Narratives in Video Games and User Experience

This presentation will discuss how the narratives within video games create a better gaming experience for the player. Specifically, this presentation addresses user experience based on interactive and immersive narratives within the game. A narrative is a story or event presented in sequence; a narrative within a video game is the interactive storyline presented by the game designer. The key components of this paper rely heavily on user experience research done on video game interaction. This topic will cover human-computer interaction and immersion models which take into account interface interaction, user-defined tasking, and narrative building within video games. The importance of intuitive interface interaction between the game design and the player facilitates a better gameplay experience as well as user-defined tasking, such as being assigned quests and goals to achieve in the game. The dialogue built between the player and game utilizes certain tools to increase immersion and thus bettering the gaming experience. The user experience is a major factor which comes into play when discussing player and game interaction. As stated by Ermi and Mayra, the essence of a game is rooted in its interactive nature, and there is no game without a player (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005). Research on this topic is progressing as technology in “Interactive Storytelling” grows and moves in the direction of dynamic user interaction (e.g., Cavazza, Lugrin, Pizzi, and Charles, 2002). This presentation will elaborate on the need for further research by expanding on already researched foundations within the topic of user experience and video game research