Story and Narrative Development for Video Games

For the first week of the class, we will be analyzing the components of three-act structure using a classic fairytale as an example. We'll examine the characters in the story by figuring out their goals and the main conflict that creates a rising arc of action to keep the audience interested.

In this week, we will draw a parallel between last week’s discussion on rising action and how that relates to gameplay. Looking at a pair of contemporary games, we'll learn how to identify story structure and themes of rising action, just like we would with traditional stories and movies. Lastly, we’ll evaluate the role that primary and secondary characters come to play in the unveiling of a game’s story and discuss the importance of understanding how these games present their stories in the actual gameplay.

This week, we explore ideation techniques and learn how to consolidate our ideas into more formalized stories specifically for pushing them towards a game design. We will take a look at the importance of, and ways to refine, characters and settings as we develop an initial concept in story form first, and then next week, into a game.