week 0: narratives can have systems...

...that I can design

When I first accepted my offer at CMU ETC, I didn’t know a lot about what I wanted to do or what I could realistically do. But I knew I cared about storytelling, and I knew I wanted my background in programming to support it. One and a half years of exploration later, I think I finally know how I could do it.

In my time here, I’ve worked on two narrative-heavy pitch projects, both of which I am very proud of, both of which I took different roles in. While I enjoyed writing stories and programming interactions that brought them to life, I found the most fulfillment in the idea of facilitating the narrative with my technical perspective. Both the experiences had simple non-linear structures that hinged on spatial storytelling and minimal level gating, that served well to our scoped design goals.

But I wondered how differently the stories would be received if there could be multiple routes to get to the end, or if the game responded to the player’s actions more.

I wondered what it’d be like if someone’s sole job was to play with narrative nodes like Lego blocks, building the tools and structures that optimized their alignment to player’s desired emotional state as best as feasible. As you must have guessed, it was in fact a job role: one of a narrative system designer.

Let me stop before I romanticize my hypothetical understanding of the work the role entails before I’ve done it; but that’s what I’m here for. To do it.

For my last semester, I’m working on an independent study with Professor David Culyba to create a portfolio piece that can assist me in exploring as well as showcasing my skillsets in narrative system design.

The world of interactive fiction is vast and I am very excited to delve into it, in limited capacity, of course. I will be documenting my journey under the tag “spring 2025, independent study”.