Narrative: We’re the Egg AND the Icing

It’s 2026, and Narrative Designers are still struggling to be understood and appreciated for our role in Game Development.

Let me put a positive spin on this challenge. Narrative Design is the egg that holds the cake together. Yes, some of our work is the tasty icing that adds the “je ne sais quoi” to the game. But before that can happen, we can and do provide the interstitial magic that gives the game cohesion.

I started a list of what we do. If any Narratives have more to add, let me know. cindi@cindiknapton.com

Narrative Participation in Game Development

• Initial Project Ideation

• Clarity of Vision to unify where the team is going. This is ever evolving, being tested and refined.

• Clarity of Player Experience intention. What do we want the player to feel as they engage with the game?

• Research into comparable media, appropriate in-game technology, cultural history and storytelling traditions

• Collaboration with all departments. Bringing enough life experience and technical know-how to speak to coders, designers, modelers, skinners, composers, marketers, community managers, and CEOs!

• Compelling Character Biographies with Arcs that players want to love, hate, fight, or even become.

• Compelling Story Sequences that tease players to play on and find out what happens next.

• Challenging, fun, and surprising Quests

• Compelling Biome Biographies with Reveals that lure players to keep exploring

• Complex and consistent Worldbuilding grounded in the unique logic of the game, and… that allows room for expansion in future games.

• Compelling Dialogue that conveys each character’s unique voice, history and point of view

• Coherent Conflict Reasoning for the Player Avatar to get into yet another fight.

• Magic Integration of divergent/discordant “cool gameplay” events into the overall fabric of the game.

• Concise On-Screen Messaging

• Review & Support of written materials from other departments.

• VO Casting & Coaching — being in the room to ensure the VO artist conveys the character intent.

• Localization Coordination — making sure the Localization output matches the gameplay intent.

• Unique Item Descriptions

• Barks — yep, we still do sassy barks! AI still can’t match a narrative designer’s unique insight into the feeling of getting punched.

Some additional thoughts from my fellow Narrative Designer Dora Vrhoci. dora.vrhoci@gmail.com

• Advocating for Cultural Sensitivity throughout the project.

• Working on Cinematics, both on the implementation side and their design.

• On the technical narrative design side — Creating Tools & Systems that support narrative implementation.

• Collaborating on MOCAP and Performance Capture.