LTAT.05.038
Exposition
- Location: Fully online in the UT Moodle environment.
Registered students will be automatically enrolled during the first few weeks of the semester. - Time: 15.09.25 - 21.12.25 (14 study weeks).
- Contact: Kertu Toompea (kertu.toompea@ut.ee)
- Language: English
Inciting Incident
Every video game tells a story. In fact, they often tell two stories. What happened the last time you played a video game? Try to recall. The chances are that you just recalled a story that you had experienced in the game. Still, a video game is not a book. While you could now recount the just‑remembered story with words, it was delivered to you through the intricate design of interactive multimedia elements.
What is it that makes these experiences so memorable?
How do video games make us feel? Make us care?
Rising Action
The Video Game Narrative Design course offers you an introduction to the video game narrative designer role. This multidisciplinary role is the main partner to the game designer role. Even with great mechanics, it is the narrative that makes players care about the game. Even with a great narrative, it is the mechanics that make it a game. The course offers the following eleven topics that explore the core of narrative design:
- What is Video Game Narrative Design and Writing?
- The Narrative Designer and the Video Game Industry
- Generative AI
- Narrative Delivery Elements
- Structure of a Story
- Characters
- Choices in Video Games
- Video Game Characters
- Video Game Environment Design
- Symbols in Video Games
- The Play Contract
Each of these topics has a learning video and some accompanying material. You can learn them mostly at your own pace.
In total, there are six analysis tasks, where you are offered to investigate an object of your choosing from a specific perspective, and four multiple-choice tests that test your understanding of the material. Each individual activity gives a maximum of 5 points.
Practice makes perfect. This course offers you the opportunity to write and design narrative in six tasks in the Arcweave environment. Your short and interactive stories should cover specificified aspects of the related topics. These will each be worth a maximum of 5 points, as well.
For learning Arcweave, we also have dedicated topics on it:
- Introduction to Arcweave
- Images in Arcweave
- Scripting in Arcweave
A wise person learns from others as well as from themself. So, the last portion of the points in this course comes from playing and assessing the created Arcweave stories of other students. Each such individual peer review can get you up to 5 points.
Climax
The grading is non-differentiated. To successfully pass the course, the number of earned points must be above 70 by the end of the last study week.
In the case where this dragon remains undefeated, individual agreements with the educator can be discussed. The notification of the educator and agreement of a personal study plan must be achieved before the end of that study week.
Welcome to the world of video game narrative and happy discoveries!
