player feel emotions, you need to show those emotions in other characters.
15. Eyes are particularly important.
16. Game mechanics should support the narrative.
17. A game needs tools to convey narrative: cutscenes, voice-over, characters speaking in the world, interface text, scripted scenes, and environmental storytelling.
18. Story conflicts and gameplay conflicts should happen at the same time.
19. To decide whether to synchronize the story with the gameplay or the gameplay with the story, you need to identify which came first in the game.
20. A chronology of events maintains the game’s coherence and an even distribution of events.
21. “The best tool for narrative is a world in which it can exist.”
22. Ken Levine dissolved Irrational Games because he wants to make nonlinear narrative.
23. DayZ and Minecraft are games without dedicated narrative elements that nonetheless generate narrative experiences.
24. Gone Home and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter have narrative elements, but do not present them linearly.
25. The main conclusion: we are all narrative designers to some extent and are responsible for telling stories in our game.
To clarify, these are only talking points: a brief outline of ideas that I explained in greater detail to the audience during my talk.