All topics / narrative design
Topic
You are reading the free Skim layer. Read unlocks the synthesis and sources.
Narrative design
1
episodes
1
thinkers
3h
of conversation
5
books & papers
3
terms defined
The neighbourhood: narrative design and the ideas it travels with. Drag to roam, click a star for the episode, click a neighbour to travel.
Drag to roam · scroll to zoom · click a neighbour to travel · click a star for the episode
From foundational to frontier
Climb the spectrum. The most accessible conversations come first.
Start here
ACCESSIBLECOREFRONTIER
The lexicon
Every term the guests lean on, in plain language. Read one in full, or filter to find it.
What the corpus says
The throughline across every conversation that touches this idea.
Dan Houser views Red Dead Redemption 2's Western setting as providing a mythic seriousness that contemporary settings lack.
Houser believes that a structured story is crucial for player engagement in open-world games, balancing freedom with narrative.
The character of Nigel Dave, an AI in development, challenges typical villain portrayals by being infinitely intelligent but lacking wisdom.
Houser argues that language models are unlikely to replace creativity in game writing, though they excel at mundane tasks.
The decision to kill the main character in Red Dead Redemption was a narrative risk that broke conventional design rules.
Voices on narrative design
4 standout quotes from across the corpus.
Go read
5 books and papers cited across these episodes.
For the specialist
What experts find new
2 expert-level takeaways for a specialist reader.
At the frontier
Still unresolved
2 open questions flagged across these conversations.
The thinkers
Who takes this idea on, by how often they return to it.