The Narrative Design Exploratorium™

A publication dedicated to exploring interactive storytelling.

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As part of the Narrative Designer’s Network and it’s mission to explore share and grow our craft, I am creating a series of interviews for our publication “Narrator” probing the depths of our ranks to find what it means to truly be a narrative designer. Today’s narrative designer is Lead Cinematic Designer Armando Troisi of EA’s Bioware and member of the Narrative Designer’s Network. He sits on the bleeding edge of interactive machinima, creating solutions for complex creative conundrums. He is here to share his thoughts on on our burgeoning craft, both philosophically and as an analysis of interactive narrative implementation in a world-class studio environment.

Stephen E. Dinehart: Can you tell me a little about yourself and your interest in interactive narrative?

Armando Troisi: I’ve always wanted to tell stories, but found the process frustrating in my early career. I bounced around radio, television and film for quite a while but none of these gave me enough control to tell the stories I wanted to tell.

When I was hired onto the Mass Effect 1 cinematic design team I knew I’d found my sweet spot. BioWare’s games were among my all-time favorites and getting an opportunity to be part of a company that’s so committed to the ‘art’ of games was a dream job.

When I joined the department, it was little more than a group of technical designers who needed to solve narrative issues the writers had never anticipated. This was done with cheap, in-engine cutscenes and later grew into making interactive conversations more engaging. I was hired as part of the design department’s effort to augment this capability with professional filmmakers.

Since then I’ve worked on a number of projects here at BioWare, helping the department recruit and train the best and brightest machinima minds in the world to work on our games. Building this team and developing the unique discipline of cinematic design has been an amazing opportunity and continues to be my focus here at BioWare. (more…)

Today’s creator is John Johnson CEO and Creative Director of Vancouver based Smoking Gun Interactive. His most recent project Exoriare is currently live. As an original IP manifesting itself in various forms of media it’s already proven a compelling mystery of a transmedia story world. John started Smoking Gun Interactive with some of his award winning team members from THQ’s Relic Entertainment, he produced the highest rated Real-Time Strategy game of all time Company of Heroes.

Entertainment is on the verge of something new; no not 3D, but a new generation of transmedia story experiences. Story worlds that, in a calculated fashion, cross from media to media providing players with new ways to experience, and immerse themselves in, an authored interactive world. In the past this was done solely for purposes of merchandising and franchise expansion, but in the present it’s being used to create fantastic story experiences. This new NDE series, Creators of Transmedia™, sets out to explore what visionaries in the field are now creating, and what they believe tomorrow will bring.

Stephen E. Dinehart: We’ll skip over the CEO portion and go straight to your role as Creative Director for Smoking Gun Interactive, what does your job entail?

John Johnson: My role is to get the various stakeholders onboard with a shared vision of what we want to accomplish with a project. Then, as we go through the various stages of development, I’m there primarily to make sure that we’re meeting that vision, in everything that we do.

Probably the most important decision we made, in terms of how we approach trans-media, is that our core creative team stays in the action, regardless of what media we’re dealing with. So, for instance, we don’t have a separate web development team, or a separate comic team – we’re treating everything as an organic, critical part of the project. We still bring in collaborators, of course, like Douglas Rushkoff, but he’s working with myself, our art director, and narrative team. (more…)

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 crafts movements refinement is born out of an evolving community of knowledge, groups of inspired individuals that together create and define a new lexicon which is to aid in the achievement of a higher form of being. We cover the confluence of design, engineering, and writing to actively give a voice to the talent which is making narrative design a reality in interactive entertainment studios around the world.

Our Community features include:

1. The Narrative Designer’s Encyclopedia a community wiki serving to create a common lexicon for our craft.
2. The NDN Forums are dedicated to creating discussion, exploration and critique of interactive narrative design.
3. The Narrative Design Exploratorium™ an e-publication dedicated to the outer limits of interactive storytelling.
4. The Narrator™ an e-publication dedicated to our network talking shop.

You can find out more @

http://narrativedesigners.net

or on Linkedin:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2246790&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

This is the first series for the NDN Narrator, “The Narrator Dialogs”; with it we seek to put a face on those who are making interactive narrative design a force to be reckoned with. Today’s dialog is with Tom Jubert, Freelance Narrative Designer. Tom is best known for his work on the Penumbra series of horror adventures, and has been in the industry one way or another since his teens. He was nominated for a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award in 2008, and was recognized by Develop Magazine as one of the top 30 game developers under 30 years old. Amongst other things, he is currently hard at work on an unannounced AAA action / adventure for consoles. Today he has come to share his perspective on interactive narrative design with the Narrative Designer’s Network.

Stephen E. Dinehart: Can you describe your current role as Freelance Narrative Designer @ Hydravision Entertainment?

Tom Jubert: If it’s got ‘narrative’ written on it, it’s my job. We’re working on an AAA action / adventure for consoles, the interesting element being that rather than the usual ‘save the world’ scenario, the plot revolves around a small picture, character driven story.

Full credit to Hydravision – they brought me on early in pre-production, which is a god send, and already had a really intelligent, mature ambition for the story. At the time, the team was limited to one designer, one artist (both in-house), and me. It’s grown a bit since then.

What do your daily duties consist of?

TJ: Every day’s different as we move forward in the project. Today I’ve been working on the plot walk-through, which is a longish chunk of prose drawing together all the central plot elements that have come out of the character design stage. The characters inform the plot, so now I’m taking their arcs and winding them around the bare-bones narrative to form what I hope will be a fully fleshed out story, but may look more like a skeleton with some viscera awkwardly draped over it. (more…)

This is the first series for the NDN Narrator, “The Narrator Dialogs”; with it we seek to put a face on those who are making interactive narrative design a force to be reckoned with. Today’s dialog is with Raphael van Lierop, Narrative Design Lead on an unannounced project at Ubisoft Montreal. Raphael comes to our field with a rich background in AAA game development, he tracks his thoughts on  blogspot.com. Today he has come to share his perspective on interactive narrative design with the Narrative Designer’s Network.

Stephen E. Dinehart: Can you tell be me about yourself?

Raphael van Lierop: I’ve been working in the games industry since 2001, and have held positions as a producer, creative director, designer, and writer on several projects. I’ve worked for Relic Entertainment (on Dawn of War and Company of Heroes), at Radar (on Earth No More, Incarnate, and Prey 2, as well as some other unannounced original IPs), and now at Ubisoft Montreal. I currently live in Montreal with my wife and two young children, and I’ve been a gamer for about 25 years now.

Can you describe to me your current role @ Ubisoft Montreal?

RvL: Sure! I’m currently leading the creation of all the story content and narrative gameplay systems for a triple-A action game at Ubisoft’s Montreal studio. As a member of the ‘core team’ on the project, I focus on the development of the setting, storyline, characters, etc., — as well as the game systems that allow the player to directly engage in these elements — and work with the various sub-groups within our development team to ensure this content and these systems are well represented in the game. (more…)

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