Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
the box office unless it is translated through the director's vision into images on the
big screen. Though a Narrative Designer generally isn't going to have the level of
project control of a movie director, narrative-driven games nevertheless similarly re-
quire someone to craft a narrative and then shepherd it through the development pro-
cess, continually evaluating how features impact either the story itself or the game's
ability to convey the story to the player.
Of course, the relative importance of a game's story directly affects the amount of
input a Narrative Designer may have on any given project. Though Doom had a story
(or at least a context), it did just fine without a Narrative Designer. In more narrative-
centric games, a Narrative Designer may have a very high degree of decision-making
ability, while in other cases, one may be little more than a sort of narrative con-
science, constantly reminding people of story considerations (which may then be
largely ignored).
6.2 So What Is a Narrative Designer Then, Exactly?
A Narrative Designer is what's left over when you smash a writer and a designer
together. Rather than being part writer, part designer, the Narrative Designer is
wholly both, devoted to story and storytelling, and equally devoted to creating the
desired game experience. Ultimately, as specialized designers, Narrative Designers
approach their tasks as viewed through the lens of the narrative and seek to balance
the demands of gameplay against those of the story.
The “normal� Designer generally doesn't need to be concerned with the narrative
implications of any particular feature. The Narrative Designer, on the other hand,
must consider features and how they can be implemented to promote or enhance the
game narrative, or at the very least not detract from it.
Take, for example, a save-game feature. When outlining how such a feature
is implemented, a Designer is primarily concerned with functionality: how does a
player access it, when is saving available, does the game use checkpoints or a save-
anywhere mechanic, and so on. The Narrative Designer, on the other hand, must
also consider how such a feature is presented in-game from a narrative perspective:
does the user interface make sense in the context of the gameworld, does the saving
mechanic need a “story� explanation, would a save-anywhere system interfere with
the pacing of the narrative, and so forth. Though at first look a save-game feature
may not seem like it needs narrative consideration, such details can make or break a
pl aye r 's buy- in to the game's na r r a t i ve .
In the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies , for example, when the developers an-
nounced that characters killed in battle could be brought back to life at a nearby
cloning facility, many players were angered. Those upset by the announcement
wanted to play the characters they'd created, not clones of those characters. In Bioshock ,
on the other hand, when the player-character died, he was “revitalized� in a nearby
Vita-chamber. The underlying mechanics are essentially the same; the player-character
dies, it reappears at a particular safe location. However, because of the narrative expla-
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