Game writing and narrative design have been popping up more in job postings in recent years (see Lassheikki 2022, 12), though it is not always quite clear what the difference between the two is. Some think they are the same, just synonyms for each other, but others think there’s a difference in the responsibilities of a game writer and a narrative designer. This issue also comes up in Poikela’s research interviews with professional game writers and narrative designers. In this blog post, MA Jasmine Poikela will delve into the roles of game writer and narrative designer, contemplating them in a historical light, discussing the present situation, and drawing conclusions about the two roles in game development. Lastly, she will introduce her doctoral dissertation topic.

Old or new?

Game writing has been around since at least the era of text-based interface games like The Sumerian Game (1964), Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), and Zork (1977; 1980), soon followed by MUDs (multiuser dungeons), which also required navigation through a text-based interface (see Lassheikki 2022, 8; Suckling & Walton 2017, 9–10). Thus, one would have had written the whole game, literally. (And let’s not forget about boardgames and tabletop games such as D&D.) Adventure games, in particular, are known for their heavier storytelling, the Colossal Cave Adventure being the pioneering example of this genre.

Narrative design, on the other hand, has formed its own role and title much later. Earlier, when games were usually created by one person or a couple of people, they were responsible for many different areas of game development, such as code, writing, graphics, and audio. All the roles and titles have been gradually forming with game development needs as technology and scope of the games evolved and game companies started to form. (Skolnick 2014, 102.)

Lassheikki (2022, 10) explains that the development of narrative design as a discipline is because of “games have grown more diverse in form, mechanics, and subject, there are more options and possibilities than before on how those stories are generated, experienced and played. The push toward games as a live service, multiplayer games, and open world games, also contribute to a need for games with narrative systems that work at scale and can be added to.” The aforementioned MUDs sparked interest for multiplayer games (see Suckling & Walton 2017, 10), and considering the history of text-based interface games, it’s not surprising that storytelling remained in the medium and raised the extra demand for narrative design when technology evolved.

Game writing and narrative design – what’s the difference?

The answer depends on who you ask. In my research, I have received various responses when interviewing experts. Some consider game writing and narrative design as synonyms, while others disagree. However, if you make a distinction, differences between responsibilities usually fall into the following description. Game writing is seen responsible for the actual writing practices, and it usually deals with, for example, the characters, dialogue, item descriptions, and lore. On the other hand, narrative design is more about how the story is delivered through the game by mechanics, graphical style, and audio, and how the structure of the story and other game elements support the experience. (Lassheikki 2022, 12–13, 45–46; Megill 2023, 13–17.)

It should be noted that game studios use the two titles differently. Game writer and narrative designer might do the same tasks under different companies. (Megill 2023, 9.) Lassheikki (2022, 12) raises a consideration from the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain: both job seekers and companies should take into account that the job titles lack consistency when considering game narrative jobs. Megill (2023, 15) highlights various other roles related to narrative designer. Those are related to narrative systems design, narrative design implementation, and technical narrative design. Thus, you can break down different variations already from the one title of narrative designer. Jumping back into Lassheikki’s (2022, 12) note from Writer’s Guild of Great Britain, they point out that titles are affected by, for example, size of a team, goals of a project, and just subjective preferences.

Does defining these two roles and areas of game development matter? It seems like it does, though narrative designers care more about this issue than game writers do, who actually don’t feel the need to explain their discipline as much as narrative designers, notes Lassheikki (2022, 12). Because game writing itself has a longer historical foundation, game writer’s responsibilities are better defined and more familiar than narrative designer’s. As discussed earlier in this blogpost, role of the narrative designer is fairly new, and considering the fact that there is no clear consistency between the narrative job titles yet, the increasing need to explain the role becomes understandable.

My research

I was originally doing my doctoral dissertation about game writing practices in game companies but, during the interviews, I soon noticed that narrative design is so tangled with game writing that I could not ignore it. Currently, I focus on clarifying the situation of the two roles, asking: Do employees see any difference between the two roles and if yes, what are the distinguishing factors? Additionally, I am investigating both roles’ practices in the industry for pedagogical reasons.

Hudson (2022) has created an approach for game writing pedagogy by interviewing triple A game writers. My purpose is to build on his valuable work and widen the pedagogical view with my findings. There is clearly an emerging need for that as Persson and Rouse (2020) point out from University of Skövde: “one of the greatest struggles in designing a game writing curriculum is maintaining a focus on what separates a game narrative from a traditional narrative. While these differences have been researched for many years this scholarship has yet to materialize in game writing curricula.” We need to develop game writing and narrative design pedagogy so that we can offer updated information and concrete practices from the industry to the students who are seeking these jobs.

Author bio

References

Hudson, S. (2022). Approaching a Pedagogy of Game Writing. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003277668 

Lassheikki, C. (2022). Game Writers and Narrative Designers: The Evolving Role of Storytelling Professionals in Game Development. https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi:443/handle/123456789/114844 

Megill, A. (2023). The Game Writing Guide: Get Your Dream Job and Keep It. CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003282235 

Persson, L. & Rouse, R. (2020). The Game Narrative Renaissance: A Call for a Dedicated Game Writing Pedagogy. Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere. http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/the-game-narrative-renaissance-a-call-for-a-dedicated-game-writing-pedagogy/ 

Skolnick, E. (2014). Videogame Storytelling: What Every Developer Need to Know About Narrative Techniques. Watson-Guptill.

Suckling, M., & Walton, M. (2017). Video Game Writing: From Macro to Micro. Mercury Learning & Information.