Designing game narrative

How do you tell a great story with a game? The answer lies not in the
plot and dialogue, but in the very structure of the game design itself. In
this article, we talk about why storytelling needs to revolve around the
interactive nature of the medium. Come and learn how to identify great
game narrative, and to understand the importance of interactive
rather than cinematic storytelling.
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Designing game
narrative
How do you tell a great story with a game? The answer lies not in the plot and dialogue, but in
the very structure of the game design itself. In this article, we talk about why storytelling
needs to revolve around the interactive nature of the medium. Come and learn how to identify
great game narrative, and to understand the importance of interactive rather than cinematic
storytelling.

IMAGINE ONE DAY you are struck with a flash of inspiration: freshly seared onto your mind
is a story, one that is undoubtedly the greatest tale ever conceived by Man. It has all the elements of a great
narrative: a gripping plot, nuanced characters, and an evocative setting.
How would you write a book to convey this story?
First, lets look at how the medium of literature works. Writers use words to express ideas, arranging them in
ways that draw the reader into the world of the story. Writers use descriptive language to evoke the senses;
they construct dialogue to reveal personalities; and they structure words into sentences, paragraphs, and
chapters, to set the pacing and flow.
Now, lets say you write your book while disregarding all of these guidelines. You use trite descriptions, a
destitute vocabulary, and you reveal your characters in unsubtle ways. An excerpt of this book might read:

Itwasadarkandstormynight.Bobwasanevilman.HesaidtoJohn,thegoodguy,Ihateyou
andIwillkillyou.
You continue to churn out the whole book in this horrible style, somehow still managing to communicate the
bare facts of the amazing story you had in mind.
People who read the book would laugh. Even though it may actually contain the outline of an amazing story,
it fails to properly put it into words you could say that it didnt take advantage of the medium of

expression (literature). The story and the storytelling are not the same thing; youve only conveyed the facts
of your story, but not the greatness of it.
Of course, you know better. Lets say instead, you write the book beautifully, creating the best novel of all
time. Great job! Now, you have a new task: you must convey your great story as a movie.

Now, lets look at the medium of cinema. Whereas literature can be characterized by using words to present
ideas over the course of time, cinema builds on that by adding a second dimension of expression: sensory
input.

The audiovisual experience in a film is a whole new realm of possibilities for artistic expression. Whole
pages of descriptive language in a book can be represented by a brief scene of imagery in a movie. A
conversation between characters is now enhanced by their body language, their tone of voice, and the
cinematography.
So, to make your movie, what do you do? Heres one method: hand a random person your
amazing, book version of the story, and film them reading it out loud. Perhaps you also sprinkle in some
beautiful panoramic landscape shots. That counts as a movie, right? Its got audio and visuals set to ideas
presented over time.
Well, despite containing narration of the best novel of all time, the movie is a failure. Again, it did not take
advantage of the medium of expression the visuals and the audio are not used in a way that brings the story
to life. Anyone who viewed it would laugh at how it tried to tell a story with complete disregard of the entire
sensory dimension of cinema. If youre just going to watch a movie of a guy reading a book out loud, you
might as well just read the book yourself.
What about the beautiful, panoramic shots? Theyre nice, but if you havent unified the narrative elements
with the cinematic ones, then all they are is a distraction. The visuals and the audio are the primary vehicle
for telling the story; they shouldnt be treated as mere artifacts of the medium. The level of cinematic quality
of the panoramic shots needs to be permeated throughout the whole storytelling; you cant just segregate the
story part and the video part. Itd be like trying to save that bad book we wrote earlier by sprinkling in
Shakespeare quotes. You cant just staple on pretty cinematics to a book and call it a film adaptation.
Of course, again, you know better this is all obvious stuff. Instead, you film an amazing movie. Good
work! With that achievement out of the way, you have one final task: to tell your amazing story using a
video game.

We said that cinema was kind of like two-dimensional literature, the second axis being sensory input. Video
games introduce a third-dimension: interactivity.

