Games Writing & Narrative Design
Games Writer vs Narrative Designer
Games writer
- In-game text, e.g. Dialogue, item descriptions, flavour text (world building text)
- Directed by narrative designer
Narrative designer
- Bigger picture narrative decisions
- Overlap with game designers, and works a lot with other departments
- Could be developing character, mechanics, setting, lore, plots
Narrative is important in games as it provides context to mechanics and stakes, it engages the player, and sometimes it’s the main point and the game couldn’t exist at all without it.
Things to Consider with Narrative Design
Structure
- Will there be different endings or paths leading to the same ending?
- Is it going to be linear or split into branches?
- What player behaviour do you want to encourage? For instance, showing the branches to the player can encourage replay-ability. E.g. Detroit: Become Human
Who’s your player character?
- Will the character be created by the player of be embodied? Or maybe both? If the character is embodied, then the playthrough should feel like that character
- E.g. Baldur’s Gate 3 – Unique choices become available depending on attributes – Many choices change the story and show personality
- Is the player going to discover who the character is themselves through their own choices?
Do the narrative and other aspects of the game support each other?
- Ludonarrative dissonance. E.g. a character has a “no killing” policy, yet kills a lot through gameplay, then proceeds to spare the final boss because of their “no killing” policy. The narrative is also everything the player does, not just what they’re told.
- E.g. Spec Ops: The Line – political anti-war game, criticising society, exploring morality, etc., yet is still a fun shooter game which conflicts with the narrative
What story do you have the ability to tell?
- What research will be needed?
- What resources do you have access to?
- What skills do you have or are you willing to learn them?
How will your player engage and feel part of the world?
NPCs
- Who are they? How do they communicate?
Dialogue
- Format? Voice acting? Choices?
- How are barks used? (barks are basically videogame exposition, it gives information about the world)
Player actions
- Branching through physical actions made?
- Does failing a quest need to be the end or could it lead to a new story?
Cutscenes
- In engine? And how ill the pacing be impacted
- Animated?
- Stills?
Descriptions
- Diegetic à originates from within the world, like an in-game playing radio
- Non-diegetic à background music playing throughout game
- Can give info about world or protagonist
- Encyclopaedias
- Flavour text adds details to the world, e.g. item descriptions can do some world building and make players curious
Activity
We did a small activity where we wrote item descriptions regarding a shovel.
Situation: You are working on a (pick one) horror/cozy/action game and are writing the item descriptions for the player’s equipment.
Write a description for a shovel using 200 characters or less.
I tried to write something, but I couldn’t come up with anything I was satisfied with. What I wrote was “A high quality shovel to facilitate harvesting of heart of Terra”.
Writing tips
Maximising impact for choices
Think about emotional impact of choices and Introduce choices and consequences early to establish character morality and relationships, they don’t even have to change the plot, they can instead say something about the character you play as.
Limiting Scope
Draw out the branches of the story and think carefully about the impact and where the splits happen, also consider merging some together and reusing things.
Dialogue tips
Know the limits, such as character count, review the pacing in the format of the game, and read out loud. Also sometimes less is more.
Workspace
They assume you know what to do, so they want to know if they can work with you and do well with the team. And no one will hire you for stuff you aren’t already making, so it’s necessary that we make stuff if we ever want to get hired.