SGC16: Evgeni Puzankov - New ways of narrative design thinking

It seems like in narrative design there are two choices: follow the crowd or make something original in every way. It can’t be further from truth. In this industry you can climb on the shoulders of giants to gain an upper hand. Sure, there are basics of narrative structure, dialogue writing, and character development. I’m not talking about them. The long history of people led to the saturation of certain tropes. Like elves. Like the perception of certain ideologies. Like atmosphere and vibe. There is a pre-existing knowledge in a player’s head that can be leveraged. It’d have a fresh feel and if we do it right it might not even blow the player’s brains out without an excessive exposition. Let’s say we get the prompt from the management somewhere along the lines of “Make up a story for a game about high elven socialist republic.” Elves are ubiquitous and socialism just doesn’t have the same flare now. What should we do? Well, I might just have a plan.