In books, depth comes from the words you read; in film, additional nuances emerge from hearing and seeing
a scene. In games, you can discover further depth from doing the scene. With interactivity, you now get to
experience the story firsthand. When you play as the protagonist, you have the opportunity to take on their
motivations and emotions. You hear and see things via your own discovery, not from the guiding lens of a
cameraman. We could say that video games communicate depth of narrative experientially, whereas cinema
did it visually.
So, to adapt your story to a game, you do this: you take your amazing movie version of the story, cut it up
into its individual scenes, and create a computer program that plays back the clips. You code some fun
segments of gameplay that are tangentially related to some unimportant parts of the story, and then sprinkle
them in between the movie scenes.
Well, despite having the best story, the best writing, and the best cinematic representation of it, the game
again fails to take advantage of the medium of expression it did not integrate the interactivity into the
narrative. What about the fun gameplay sections you sprinkled in? Well, just like the Shakespeare sprinkled
in your bad book, and the panoramic shots in your bad movie, those gameplay sections dont do anything to
advance the narrative. All youve done is segregate the game into its story parts and gameplay parts. No
matter how fun the gameplay part is, no matter how good the story part is, if there is minimal overlap
between the two, then you can hardly say that the story was successfully told through the medium of games.
All youve done is staple gameplay onto a movie.
Now, people who play this game would laugh at how poorly the narrative is presented, right? Well, no, they
wouldnt.

You may be unsurprised to learn that almost all big-budget games present their narrative in that method
story, gameplay, story, gameplay, with minimal overlap.

Story versus storytelling

Wait-a-minute: this method isnt actually bad storytelling, is it? I mean, people love these games, dont
they? They sell well, and people always talk about how good their stories are.
Well, yes, I would say that it is bad storytelling. Now, that isnt to say that the games themselves are
necessarily bad, or even that their stories are bad. Narrative isnt automatically a crucial component in
games, as it often is in film or literature. Interactivity is the defining feature of games and indeed, games
that excel in their gameplay are most often great games. However, a large number of games appear to have
serious narrative ambitions, yet they try to tell their stories by jamming together the mismatching puzzle
pieces of cinematic control and interactivity.
It doesnt matter how good your story is. What matters first is how good your storytellingis, and thats
defined by what medium youre telling that story in, whether its a book, movie, or game. The
aforementioned games with big narrative ambitions have great stories but bad storytelling.
So what makes storytelling good, and how do we identify bad storytelling?

A note on game criticism

Before we answer those questions, lets all get on the same page regarding some concerns: Isnt this all
subjective? If everyone likes it, then whats the big deal?

Is the quality of game storytelling subjective? Only partially. A story-focused video game, like any form of
creative expression, is an act of communication. The goal of a game designer is to communicate an
experience and theme to the player. Whats subjective is the value of that desired experience and theme.
However, whats not as subjective is the effectiveness of the communication of those ideas. Most game
criticism about stories tends to discuss the subjective themes, while taking the clarity and presentation of the
theme for granted. Its like if critics were discussing the horrible movie that we made earlier, and rating it
positively solely because of the content of the narrated story, overlooking the fact that the story is presented
in a horrible way.
But people like these games; they have fun and they enjoy the stories. Well, I dont mean to diminish their
positive experiences. Rather, I hope to show that enormously greater experiences are possible. We have very
low standards, mostly because there are such few good examples out there. This is reinforced by popular
game journalism reviews, which really is just an extension of the game industrys marketing arm, a
symbiotic feel-good loop that ensures that only the most easily digestible game concepts are explored. We
think what we want are movies with a dash of interactivity, when there is actually an entirely unexplored
universe of possibilities out there. Once you think about what the theoretically perfect game narrative could
be, you realize that what we currently have falls drastically short. We already have works in literature and
cinema that are close to ideal perfection, but we dont even know what the ideal is in games.
The goal of this article is to show that games have barely even figured out how to present a theme, and that
we should first focus on how to properly use the medium as a tool of expression before we start to worry so
much about what is being expressed.

How to measure artistic quality

Before we talk about storytelling, lets first talk about how to even identify good qualities in a game. One of
the strongest indicators of artistic quality or good design is how effectively the individual elements work
together to communicate the theme. In a good movie, everything should work to reinforce the thematic
ideas, from the colors and the angle of the camera, to the music, acting, and makeup. If one of these
elements instead contradicts the theme, then it sticks out and detracts from the power of the message, or at
the very least, misses an opportunity to strengthen the message.
For example, in The Matrix, colors are used to emphasize the idea of opposing realities. All the scenes that
take place in the simulated matrix world have a green tint built into the very props, wardrobe, and lighting,
while all the scenes that take place in the cold and harsh real world have a blue tint. This visual cue helps the
viewer subconsciously distinguish the contrasting worlds. Its an elegant way to subtly reinforce that theme.

