MA in Game Design

MA in Game Design with focus on Narrative Design

A study into player retention and engagement through Narrative Design. My final project assessed maintaining player immersion within multiplayer horror games with branching narratives.

I spent a year completing my MA in Game Design at UCLAN focusing on Narrative design, as I was hoping to learn new skills from the tutors and guest speakers. Although the course really did not teach anything, I took the time to delve into research and turned the experience something worthwhile. Having this time to explore game design and narrative techniques was invaluable, and furthered my understanding of environmental storytelling, player engagement, world creation and character design. I took the opportunity to study not only narrative design but all aspects of game creation, to increase my ability to understand how all areas of game design contribute to a project. This increased my communication skills with different teams, ensuring that game narrative can be enhanced with the whole team working towards the same vision.

I specifically chose multiplayer horror with branching narrative, because horror titles need to maintain atmosphere. Multiplayer games and branching narrative are notorious for breaking atmosphere, this presented an opportunity to test my creativity without having a studio or publisher having to take on a risky concept.