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NEWS

Narrative is crucial to the computer games industry because it enhances player engagement, enriches gameplay experiences, and differentiates games in a competitive market.


A compelling story draws players into the game world, fostering a sense of purpose and emotional investment. Games like The Last of Us or Red Dead Redemption create memorable experiences because of their rich narratives and well-developed characters.

Additionally stories provide players with a reason to engage in gameplay. Objectives and mechanics, such as quests or battles, become more meaningful when tied to a narrative. For example, players might be more motivated to defeat an enemy if it's part of a larger story about protecting a kingdom or avenging a loved one.


Also in a saturated market, a strong narrative can make a game stand out. Titles like Life is Strange or BioShock are often remembered and celebrated for their unique and thought-provoking stories, creating loyal fanbases and enduring legacies.


Games with branching narratives or rich lore often encourage players to replay them to explore different storylines or outcomes, as seen in games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Detroit: Become Human. This increases player retention and long-term value.


A strong narrative can also extend a game’s appeal far beyond its medium, enabling adaptations into films, books, or TV series. For instance, The Witcher series' success as a Netflix show highlights the power of narrative in expanding a game's cultural footprint.


Narrative-driven games can use story to complement gameplay mechanics, creating a seamless experience. Games like Hades blend roguelike mechanics with evolving character relationships and storylines, enhancing both the gameplay and the narrative.

Video game stories contribute to the perception of games as a legitimate art form. Complex narratives, such as those in Disco Elysium, explore themes like politics, philosophy, and identity, elevating games as a medium for storytelling.


Put simply- narrative adds depth, meaning, and uniqueness to games, transforming them from mere entertainment into powerful storytelling experiences that resonate with players.

Updated: Jan 19

Somebody in the annals of history once said “Suggestion is more expressive than precision”.


This was a good point, well made and especially so in the area of concept art, or where concept art blurs its way into “concept illustration”.


As most of us will already know, in 2D, 3D design and build, code and QA, there are many iterations and corrections as the development process rolls along and we find ourselves in 2D spending most of our time in a visual problem solving situation. The images created within this large section can range from rough but expressive scribbles through to clearer color high quality images but ones that we wouldn’t class as illustrative.


What can make the beginnings of these stages where concepting starts to become a bit more complicated, is the not so obvious balance between concept art and “doing” illustration. This illustrative stage may be called “key art” or “game in a frame” art, whatever way you put it, there is a traditional leaning toward having more finished, polished imagery. These sort of images often make up the majority of someone’s folio or gallery but often fail to show how the artist was thinking or why?


The concern is that for the many hundred or thousand versions of something that most well-rounded concept bods have iterated upon in their careers, it would be impossible to have all or even most of these images turn out polished or “illustrative”. There just aren’t enough hours in the day no matter how dedicated someone is.


To go one step further as well as back to the first sentence, why does a piece of even “key” art have to be precise? Understandable? Yes. Conveying clear imagery? Yes…but the nuances and imagining that happen in our brain in the “suggested” and not so precise and clear areas of a well-executed piece of concept art can convey more than any illustrative, 8k, HD, eye popping attempt at a piece of soul less clarity and the pursuit of showing everything could ever hope to. The things we see in the shadowed or blurred areas of an image can often add so much more to a picture than one where everything is perfectly visible.

Compare Blade Runner and Avatar.


Concept art should only be partially prescriptive, it should be very descriptive, and allow for enough wiggle room in the following stages of production so as not to constrain development but give the 3D department ideas to springboard off and enhance.


This clip on YouTube makes some very valid points.









https://youtu.be/7_3e9TexELM

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