Preface to the Zeroth Edition
The Game Narrative Reader is a collection of links built to resemble an anthology textbook. It's a survey of key topics in video game narrative design, composed from essays and articles published elsewhere by their respective authors. It's meant as a resource for students, educators, and practitioners.
Narrative design, as a discipline, has had a complicated and fraught history. It has been invented many times, independently, in different parts of the world and under different conditions. Those distinct traditions have not always talked to each other.
Criticism, theory, and craft discussion about interactive narrative have happened over decades across many venues, and often people engaging in one area have been totally unaware of work done elsewhere. The Reader is intended as a starting point for those new to the discipline, and as an anchoring canon for those with more experience.
The ordering of articles here is purposefully idiosyncratic; they're arranged in an arbitrary order meant so that ideas loosely flow into one another. In some cases, texts are arranged so that material with greater complexity appears later; in others—such as in the latter chapter on process—the order of entries is analogous to their place in an actual process.
This "zeroth edition" is meant as a trial balloon as much as anything; it is very much incomplete and tentative, published with the explicit goal of drawing criticism of the choices made in curating it. This initial compilation is, self-consciously, very heavy on things written by people I personally know, including some writing done specifically to fill gaps in the collection itself. It naturally reflects a bias towards my own web of influences and contacts. But it's my hope that by putting it out there at this stage, I can induce others to yell at me about things I should be aware of.
It also includes only links to relatively short articles that can be read on the web. Future editions are meant to include a selection of additional materials, such as an index of useful videos—a lot of useful knowledge has been transmitted through talks rather than in writing.
For corrections, suggestions, or requests: You can reach the editor (Bruno Dias) via email: hello [at] brunodias.dev.