Video Game Designers’ Views on Storytelling in Video Games. A Thematic Analysis of Interviews with Video Game Designers

Video games as a medium were born about seventy years ago, when computer scientists at Cambridge University created a digital version of noughts and crosses in 1949. Only much more recently have designers begun using video games as a medium for storytelling, with Colossal Cave Adventure (Will Crowther and Don Woods, 1975) pioneering the genre. Most academics studying video games argue that telling a story in a video game presents difficulties, because narratives require structure and structure goes against the core qualities of the medium, namely interactivity and choice, which require a degree of freedom. Despite the concerns of the academics, video game companies have continued to tell stories using video games. Some games, like The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013) have even gained a lot of praise for their story. Thus, it could be that game designers have a different view on narrative in games than academics, but previous to this study, there was hardly any research on how video game designers view the interplay between story and video games. The question this thesis aims to answer is: how do video game designers articulate the writing and designing of meaning in single-player story-driven video game narratives? To answer the research question, twelve video game designers were interviewed, most of which employed at AAA video game companies. The transcripts of the interviews were analysed with the use of thematic analysis. From the analysis resulted that video game designers do recognise the concerns that the academics have with regards to the difficulty in telling a structured narrative while simultaneously playing into the unique qualities of video games like interactivity and choice. They were familiar with and mindful of ludonarrative dissonance and other complications of video game storytelling. However, game designers’ first priority is to make video games that provide a good player experience. This means that some narrative and gameplay rules are sometimes broken in favour of the enjoyment of the player. This can be seen as the designers taking some artistic license in the game design process. The player is willing to accept certain illogical game elements if they benefit the quality of player experience on the whole. AAA game designers generally want to make use of video game design norms, because they do not want to frustrate the player when she is learning to play the game. AAA game designers cannot experiment much with the medium of video games, because their company cannot afford to take risks. Instead, AAA game designers pose that it will be the indie game industry that will produce breakthroughs in gameplay and narrative design. Finally, game designers state that narrative in video games has improved greatly over the last decades. Looking towards the future, they think that narrative in video games can only improve further with the advancements of technology, most promisingly augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), personalised artificial intelligence (AI) and emergent systems. In future research, academics might want to shift the focus from game design problems to the artistic license of video game designers. More research could be done into the practices of indie video game designers and future storytelling formats like AR, VR, AI and emergent systems.