Board 8 > If you taught a college class in video game writing/narrative...

(+) Yeah! (+)

...what games would you include?

The only real stipulations are that they need to be relatively short (less than 20 hours tops) and relatively easy in terms of gameplay (nothing that requires skill or strong hand/eye coordination). Need to be in English. Nothing pervy.

Outer Wilds

Silent Hill 2, Spec Ops: The Line, The Last of Us, Grim Fandango, Night in the Woods, Journey

Under 20 hours makes it a bit tough!

Planetarian
Doki Doki Literature Club
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (first four cases only)

Speaking as someone who is not the biggest fan of it, Chrono Trigger honestly is a must even if it's very slightly over 20 hours on a normal playthrough. Just a lot of simple things it does right that are fairly Video Game specific imo

Snake5555555555 posted...

Silent Hill 2, Spec Ops: The Line, The Last of Us, Grim Fandango, Night in the Woods, Journey

All of these except for Night in the Woods and Journey are too much gameplay for what I'm thinking of

With those stipulations

Journey
Papers Please
The Stanley Parable

Honestly? Portal. The writing is essentially one comedic monologue. It's rather unique among games in that regard, and I think it deserves a place in the discussion.

What Remains of Edith Finch

Return of the Obra Dinn

Her Story/Immortality
Gone Home/Tacoma

Gone Home
Emily is Away
The Stanley Parable

Ghost Trick?

Is it under 20 hours?

What Remains of Edith Finch?

Maybe Monkey Island games if those aren't too complicated or Telltale games instead.

The Walking Dead season 1 would be fun for creating discussion on which choices people picked.

Is Bioshock under 20 hours? That feels essential. Maybe as the final

Gone Home
What Remains of Edith Finch
Life is Strange
Immortality

Listen to me this maybe are last chance

Persona 3 but only the first and last 10 hours.

Undertale
Journey
Firewatch

Planescape: Torment

amusingly i came in here to also say Chrono Trigger and am surprised i'm not the first.
it's a JRPG that manages to be beaten within 20h and does a lot of writing in the best ways it can be. it shows you don't need to be overly complicated to have memorable writing and memorable characters, a good framework, a story with a few twists and turns, some callbacks, and a little complexity goes a long way. it just does writing/narrative well, especially with the different settings for time travel.

there's not many RPGs i can think of that would fit this really. the only other really big example is Undertale, with an understanding that decision making can absolutely drive the plot one way or the other. but both this and CT have the possible issue of gameplay mentioned. they aren't hard, you can turn ATB off and make it a fully turnbased game, but it's still maybe more than you'd want.

VNs and adventure games would be the other main markets i can think of, especially if you don't want as much gameplay happening. Ghost Trick wins that category for being a single, complete game within the time frame.

Bad Dudes

Kingdom Hearts (franchise)

yeah probably won't do chrono trigger or any jrpg. even though it's extremely easy it still requires a lot of inventory management that some non-video game players just won't find appealing.

if I was teaching game design on the other hand, for sure

thanks for the recs so far! I haven't played gone home so I should definitely check it out

non-video game players are interested in video game storytelling?

pjbasis posted...

non-video game players are interested in video game storytelling?

not really, but part of my deal for teaching this class is that the games "have to be enjoyable to people who haven't played a game before" according to my department head. it's the first time the school's ever done a class like this before (we're an English department).

I think specifically why Chrono Trigger's design has strength is in its story structure and how it uses Gameplay to pace itself well

But yeah if it's too much video game I guess that's.. fine? A little weird to have a video game class be quite so antigameplay but hey maybe if it's a hit do it again with easing a bit more gameplay in I guess.

Wanglicious posted...

but both this and CT have the possible issue of gameplay mentioned. they aren't hard, you can turn ATB off and make it a fully turnbased game, but it's still maybe more than you'd want.

wut

CT is one of the easiest rpgs ever made.

What are you teaching? Like, is it more of a focus on how to write, or is it more of a focus on how to design a game around writing?

Uncharted 2

If puzzle solving isn't considered a "skill" here, and if ambiguous, environmental, or otherwise no dialogue games are fine, I would toss in The Gardens Between, AER: Memories of Old, and the combo of Hotel Dusk: Room 215/Last Window: The Secret of Cape West.

Paratroopa1 posted...