If the color palettes were instead chosen arbitrarily, the theme of contrasting realities would be that much
weaker, that much less coherent. A good cinematographer finds and takes these opportunities in order to
maximize the strength of their ideas. Likewise, in game storytelling, we also find opportunities to reinforce
the message of the story with game elements like interaction and decision making. To ignore the theme
while designing these elements is to have a weaker storytelling experience. This is a restatement of our
earlier revelation, that we must take advantage of the traits of the medium in order to effectively tell a story
in that medium.
A creative work made with this attitude feels elegant and consistent, because it manages to communicate
many related ideas with few components. A less coordinated game instead feels unfocused, clumsy, and
conflicting. If we want to identify weak storytelling, these are the attributes to look for, which we can detect
by playing through a game and paying attention to see if our mind fills with dissonance.

Three kinds of dissonance

Cognitive dissonance its an internal, mental conflict, and is usually quite subtle. It happens when you hold
two conflicting beliefs or ideas in your mind at the same time. What kind of dissonance do we feel when we
play these kinds of games? Here are three kinds that Ive identified.

Conflicting experiences

Some games purposely exploit ludonarrative dissonance to their advantage. Saints Row 2 is a
game with the humor built around that exploitation. For example, in one scene you mourn the

loss of your friends wife, and then afterwards, you run around in the streets naked with a
chainsaw, throwing grenades at civilians. Now, doing that may be funny on its own, but when
done in the context of an ostensibly serious story, its hilarious in its absurdity.

The first and most apparent kind is ludonarrative dissonance. What does that mean? Ludonarrative
dissonance is when you watch a game cutscene where the hero laments his distancing relationship with his
family, and then in the next moment, youre driving a car over a hundred people. Ludonarrative dissonance
is when a great warrior ally monologues about how cunning and fearsome he is, only in the next moment,
hes running in circles, blocking your path annoyingly, and then gets shot dead instantly. Its when what the
story says and what the player does or experiences dont match up.
This kind of dissonance happens quite often when you segregate the narrative and the gameplay, because the
narrative is in the hands of the writer in one moment, and the player the next. It makes it hard to take
seriously what the story is saying, because it conflicts with what we are actually experiencing.

Who am I?
The next kind of dissonance is a dissonance of identity. To explain this, lets first back up a bit to the analogy
of literature, cinema, and games as dimensions. Another way to look at this triplet is in their increasingly
intimate point of view. Think about books: a lot of literature could be described as third-person storytelling:
the events are verbally recounted to you by a third party the author and you interpret the words on your
own. Movies, on the other hand, are second-person storytelling: you watch the events unfold before your
eyes, seeing things directly as they are. Lastly, video games are first-person storytelling: you are the actor
living out the story. Instead of simply being told whats going on, or watching it happen, youre experiencing
it firsthand!

However, in poor game storytelling, we often have a big dissonance regarding your identity. In one
moment, you are the protagonist, exploring the world and fighting enemies. In the next moment, you jump
out of your body and watch your character interact with others without your control, walking and talking on

their own. Youve switched from first-person to second-person. Who are you? Are you the actor or the
viewer? Games should be consistent with their point of view. It severely diminishes the importance of your
actions if it constantly feels like the game distrusts you with making the important ones.

It diminishes the importance of your

actions if it feels like the game
distrusts you with making the
important ones.
One of the basic principles in writing is to show, dont tell. If you want to convey that a character is nimble,
dont explicitly say Bob is nimble, show it: Bob dodged the falling boulder. In games, the principle
should be to do, dont show. Dont just show a cinematic of your character dodging a falling boulder, do it:
have the player dodge the boulder himself. Now it is the player themselves who feels nimble, instead of just
his avatar. This conversion of character development into personal development is the key to immersive
storytelling in games.

