Narrative Designer Interview: Stephen Dinehart

In this interview, we get a glimpse into gaming’s future from a narrative designer duking it out in the field.

As writer and narrative designer, Stephen Dinehart helped bring WWII to life in the RTS Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. A featured blogger for Gamasutra, he runs the Narrative Design Exploratorium and now works at NarrWare, an indie developer.

He’s written extensively on the field of narrative design and is exploring new ground in the gaming industry. Today he sheds some light on what narrative design is all about, as well as his ideas behind dramatic play.

So you’ve worked on Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts in the past and are currently working on some other projects. What’s your current title, and what kind of work are you doing with NarrWare?

Indeed, I also worked on one of the COH: Tales of Valor campaigns. The Metacritic isn’t so hot on that title, but I really enjoyed writing and working with Brian Woods to design it.

Currently, I’m CEO of Me LLC! I have two focuses: CEO and Creative Director of NarrWare and freelance transmedia writer and interactive narrative designer.

NarrWare is a new venture; our aim is to break new ground in interactive narrative, and to do our best to push the industry forward in an exciting new direction I call dramatic play.

Dramatic play is an interesting concept, and I want to delve into that more in just a second. But first, narrative design itself can be hard to get for the average person or even average gamer. What exactly is a narrative designer, and how does one differ from a game writer?

It is abstract. Narrative designers serve a few functions on a AAA game development team. First, they act as the champion of story for the team; they are the vision keepers, and when someone has questions relating to story, they act as point man.

Second, a narrative designer is responsible for designing and contributing to the structure and system design of the video game as it relates to narrative. Working with level designers, audio, UI, engineering, AI, etc, they try to tie these seemingly disparate pipelines together so that they have a unified presentation. The goal is to create a player experience that communicates the team’s vision.

Third, they often also write and/or manage writers to create content for these systems.

Game writing is no more a part of narrative design than is level design. That said, in my experience, I have also functioned as a game writer. Game writing is a fine art unto itself, really a different discipline. Unless a game writer is high-profile enough or just plain lucky, he usually serves the game designers. Narrative Designers start in pre-production. They co-design and document systems to be executed by the entire pipeline.

It started for me when an associate of mine approached me at the [Game Developer’s Conference]. He said, we need someone like you to help us better the stories in our games, to act as the champion for game stories. I worked with his studio over the course of several months to write and design the Narrative Designer position at THQ, eventually taking the role at Relic Entertainment.

Is that any less abstract?

It’s definitely a little less abstract, but let’s look at it this way: Why should the average gamer care about narrative designers? What would it be like without them?

Like any good entertainment craft, when narrative design works, it should be transparent. Like well-crafted cinematography in a film.

What I’d ask the average gamer is, do you like games that give you cool characters, compelling stories, and immersive worlds? Or do you prefer arcade-style games with repetitive mechanics?

Narrative Design aims to immerse the player in amazing worlds where they play characters with depth. It’s really like role-playing, not in the typical RPG sense; but allowing the player to take on a role in a setting that provides escapism and meaning.

I think it caters to a new audience that seeks to play in the worlds that film once showed to us, and which technology now allows us to act in.

And this is what dramatic play is all about, isn’t it?

Yep.

You wrote an article on dramatic play for Gamasutra, but the content can be a little hard to digest for someone who’s not versed in narrative design. In layman’s terms, what is dramatic play?

Yeah, that was my attempt as crossing the worlds of academia and commercial game design.

Dramatic play is really taken from the psychological studies of children. To engage with our world, they recreate it in play. It’s role playing for adults in virtual worlds.

Scratch that. It can be for any age.

And we’ve seen elements of this in games like World of Warcraft and your own Company of Heroes, correct?

Yep, they do a good job. Lord knows I try. I think there are plenty of examples, Dead Space, Bioshock, Fable, and Far Cry 2 also being great examples.

These games and their makers are aiming at a new form. They are experiments in this exciting new game type.

Ubisoft has also embraced this form, I believe their work on James Cameron’s Avatar will be an interesting experiment in the vein I speak of.

