‘The Narrative Designer’s Toolbox’: how narrative shapes story in gameplay
Written by Vinay Ranganathan, Photos sourced from SCAD Gamingfest
The definition of narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events: ultimately, it’s a story, so it’s no surprise that when people hear narrative design in relation to video games, they think it only has to do with writing. SCAD Graduate Jolie Menzel, B.F.A sequential arts, 2012, says she wants to clear up that misconception. In Feb 2020, Menzel started working as a lead narrative designer at Coalition, collaborating on games such as “The Walking Dead,” “Wolf Among Us,” and more recently, “Gears of War: Hivebusters.”
In her panel for SCAD Gaming Fest, “The Narrative Designer’s Toolbox”, moderated by SCAD professor of interactive design and game development Gregory Johnson, Menzel mentioned the multi-step process that goes into factoring narrative design into gameplay, scene and story direction.
Menzel emphasized the levels of agency players have. Agency is the amount of power a player has in a game world. Low agency are things like scripted story cutscenes, as the player doesn’t have much control over that part of the game, whereas high agency sequences may be scripted or unscripted dialogue and story menus.
After this rundown Menzel gave a gameplay example from “Gears of War: Hivebusters.” The scene started with a cutscene that transitioned into the game environment and world, which led into the gameplay aspect, which the player controls. As she explains, every aspect of this is created through narrative design to produce a cohesive experience.
Sometimes story is heavily choice based through dialogue options, quick time events and actions that need to be completed in a short amount of time after their appearance, on screen. Menzel mentioned how this kind of gameplay has cutscenes, but interactivity allows the player to remain engaged.
She wrapped up her presentation with the spectrum of high agency to low agency. Cutscenes and quick time events are at the lower agency spectrum, which from there scripted, dynamic dialogue and at the very end full agency with the story and story menus.
Menzel touched upon the fact that on the lower agency side, many story items are additions to lore and world building, not in relationship to the story, so the player has more choice in deciding whether they would like to follow it or not.
Menzel finished her presentation with advocating that narrative design is important to shaping games and that people with the technical minds for game design and narrative ability will have a strong chance at getting a foot in the industry.
