A few months ago, Stephen Dinehart’s inner tech geek flashed on. Flexing mental muscles he hadn’t used since grad school, he set out to create The Narrative Designer’s Network, which officially launched Tuesday.

Sporting a slick front page and a pronounced audio intro, the Web site is a product of Narrware, an indie developer. Dinehart, creative director at the company, hopes the site will foster community among narrative designers, though he said it could also benefit gamers.

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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.
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Sam Lake is the lead writer behind Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake. His scripts helped propel the Max Payne series to positive reviews, and his writings will be equally essential to this new title’s success.

But it’s rare for developers to prioritize the role of a writer like this. Frequently sidelined as an afterthought, writers — also known as narrative designers, depending on your opinion — hardly ever work as closely with a development team as Mr. Lake does.

Rather than marginalizing writers, more developers should take Remedy’s approach and embrace them. We’ve seen the success of story-driven games like Metal Gear Solid. Narrative designers make games come alive, and we simply can’t afford to treat them like dirt anymore.

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