You say you’re also exploring it with NarrWare. Do you differ from other developers in your approach to dramatic play? How are you pushing the industry’s boundaries?

Yep, NarrWare is my place to focus on it. I don’t think you need huge productions to achieve it. It is possible in small independent settings too.

NarrWare aims to achieve in months what takes the big boys years. Some systems need lots of man hours and development talent, but others are executable by small teams. A fine example of this is a company started by some old classmates of mine called That Game Company; they focus on one emotion to communicate. NarrWare focuses on creating deeper stories in smaller segments. At least for now.

Can you name any specifics on any current projects? That is, how exactly are you implementing dramatic play at NarrWare?

We are building video games, and really all our new media products, from the ground up to all means available to communicate to the viewer/user/player. Plot, characters, action (play mechanics), feedback (system response), patterns of play — and all lend to a concise, themed spectacle for the player.

A great mechanic, however simple, we’ve created is a simple function on an episodic game. I call it “ponder.” It’s a simple function that gives the player a moment outside of combat and exploration to let the player character (PC) think. In observing the PC’s thoughts naturally, the player learns about the world and its characters.

It’s kind of like a Magic 8 Ball, but I really enjoy it. Other players will too.

Think about how many times you’ve played a great game with a compelling plot, characters, setting, etc; the first cinematic plays out and then you find yourself with a gun in your hand and a prompt that says, “duck and shoot.” The goal is to have all systems communicate a themed experience to the player. If shooting everything is the goal, that’s great (thank you Serious Sam) but I think we can get a lot more depth by simply changing how we look at play mechanics as a start.

So how does a dramatic play game differ from other kinds of games? Can you give us an example?

The easiest comparison would be a game like Wii Sports or Bejeweled. They clearly aim at providing the user with a play experience which is not dramatic. There is no conflict outside of a player challenging themselves to do well or to accomplish a “win.” Far Cry 2, on the other hand, has inherent drama, and the player alters the conflict of the situation through action. This is dramatic play.

And so, NarrWare aims to make this dramatic play come alive in ways that haven’t been attempted before?

Yes, though there is clearly a foundation to work from.

I really believe that, as a culture, we have been evolving this form for some time. NarrWare is my venture into a dark realm where I see the potential of doing what only AAA games have done in the past. Like a comic book maker, we seek to have high drama delivered in small interactive sizes.

Super-sizing is great, but it requires a lot of time, money, and man power. Small ventures are something any passionately inspired individual can create. If your aim is dramatic play, I don’t think it’s beyond reach.

It seems to me that any game with a story to it has elements of dramatic play, from The Legend of Zelda to Halo. We just haven’t explored its full potential yet. Is that the right way to look at it?

Most definitely. One of my favorite examples, which I try to emulate with my game, Journey of Jin, is Dragon Warrior 2 for the NES. It was incredibly dramatic for me as a kid.

Now, taking a look at the future, how do you think dramatic play will evolve? Let’s say you had unlimited capacity to create a game. What would that dramatic play game look like? Do you think we’ll get there?

We live in a time of leaps and bounds on all fronts of progress; it will not be an overnight thing, but within the next 3 years, we will see games trying to grab a larger chunk of the mature audience though interactive experiences driven out of dramatic play. Unlimited capacity? Then it would look like life, the creation itself, but it would kick you out after 2 hours and say, “Get a real life, fan boy.” I hope we never get there, actually. Too many people forget the real world these days. It’s good to roll in real dirt every now and then.

That said, I believe it’s being developed as we speak. It’s an exciting time to be creating interactive media, and truly, we are only limited by own imaginations.

Expand your mind. Your games will follow.

On behalf of GotGame, thank you for taking time out of your day to answer some questions. It was a pleasure.

Thank you.

Stephen Dinehart is working hard to make narrative design a part of the discussion. We appreciate him taking the time to impart his knowledge, and I’d like to thank him for his efforts with the Narrative Design Exploratorium, which you can check it out at www.narrativedesign.org