The design of narrative in games has always had a different feel for me than how narrative is designed for other fictional media. I feel that while other fictional mediums tend to put the story as the most important piece to tell, many games instead emphasize the setting as equally or more important than the story. Worldbuilding in games tend to follow different practices from traditional fictional media.

This seems to follow the idea of spatial stories and environmental storytelling, where the worldbuilding is more important than the narrative (Jenkins). In addition, the presentation of the worlds in these types of games tend to be more passive, where players need to actively talk to NPCs and interact with objects in the world in order to learn more about it. However, it is not necessary to interact with anything not essential to the story or to understand the world to reach the end of the game and essentially “beat the game.” Essentially, a large part of the worldbuilding serves to flavor the mechanics of the game. However, those who seek out to learn more of the world are rewarded by being active on their part. An example that I can think of is Pokemon, where the player’s main goal is to become the champion, and to defeat some of the evil teams along the way. However, there are also several side quests and post-game content that is not necessary for the player to control, but can if they so desire. A lot of the NPCs within the game also has some kind of unique dialogue that gives background to the settings in the game.

In some games with a more strictly linear narrative, they tend to feature only one path through the story, a lot of the background follows more traditional storytelling methods where the backgrounds are often given to the player. These seems to follow Jenkins’s idea of enacting stories, where the player can participate in performing and witnessing the story as if they were there. If it is a game where the player can move around in the world, the path that the player must take is largely fixed. However, the freedom that the player has in pacing out the reveal of story beats still gives a sense of exploration and freedom not allowed in other mediums. An example I can think of is Davey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide, which we played in class, where a large part of the narrative given to the player is linear, to the point that the narrator himself controls a lot of the player’s freedom over the game, such as making the player skip the maze. However, the player can still have freedom in pacing, such as if the player chooses to read all the comments in one of Coda’s games.

In class, we played Half Life 2, which uses a bit of both ideas. The player controlled character is able to freely move around and interact with characters to learn about the world. In addition, talking to important characters in the story does not prevent the player from continuing to freely move around. However, the game also has a set path that they must follow to access the next stage of the story.

Sources:

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” Electronic Book Review, 7 Oct. 2004, electronicbookreview.com/essay/game-design-as-narrative-architecture/.