The problem with cutscenes

The last kind of dissonance is the weird modal shift that happens every time the game awkwardly tries to
switch between narrative mode and game mode. One minute youre playing a game, the next youre
watching a movie. It breaks the immersion, reminding you constantly that youre consuming a piece of
media. Not only that, it strips away any tension and emotion that was built up during the gameplay.
Imagine youre playing an intense game where youre fighting for your life. Youre in a really difficult
segment: the whole time youre on your toes and watching your every step, making sure you dont make any
mistakes. The stress and tension you are filled with is real: its genuine, tangible pressure, not just because
your character is in a thematically tense situation with bullets flying and zombies shambling, but because
you yourself are being challenged, trying to master the gameplay and pull victory out of a tricky situation.
This part right here is good storytelling: the emotions the player is feeling matches up with the thematic
situation at hand.

Converting character development

into personal development is the key
to truly immersive storytelling.

While you are playing through this part of the game, all of a sudden, the camera zooms out, and now its a
cutscene. Instantly, all your internal tension is gone. You put your controller down and sit back and watch.
Even though the characters on-screen might now be engaged in an even more thematically tense situation,
jumping from helicopters or something, you as a player dont really care about that. Deep down inside, you
know its just movie mode: anything that happens now is just supposed to happen; its all just part of the
story. Any mistakes you made before, during the gameplay mode, actually mattered: they caused you real
world stress. But now, since you have no more control, any mistakes that you see your character doing
during movie mode are all part of the plan. You no longer have skin in the game. You find
yourself relaxing when it switches to this mode. Youre relaxing during the climax! Whats supposed to be
the most intense part of a game is now the moment for your to ease your muscles and take a breath of relief.
The game wasted a hard-earned emotional buildup in the name of being more cinematic!
Every time the game switches from gameplay mode to movie mode, your attachment to the player character
switches from 100% emotionally invested, to 100% detached. Thats pure, jarring, dissonance right there.

A pianist plays in front of an intertitle from the silent film, Hoodoo Ann (1916).

Heres another, very different example of this kind of modal shift, this one happening outside of games:
silent movies. These films have pretty good cinematography and very good acting. You could say that they
fill out the visual experience quite well. However, every once in a while, an intertitle comes up.
Intertitles are those fullscreen captions that describe what is happening or contain dialogue. During these
captions, the film regresses back a dimension it ignores the sensory experience, the thing that makes film
unique from literature, and puts straight up literature on the screen. If we were to graph the progression of a
silent film on our 2D chart, it would look something like this:

Over the length of the film, it generally maintains high levels of visual experience; however, whenever an
intertitle comes up, the amount of sensory experience drops down to near zero. The exact same thing
happens with game cutscenes!

When a cutscene happens, you ignore the whole dimension of interactivity, the thing that makes games
unique from film, and put straight up film on the screen. Games with cutscenes are the silent films of games.
At least silent films are excused by their technical limitations no comparable excuse exists for games. The
worst part is that the most important plot points tend to happen during cutscenes, while keeping you at a safe
distance from actually participating.

Games with cutscenes are the silent

films of games.
Lets look at a counter example to cutscenes. The Half-Life series has an alternative approach: instead of
showing a movie, they unfold the content of the scene naturally during the gameplay, and you never lose
control of your character. Characters start talking around you, impressive visuals happen in front of you, but
youre always in control. You may be confined to a gated area during these parts, but youre still free to walk
around and examine things, and watch the action unfold while remaining in-character.
This works pretty well: the immersion is not broken, and you dont change point-of-view you never stop
being an actor in the story experiencing things firsthand. Its not perfect though: the formula does eventually
get a little bit predictable, and the illusion wears away once you start realizing, okay, Im now in a story
room, but for the most part it works well, far better than a cutscene.

