1st Edition

Narrative Design The Craft of Writing for Games

By Michael Breault Copyright 2020
224 Pages
by CRC Press

224 Pages
by CRC Press

224 Pages
by CRC Press

Narrative designers and game designers are critical to the development of digital and analog games. This book provides a detailed look at the work writers and designers perform every day on game development projects. It includes practical advice on how to break into the game industry as a writer or game designer. Readers can use the templates and detailed instructions provided here to create... Read more

Chapter 1 ◾ What Is Narrative Design? 1

Chapter 2 ◾ What Is Game Design? 9

Chapter 3 ◾ Story in Games 17

Chapter 4 ◾ Game Development as a Craft 25

Chapter 5 ◾ The Idea Is Everything…and Nothing 31

Chapter 6 ◾ The Player’s the Thing 41

Chapter 7 ◾ The Team’s the Thing, Too 47

Chapter 8 ◾ Game Genres and Their Players 57

Chapter 9 ◾ The Game Development Process 63

Chapter 10 ◾ Writing and Design for Analog Games 75

Chapter 11 ◾ Writing Advice 81

Chapter 12 ◾ Teaching Narrative Design and Game Design 89

Chapter 13 ◾ Career Opportunities in the Game Industry 99

APPENDIX A: PUBLICATIONS LIST, 105

APPENDIX B: CLASS SYLLABI, 113

APPENDIX C: COURSE ASSIGNMENTS (INSTRUCTIONS AND

TEMPLATES), 145

Biography

Michael Breault is a 35-year industry veteran who has worked on just over 130 games. Much of his work in the game industry has been as a writer or narrative designer (the rest has been as a game designer). For the last few years, he has been teaching narrative design and game design at several universities, currently at Webster University in St. Louis. The courses he creates and teaches are based on the tasks narrative designers and game designers do every day while developing games, providing students with a real-world view of the work they will be doing as writers and designers in the game industry.