The art of make believe: emergent narrative in games

destructoid.com:

I think by this point it’s pretty clear that my favorite thing about games is how they can tell stories in whole new ways. Usually that means games that put narrative design at the forefront, with cinematic cutscenes or branching storylines that let you choose how the characters move forward through the plot. One type of narrative design I don’t think about as often as I should, though, is the idea of emergent storytelling in games, which has been around for years.

It’s a bit of a complex topic, mostly because emergent storytelling has a ton of crossover with the design of gameplay systems. The idea is that emergent stories aren’t plotlines that were placed there by the devs for you to find, but instead, they’re the stories that you create on your own based on how you play.

These narratives come about in just about every game genre, with the only real criteria being that they’re stories that the devs didn’t put there intentionally. They may have put the tools in place for you to be able to create a narrative of your own, but you’re the one who has to put the pieces together.

Totally didn’t just run across a half of Hyrule for this star fragment… from Breath_of_the_Wild

One of the best ways I’ve heard to know if something has an emergent narrative is if you tell your friends stories of your time playing the game. You know, the classic “you had to be there” story. It’s like trying to tell someone about something awesome that happened in your Dungeons & Dragons game, or a really cool dream that you had. We love to share these stories regardless — you see them all over Reddit and Twitter.

I recently started playing Pokémon for the first time ever as an adult, and the way the gameplay is designed, it’s so perfect for making