Explicit stories and player stories

Weve talked a lot about what games are doing wrong. How do we improve our storytelling? To figure that
out, lets first take a look at the concept of narrative itself more deeply.
What even is narrative? Do all games have it? Do all games need it? Lets lay down some definitions. First
of all, there are two kinds of narratives in games: the first is the traditional kind, the kind we think of when
we talk about plot, characters, and dialogue; and the second kind is the narrative of the players personal
experience.
The first kind is what I call the explicit story. Its what games are about. This game is about fighting off
zombies. This game is about exploring the world and saving the princess. This game is about saving the
world from aliens. Its the aesthetic context of the game, explicitly stated by visuals, sounds, and words. Not
all games have this kind of narrative, but its in most. RPGs, adventure games, and action games usually put
a lot of emphasis on the explicit story. Other games eschew it completely, like many puzzle games and most
traditional card games. Even a game like chess has a tiny amount of it: the game is loosely styled as a
medieval war game.
The second kind of narrative is what I call the player story. Its the players personal experience. As they
play through the game, a lot of things happen in the players mind: they experience a variety of emotions,
they develop perceptions and interpretations of characters and events, and they form relationships between
their own actions and the on-screen results. These things all work together to create a different kind of
narrative experience, one with its own pacing, characters, plot, and dialogue, separate from the explicit story.
Are these player stories actually real stories? Yes in fact, players will often just outright tell these stories to
others. Ask someone about their intense Tetris match.

Iwastryingtobeatmyfriendshighscore.Ihadagreatstart,butneartheendIjustcouldntget
alinepiece.Itwasuptothefinalfewrows,andfinallyIgotone!Iusedittoputmyselfintheclear,
andwentontobeatmyfriendshighscore.
Thats a real story. Maybe it doesnt sound that exciting when you put it in words, but in the players mind,
its a fully developed experience with a real conflict, climax, and conclusion. Its felt deeply by the player,
because its something that happened directly to them.
All games have this kind of narrative. Even a game like football has its own stories people tell them all the
time, recounting exciting matches and plays. Many games have both kinds, both an explicit story and the
players story. However, a good player story should always be the end goal, while the role of an explicit
story should be to support the development of a good player story. A game with an amazing explicit story
and a horrible player story is like the book we made earlier that had a great plot but a horrible delivery of it;
its the movie we made with the bad narrator and boring visuals. You cant just design both stories
separately: as we saw earlier, fun gameplay that is segregated from the explicit story makes for dissonance,
meaning youll end up with a disjointed and bad player story.

Unifying the two narratives

So how do we tell a good player story and a good explicit story together? By knowing this: the best game
storytelling is when the explicit story is indistinguishable from the player story.
Ideally, when you play a game, you should never have to ask yourself, What am Isupposed to be doing? In
a good game, what you are supposed to do should intersect with what you want to do. If the emotions and
motivations you feel while playing a game feel natural within the context of the game, then something
amazing has happened.

In a good game, what you

are supposedto do should intersect
with what youwant to do.
Heres an example from the first Portal game. In this game, you play as a test subject with a portal gun,
trying to advance through different test chambers. Near the end, you are riding a slowly moving platform to
what you are told is a reward for your good test performance. Suddenly, its revealed that the platform is
actually taking you to a fiery death. When I was playing this scene, I genuinely panicked: I was deeply
immersed in the game at this point, feeling good about myself for beating the puzzles, ready to be rewarded
for it, and now I was being betrayed. Without thinking, my eyes lead me to an ideal surface for firing my
portal gun, and I created an exit for myself, escaping certain death. For just a moment, I genuinely thought I
broke the system. I had outsmarted the enemy with my wits!

Now of course, it turns out that I was actually supposed to do that. But when I did it, it was purely out of my
own motivation for self preservation, not because I wanted to advance the story. Theres a night and day
difference between just watching a character narrowly escape, versus doing it firsthand via your own wits
and finesse, experiencing genuine anxiety and relief. A key plot element has progressed naturally, without
dissonance. What I wanted to do and what I was supposed to do was the same.
Everything in the earlier parts of the game worked towards making this scene happen naturally for the
player: the training in the portal mechanics; the witty dialogue that foreshadowed doom; the test chamber
format that made you want to escape; the little hints that escape could be possible.
Lets break this scene down to the two narrative types: The player story is that you used your wits to escape
a stressful situation. The explicit story is that your character, Chell, used her wits to escape a stressful
situation. Theyre identical!
Lets compare this scene to a similar one in a different game. Ill use the new Tomb Raideras an example,
although there are countless situations in other games that play out the same way. In one scene, you are
watching a cutscene of your character running from danger, and suddenly its revealed that a large boulder is
about to crush you. You have exactly one option: press the button within the next half second. If you do,
your character jumps out of the way safely. Any other action causes your character to die.
On the outside, both scenes in Portal and Tomb Raider seem to have the same amount of danger: in both
cases, failure means a gruesome death for the heroine. Yet in Tomb Raider, the situation is experienced
largely emotionlessly by the player. Perhaps you cringe a bit when you see the grisly death animation, or
maybe you experience frustration as you miss the button the first few times. But theres never the excitement
of using your wits to save yourself from danger, as there was in Portal.

