Publié par This chapter presents an overview of the concepts and practices of interactive narrative in the vast and heterogeneous context of video games from the perspectives of practitioners and researchers. The difficulties in harmonizing a pre-written fixed narrative with the freedom of gameplay are outlined and traced back to the role-playing game (RPG). The chapter offers three tools to grasp and work through these issues: the narrative programme, narrative structures, and narrative infusion. The narrative programme allows us to frame games as a-narrative, hypo-narrative, meso-narrative or hyper-narrative according to their ambitions regarding story elements. The chapter provides a synthesis of the structures of interactive narrative discussed by a dozen video game writers and academics, organizing and refining common terms like “branching trees” into a set of structural primitives that can be combined and reshaped across the temporal, spatial and virtual axes of video game narrative. Finally, the chapter proposes the concept of narrative infusion to account for the deployment of narrativity in video games outside of a formal narrative, including lore, environmental storytelling and worldbuilding. The three tools provide a vocabulary to discuss the multiple ways in which video games engage with narrativity, and can assist in the analysis or creation of games.
ARSENAULT, Dominic (2023). « Video Game Narrative: Concepts and Practices for Structuring and Infusing Story in Games ». In : Paul Taberham & Catalina Iricinschi (eds.), Introduction to Screen Narrative: Perspectives on Story Production and Comprehension. Routledge, p.199-219.