What is a Narrative Designer? Aren’t They Just Writers?

I frequently hear narrative designers referred to as “writers” and while they often do write for projects, it misrepresents and dismisses their abilities as designers. It’s about the same as calling a Lamborghini engineer a “grease monkey” just because they can repair a car. If you were ever under the delusion that a bunch of writers think up stuff and the rest of the team makes it, allow me to kill any romantic notions of how games are made.

As a narrative designer, we are tasked with presenting information and reinforcing the story elements through the entire player experience and giving context to the actions they take in the game. While it’s true that dialogue and writing convey story elements, this is just one of the ways we convey narrative elements to the player. Narrative designers help make decisions on the narrative structure of the game, such as:

• How is information presented to the player?

• What systems and tools are needed to convey this information?

• How can narrative support other elements of the game?

• How do other systems reinforce the narrative?

• What information is crucial versus optional in player understanding of the story?

• Does the narrative work within the guidelines set out by the directors, stakeholders, and IP holder?

• Does the narrative scope work within production time constraints and personnel available?

Generally, I work on RPGs which are some of the most complex narratives to make based on elements such as branching narrative, reactivity, and the sheer number of systems that might need to support or be supported by the narrative design. When work starts on a new project for me, there is generally nothing in place. Think of a blank void - that’s all that exists for the game at the moment you start. Everything from this point on needs to be designed, built, and engineered and all of these elements generally have dependencies such as personnel needed or priority systems that need to be finished before other systems can be designed.

For example, if you want the ability for characters to talk to each other or the player in the game, you will need a dialogue tool/editor to be able to make this happen. But then you have to think of the extent of the actions that the designers or other departments will need from the dialogue editor:

-Can more than one character be involved in a dialogue at a time?

-Can the player choose their responses?

-How does the tool’s design and UI make it easy to write characters and replies without making it frustrating or time-consuming for writers/designers to create dialogues?

-Is this tool used for cutscenes?

- Are player skills represented within the replies?

-What common markup is needed for checks, reactivity, rewards, or progression (for example - give/take cash, give XP, check player gender, set quest = done, etc.)?

-Is there an easy way for writers/designers to pick or autocomplete markup to save time built in?

-Can designers or implementers trigger audio, cutscenes, or world events from the dialogue system?

-Does the tool have line IDs built in to make it easier to implement localization and voice over?

-If the game has VO, what are the needs for a “shooting script” version of the dialogue (like hiding markup or giving context)?

-Does the tool have the functionality to spit out a roadmap of all possible player choices and consequences for QA purposes?

-What does the player-facing UI need to convey and how does it let players know they are using skills or making a decision?

-What camera angles are being used in dialogue and can the designer control them from the dialogue easily?

-Does the dialogue system support the ability to set animation poses per line or even within a line?

-What format are the files saved in and what is the naming convention for dialogue files?

-Is there an internal testing tool that generates a test scenario for the dialogue and what elements does it generate?

Assuming you’re still reading this, those questions above are just a few that need to be asked, answered, designed into a tool with a user interface, and engineered/refined just to get dialogue in the game. Now imagine anything in the game that needs narrative elements and text - lore, notes, computers, item descriptions, emails, texting, phones, mission objectives, player journal, combat barks, signs, character creation/skill sheet, tool tips, tutorials, world map, or even credits. All of these systems need to go through the same process of identifying internal tools needs and player-facing elements. All of these tools are used at one time or another by the narrative team to help produce content within the game.

In addition to designing the basic tools and foundations that just allow narrative designers to create content, there’s a host of other tasks narrative designers need to produce content or help other departments create content. Some of these would be:

-Setting standards and guidelines for the writing team.

-Setting narrative goals for the project that support the project pillars.

-Laying out all narrative elements for high-level story beats, quests, or levels in internal documentation and keeping it up to date.

-Figuring out the time and resources needed per level of scope so that quests can be designed within scope parameters and don’t go over budget.

-Plotting out branching dialogues and other reactivity.

-Meeting with implementers to make sure quests/mission elements not handled by narrative are working as designed such as a combat encounter or critical path trigger.

-Scripting markup in dialogues and testing dialogue branches and quest functionality to make sure they work as designed.

-Drafting cutscenes and storyboards with art/animation/cinematics.

-Reviewing and editing the work of other writers or narrative designers.

-Cooperatively working with artists to develop character/item concepts or environmental/world-building elements.

-Regular meetings with other departments to maintain narrative cohesion or suggest ways narrative can reinforce other elements of the game such as combat (like barks) or levels (environmental storytelling elements).

-Estimating time per task for production schedules.

-Management reviews and notes that need to be addressed in future revisions.

-Answering questions about narrative elements over email or Slack/Discord.

-Presenting narrative design or story to members of the team or publisher.

-Generating PR and marketing materials.

-Fixing bugs, revising work, and testing fixes.

That’s just a small sample of tasks that a narrative designers handle on a daily basis. Most of them aren’t writing or creative work and can involve a lot of face-to-face time, paperwork, and planning. There’s a lot of negotiation, collaboration, revision, and rhythmic banging of one’s head against a desk. While players might notice your work in the character dialogue, they rarely think about all of the other technical elements working under the hood to consistently reinforce the narrative.

Ultimately, the narrative design of the game involves a lot of problem solving, resource management, communication, understanding of what other departments do, revision, denial, bargaining, acceptance, and sometimes hope. When we’ve got all that out of the way, we occasionally find the time to actually write for the game. And so if you were wondering what the difference between narrative designers and writers is, there you go.

Feel free to ask your questions about narrative on my Twitter and I’ll try to answer them in a future update.