Even though the Tomb Raider scene may be more cinematic and visually impressive, its forgettable. You
almost got killed! Shouldnt that be memorable? Its not, because the player story clashes with the explicit
story. The player story is that youre watching a cutscene, and suddenly the game tells you to press a button
in an obvious and annoying way, and you are forced to press it under the punishment of boring repetition.
The explicit story is that your character, Lara Croft, narrowly escape grave danger using her keen senses and
agility. Thats a huge disconnect between the two! How dissonant is that?
This is what I mean when I say that the explicit story is the aesthetic context to the player story. Its a way of
framing your actions and motivations, a way to increase consistency and to reinforce themes. The two
narrative types work together. If there was no explicit story in that Portal scene, you would just be jumping

from gray boxes into gray walls, so that you dont fall into the red zone that would reset your position. You
might feel good about figuring out the puzzle, or enjoy that youre getting pretty good at the mechanics, but
you wouldnt feel like you beat the system, or that you used your wits to cheat death.
On the other hand, if there were no player story, like if you had just watched a really cinematic video of the
situation, you wouldnt have felt those things either. You may get excited by the visuals, or feel happy that
the protagonist survived, but you wouldnt feel any personal achievement or any risk to yourself.

Linear, scripted, cinematic stories

So we just saw a good example of how tell a good story of a short action sequence. How can we extend
these principles to the entire story of the game?
Well, its hard. Not many games have pulled it off very well, especially games with a linear, scripted,
cinematic format. By this format, I mean games with a big emphasis on the explicit story, with scripted
events, lots of characters and dialogue, and usually a definite ending. There are a lot of weaknesses with this
format: a lack of choice; an over-emphasis of dialogue, even though the player has little control over it; a
rigid, linear progression. These arent weaknesses in a film, but in a game, these traits clash quite heavily
with the mediums emphasis on interactivity.
Portal is one of these games, but it manages to do a great job at storytelling. However, I think it is an
exception, in that it is unique in its ability to take advantage of those weaknesses. The lack of choices, the
one-sided dialogue, and the linear progression, all made sense in Portals test chamber format. Youre forced
to do what is told, since youre just a guinea pig; you cant talk back, since there are no other characters
except for a disembodied computer; and you only have one direction to go in those test chambers. This
convenient format means that none of the usual dissonances arise. But you cant really generalize these
techniques to other games. Its as if the only way to overcome these weaknesses is by embracing them and
building them into the story itself. Thats not an option for most game stories.
Maybe the linear, scripted, cinematic story just isnt a great format for games. Some games with this format
do a pretty decent job, at least in some aspects, but I doubt were going to see great advances in this style for
a long time. Its a style that is imperfectly adapted from movies, and it just doesnt fit very elegantly in a
medium about interactivity, choices, and personal experience.
I dont think it should be the go-to format for game stories. What other formats are there? There are a few
options, many of them experimental, but theres one in particular I want to explore in this article: emergent
narrative.

Putting the player back in control

We saw that the weaknesses with the linear, scripted, cinematic format all revolved around control. The
writer in us wants to create a string of concrete events that unfold unvaryingly, but what if we loosened up
on that desire? What if we gave up that strict control? A common thing we saw in those games is that they
first created the explicit story, and then designed the player story around that. They have their script all
written out, and then built the gameplay with the script in mind, trying to get it to match up. What if we did
the opposite? What if we designed the player story first, and then built the explicit story to match that?

Now, I dont mean to simply make a fun abstract game first, and then write a scripted story that makes sense
with it. Thats certainly a great method to try out, but its not exactly what Im talking about at the moment.
What I mean is, instead of having any scripted elements at all, we let the explicit story describe the player
story. We let the plot, climax, and characters all emerge from what the player experiences. In short, the story
describes what the player did, instead of what the player needs to do.
What would that look like, exactly? Here are a few examples.

