A publication dedicated to exploring interactive storytelling.

Category Archives: Editorials

The NDE is now part of the NDN! We foster, support, and nurture narrative designers and evangelize the burgeoning craft of Interactive Narrative Design. We have theorists, students, practitioners, dabblers, junkies, talent agents, and converts all on board to explore, learn and evolve, won’t you join us? We won’t bite, promise. In all arts and [...]

The NDE has moved and is now part of the Narrative Designer’s Network; the change was rather easy, but some details remain scrambled. Please forgive any formatting errors or broken links you may experience, in the coming weeks I will be be updating the site and fixing problems as quickly as I can. Thank you [...]

The Narrative Designer’s Network is for those that find themselves between the blurred lines of interactive entertainment writing and design; a group dedicated to support fellow Narrative Designers, foster discussion, and to evangelize the burgeoning craft of Interactive Narrative Design. Interactive Narrative Design is a new breed of design that is evolving into unknown territories. [...]

Drama is defined as “A serious play of human conflict.” This is especially apt for video games.The basic conflict of protagonist (player 1), deuteragonist (player 2) and the antagonist is at the core of life, drama, and games. Whether it’s a Wii bowling game or a online multiplayer strategy game, conflict, and it’s resolution, is also [...]

There was a interesting discussion on the the IGDA‘s Game Design Special Interest Group about the necessity of gore in games. In any other genres but action, horror and war, I would say no, gore is not needed. That said, I do not believe in the “gore-wars” to one-up the “real” nature of violence in [...]

Why make games? I create games to make meaningful emotional experiences, not to further puzzles or to encourage the slaughter of hordes of trolls. It’s not that these puzzle slaughter games are wrong, but they aren’t meaningful for me, and that’s why I work in games, to try and make these shoot ‘em up, dry [...]

Most recently I was asked by a rather famous game writer, whom I’ve been trying to interview, how I decide who is a candidate for the Master of Narrative Design series, rather than a Game Writer in the Trenches on the Narrative Design Exploratorium. It was the first time I was asked, realizing ego, not [...]

This is an overview of techniques I employed during the development of the award winning strategy game “Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts”. Publisher THQ’s first venture into narrative design, “Opposing Fronts” had to overcome interesting challenges and opportunities presented by storytelling in the Real Time Strategy game type and the COH franchise. This article will [...]

Sometimes we eat our own hype way too much. It should come as no surprise that most current video game production models continue to treat story as a misnomer. Giving narrative teams small budget allotments, and for the most part treating writing as a disposable commodity it’s no wonder the promises of high drama in [...]

A few years back at the San Francisco GDC Warren Spector gave a talk about the ability of stories to lower the barrier of entry into video games, and I believe the proof of that day being upon us in no more evident than in the hype around GTA 4. This Reuters Story is evidence [...]

I am honored to say my work on Company of Heroes – Opposing Fronts was a final nominee for “Best Writing for a Game Production” at the 2nd Annual Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts, and the game won “Nokia Award for Outstanding Innovation in Gaming.”. While I may not have walked away [...]

My first title with THQ and Relic Entertainment launched this past week and is currently the top selling PC game in North America according to Gamasutra. We created a wealth of content for a product that took less than a year to produce, while the current Metacritic score of 85 might seem pale in comparison [...]

Last spring at the 2007 GDC in San Francisco, Warren Spectre in his talk Storytelling in the Next Generation pointed out that story was a way to lower barriers to entry for new audiences. This idea was brought to mind recently when I saw a direct mail piece that was sent to me from Best [...]

The Resistance Fall of Man story is an interesting one. As you may well know the Church of England accused Sony of representing the Manchester Cathedral in their game without consent. The cathedral’s dean, the Very Rev. Rogers Govender was quoted in the AP story by Jill Lawless published on Breitbart.com        “For a [...]