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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: Narrative Legos
Speaker(s): Ken Levine
Company Name(s): Irrational Games
Track / Format: Design

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Overview: It's clear that narrative is an important part of video games and something that the audience deeply relates to. However, the strengths of interactive media are player participation, the ability to experience content in different ways on different playthroughs and the fact that the content is not static. It's time for narrative to deeply embrace these elements. The challenge lies in building non-linear, replayable (narrative) sequences. By breaking narrative down to its smallest yet non-abstract elements and finding ways to combine and recombine them, one could potentially build a nearly infinite array of narrative opportunities out of these small building blocks. The comparison is closest to, say, the Death Star play set of our childhood, which was very specific and beautiful, but single-purposed versus Legos. Which on their own seem less exciting and less appealing, but can be recombined and repurposed in an infinite number of ways. It's time to start exploring narrative Legos.

GDC 2014

Ken Levine

Irrational Games

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Design

Design