Journey
The first example is the game Journey. In the game, the explicit story appears to be very loose. When you
start out, all you know is that youre some sort of person or creature in the desert. Thats it. There are no
explicit goals, motivations, plot, conflict or dialogue. However, these things naturally emerge, simply
through the design of the game. Early on, you see a beautiful, gleaming beam of light on a mountain far in
the distance. Either consciously or subconsciously, your goal becomes to get to that mountain, as it always
seems to be in your view. Along the way, you encounter some characters. These are other human players,
going through the same experience as you. You cant talk to them with words, but you can communicate
with body language and a singing ability.

At this point, the story is different for everyone. Some people partner up with a curious new player, solving
problems together, building up their friendship, reaching the end together. Others have conflicts with the
other players, and choose to go it alone. Others make a great friend, but become separated from each other
through their own struggles in the game, and they mourn the loss of their friend. Others find a mentor, an
experienced player who can guide and teach them along their way.
These are all great stories that are deeply meaningful to the players, since they are personal experiences that
they created for themselves. And theyre not just personal like an intense Tetris game, but also emotionally
complex, like a good movie. I mean, imagine this:

Yourealoneinthewilderness,andthenyougetstuckatthebottomofacliff.Youhavegreat
troublegettingout,butthenastrangercomesoutofnowhereandhelpsyou.Thetwoofyoubecome
greatfriendsandyouexploretheworldtogether.However,asyoucrossawindybridge,your
friendfallsoff!
Youyellforhim,hopinghehearsyou.Youarefilledwithdespair,knowingyoumayneverseehim
again,butsuddenlyyouhearhimwailingfaintlyinthedistance.Youknowthatvoice,thatsingsong
patternthatyouveheardhimchirpbefore.Eventually,yougodownandrescuehim,ashehad
rescuedyouearlier.Youjourneytotheendtogethersafely.
Thats like something out of a movie! However, the experience is even stronger than a movie, because it
actually happens to you. It happens not because a writer decided it should, but because of the actions you
and your new friend did. You formed real relationships, felt real emotions, real despair and joy. A scripted
version of the experience would only be a vicarious one; never a genuine, firsthand one like it is now. You
could call it a literal narrative, since everything thats important actually happens in real life, short of
physically going into a mystical desert.
Its not that the designers didnt design any explicit story. Rather, instead of trying to come up with very
specific plot lines, characters, dialogue, and events, they chose to design a context that would highlight those
elements when they emerged. When you find another player, there are visual cues that underscore their
presence and introduction. When you communicate with them through singing and body language, all sorts
of imagery forms in your mind about the other players personality (thats character development!). When
you both are getting along fine, a big hazard tests your relationship. These are all elements of a great story,
and they are explicitly designed by the designers. Theyre just not shoved down your throat they happen
naturally.

Dwarf Fortress
Lets look at another example. We talked about letting the story emerge out of the player experience; this
game takes that concept to a whole new level: Dwarf Fortress.
Its hard to describe Dwarf Fortress, but in short, its a detailed simulation of a kingdom of dwarves. It looks
graphically primitive, but dont let that fool you: the game is ridiculously detailed. This is a game that
simulates everything from rivers cutting through canyons over thousands of years, to an individual droplet of
rain on the eyelash of a child. Its a sandbox game, and you try to build up your kingdom until a catastrophe
naturally emerges through the complexity of the simulation, wiping everything away.

One great aspect of the game is that its visual simplicity allows your mind to fill in the blanks and assign
meaning and motivation to the details in the game. Its like how when you read a good book, your mind
naturally creates what the characters look and sound like. Through this and through the games complexity,
you can imagine what kinds of stories must emerge. DFstories.com catalogues many of these: some filled
with action, some unexpectedly heartfelt and touching, others just plain silly. Check them out to see just
what kind of imagination and emotions get stirred up by people playing this game.
While I would consider Dwarf Fortress to be on the extreme side of its style of storytelling, as it is quite
inaccessible to most people, theres still a lot from it that we can learn. The main thing we can take away is
that an emergent situation whether it came from the interaction of complex rules, the players
experimentation, or even just through random chance can be just as impactful to a player as a scripted
situation, sometimes even more so. The beauty comes when the situations feel purposeful and add depth to
the player story. The fact that a situation is emergent means its likely unique, making the experience feel
special for the player, since they know that no one else has encountered it before. Its like when you
play Minecraft the first few times and find a beautiful natural formation. You feel a sense of awe, knowing
that youre the first person to have ever seen it. It must be what old explorers felt when trailblazing. Thats a
hard feeling to create with scripted situations!

