Conference article

When discussing narrative in games; game designers and academics alike often ignore a very potent narrative component in favor of more traditional literary devices. The narrative component in question is the game world itself. Doug Church argued that the narrative within games refers to any narrative thread that binds events together and drives the player to complete the game. With this in mind; the game world is a very important part of the game narrative; as the player will be exposed to the game world for the duration of the entire game. It is for this reason that this paper aims to look at the narrative components of the game world. In the past; two definitions were established to describe the game world as a narrative component; namely narrative spaces and narrative descriptors. However; these two definitions prove to be insufficient for the scope of game worlds found in current day game. With this in mind; this paper aims to expand on those two definitions; by analyzing game worlds and deriving new definitions from those worlds and forming models based on those. On top of that; this paper seeks to validate these newfound definitions through the use of the Game Experience Questionnaire (QED).

Game design; Interactive Design; Narrative Design; User Experience (UX)