Foundations

Some say that the first hour of the game is crucial for the player's engagement. In my experience, the window we have to get the player to care for our story is closer to 10 minutes. Anyway, beginnings seem quite important...

The first and the third dramatic acts are usually quite short. One asks the dramatic question, the other provides the definitive answer. But the actual story happens in between those two points...

Research suggests that one third to half of players who picked up your game will never finish it—yet the way the ending is designed and executed can make or break the experience.

The dramatic tension in a story comes from uncertainty. We ask ourselves a question and wonder what the answer will be. It is the job of a narrative designer to make sure that the players know and understand the main dramatic question.

So far, we’ve discussed the big picture: goals, conflicts, protagonists, story structures, and nonlinearity. We know how a story looks from afar, we can hopefully recognize a story in the wild. Time to zoom in...

Branching, nonlinear stories are the bread and butter of narrative design, but while we have an abundance of sources on traditional story structures, structuring the nonlinear stories still seems like uncharted waters.

“What’s this character’s arc?” I got asked that a lot. “What’s this character’s evolution? How does the protagonist change during the quest?” But the thing is, that such questions do not always make sense.

“Dunking on Joseph Campbell is not only our duty but also a pleasure.”—my colleague writer and anthropologist used to say. While my view on this issue might be slightly more relaxed, I have my bones to pick with using the monomyth as the default story structure in video games.

There are many definitions of a story, but there’s one that I find particularly useful as the starting point for talking about and designing game narratives. The definition is as follows: a story is the protagonist overcoming obstacles to reach their goal.