Brogue
A final example of emergent narrative is a roguelike game called Brogue.
In Brogue, you are an adventurer exploring a procedurally generated cave, trying to reach the artifact at the
bottom and bring it back up in one piece. Its very difficult: death is permanent, and there are an infinite
number of mistakes to make. The explicit story is minimal: all you know is what youre looking for, and that
the world around you is highly dangerous. Like Dwarf Fortress, the minimal visuals let the player form their
own interpretations of the action.

However, the game is filled to the brim with opportunities for the emergence of great player stories. There
are complex interactions between items, enemies, and the environment, and you always have a myriad of
options for dealing with the current situation. Grass catches on fire; enemies can turn into allies; dropped
items can trigger switches. There are so many interactions between individual elements, yet there are no
scripted sequences. What kinds of emergent stories can arise from this? I watched my friend play the game
once:

Therehewas,stuckonawoodenbridgeoveradeepchasm,goblinsclosinginonbothsides,
blockingthebridgeexits.Heisatlowhealthandcan'tfightthemall.Allhehasisanunidentified
potion,whichhecanonlyhopeisapotionoflevitation,sohecanflyoffthebridgetosafety.With
thegoblinsjuststepsaway,hedrinksthepotion.Unfortunately,itwasapotionofincineration!
Ahugeburstofflameserupts,settinghim,thegoblins,andthebridgeonfire.Thebridgeburns
awayandeveryonefallsintothechasmbelow.Fortunately,helandssafelyinapoolofwater,
whichalsoputsouttheflames.Someofthegoblinssurvive,whileothershitthegroundnearbyand
die.However,oneoftheflaminggoblinslandsinabogfilledwithexplosivegas,andtriggersa
massiveexplosionthatwipesouttheremaininggoblins.Myfriendescapes,andcontinueshis
journeydeeperintothecave.
That scene is packed with action. Its just as exciting as any action movie or game cinematic, and its just
one of many equally amazing scenes that Ive seen happen in the game. Despite that, none of it is scripted;
its not even directly intended by the designer. It simply emerges from the interactions of the mechanics. The
difficulty progression inBrogue means that as you get further in the game, the more elements youll
encounter, meaning more interactions and more intense sequences like these will happen.
A playthrough of Brogue truly does contain a genuine story: the story of the players adventure through the
dangerous caves. Just because there arent names or dialogue or cinematics doesnt make it any less of a
story. I honestly think the storytelling in Brogue, despite the game being entirely untouched by plot writers,
is superior to the storytelling in a game like the new Tomb Raider. Yes, Tomb Raider has a more complex

plot and more detailed characters, but remember: the story and the telling of it are not the same thing.
Perhaps Tomb Raider would make for a better movie than Brogue, but were talking about games. Tomb
Raider is that book we wrote at the beginning of this talk that has a good story but uses words and sentences
poorly. Brogue is like Hemingway, with a simple plot, simple vocabulary, and simple sentence structures,
but is written masterfully, in a way that deeply communicates its themes. I think the themes of action and
adventure resonate much more deeply in Brogue than in Tomb Raider.

A new frontier
Emergent narrative is still a fairly unexplored technique, one that I think is particularly promising, since it
delves so deeply into forming personal experiences. Its one of many possible storytelling methods, and I
think designers will have to first branch out in these areas if we want to discover the ideal form of game
narrative. Until then, lets remember to focus on the player story when building the explicit one.
Video games are a young medium of creative expression. Books have been around for millennia; cinema for
a century. Video games became popular only just a few decades ago. Were still just passing over the silent
film era of games. I dont think weve fully understood yet what it means to have great narrative in games,
so we need to be open minded about different storytelling formats. We should stop looking to cinema as
inspiration for our narrative, and start realizing that nontraditional structures can be a stronger storytelling
technique than the ones in the biggest scripted and cinematic games. Lets redefine game narrative to mean
more than just plot and dialogue what we really care about is the story that happens in the players mind.