Narrative Design for Everyone

Speaker’s bio

Artur Ganszyniec is a narrative designer, game designer and writer specialising in nonlinear narratives and system rhetorics, working in the industry since 2006. His experience spans from AAA games in the Witcher franchise, through player-friendly F2P mobile games, to indie journalistic interactive literary experiences. Apart from writing and designing games, he also teaches Game Design at Lodz University of Technology.

Speech description

Narrative Design tries to bridge the perceived gap between “gameplay” and “story”. During this talk, we’ll try to define common vocabulary to talk about what happens in games: what does story, plot, narrative, writing, and world-building really mean? Then we will take a look at the reasons that narrative in games gains from being designed rather than just written. We will tackle non-linear stories, co-authored midpoints, gameplay as a narrative tool, decisions-as-characterization, and more.