What are you teaching? Like, is it more of a focus on how to write, or is it more of a focus on how to design a game around writing?

more of the first one. critique of the writing and how the writing and gameplay intersect, but nothing on the technical side.

and yeah, I wish I could push back against the gameplay thing, but since it's being delivered as a gen ed class, the higher ups are being weird about it not being exclusionary toward students who don't normally play games but are taking it for credit

uh.... can't say there's much inventory to figure out with CT since you aren't really limited on it but like... if this is dealing with menus i'm not sure what we'd have that aren't going to be at least part VN, like the Telltale games (Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us). like Recettear would've been a thought for a sec but literal inventory management probably isn't a good idea in that case.

Chrono Trigger is a relatively technical game for a class of this nature. You guys are a little too jrpg-brained, lol

colliding posted...

more of the first one. critique of the writing and how the writing and gameplay intersect, but nothing on the technical side.

i mean a literal example of writing and gameplay intersecting would be Scribblenauts, if that's an idea you think you can work with. words are literally your powers in the game.

I don't think Wang understands what you're looking for here lol

Paratroopa1 posted...

Chrono Trigger is a relatively technical game for a class of this nature. You guys are a little too jrpg-brained, lol

Im literally not sure how you dont just bin the entire rpg genre then.

redrocket posted...

Im literally not sure how you dont just bin the entire rpg genre then.

You do. You do bin the entire rpg genre. Trust me. This is clearly not the class for that.

you do bin it. shooters already got binned earlier in the topic too, which is why you're just reduced to some adventure, puzzle, vns, and platformers at this point. even simulation wouldn't work, too many menu and options.

still think Ghost Trick is the best title mentioned so far.

Depends what the focus is. I would do a big range with something cinematic like MGS, walking simulator like Gone Home, and a big modern open world like Horizon. Venba is a good example of a modern style almost-not-a-game that they might like (Florence is the most common example but it's kinda lame). More mechanical ones like Her Story, Papers Please, Obra Dinn would be interesting, but I dunno if it would make sense without making them play a significant portion of it. Hypnospace Outlaw might actually be a great middle ground that they could easily understand.

If you do want them to play something and analyze it like literature, it probably has to be free, so go on itch and find some free short narrative games to assign to them. Anything from Nicky Case is great. I hesitate to recommend DDLC but it could actually work well. Frog Fractions would be fun to show them how maximalist narrative design can go. On the other side, Reigns on mobile is a powerful example of minimalism, if it's ok for them to spend a few $.

You really want to stick to narrative-driven games with a little bit of light adventure or puzzle gameplay here. Gone Home, Night in the Woods, and What Remains of Edith Finch were all great examples - easily accessible, short, mostly focused on the writing. Also easy to acquire.

Paratroopa1 posted...

I don't think Wang understands what you're looking for here lol

Why would you expect a GGer to even know what narrative design is let alone have recommendations for it?

I do think Ace Attorney would be hilarious to "try to get away with" here, it kinda fits! The gameplay's accessible enough and it's coming in under a reasonable length if you stick to the first four cases only

I dunno if it's ideal though

How long is Disco Elysium? I finished it, had someone else try it for a bit, briefly started a second playthrough, and I only have 18.5 hrs played.

I'm actually surprised you haven't played Gone Home, since it's like the platonic ideal of what you're looking for here - short (not longer than 4 hours at MOST), basically no gameplay, the format and style of writing makes it very easy to do a college course about. This is like, totally the first game you assign.

azuarc posted...

How long is Disco Elysium? I finished it, had someone else try it for a bit, briefly started a second playthrough, and I only have 18.5 hrs played.

I don't think it's a stupid idea but the idea of having an entire class of writing students play and then analyze Disco Elysium is so fucking funny

Oh you can do up to 20 hours? Disco Elysium would be a legendary assignment. But it would take up the whole semester and then some.

I just remembered some super short games from back when "serious games" was trendy, like this one and his other games.
https://jordanmagnuson.itch.io/freedom-bridge

Here's another short mechanics-based one that would be fun as an alternative to Her Story / Obra Dinn
https://sheepolution.itch.io/lost-in-translation

I think this is going to be a really tough class to teach "as literature". If you're teaching it as writing, game design, history, etc it's a lot easier. But most game writing/narrative is pretty juvenile and I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way, it's just more like young adult fiction than the stuff I read in college. Anyway here's my best shot at it:

Venba
We Know the Devil*
Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk
a new life.
tomorrow won't come for those without *
Gone Home
Juniper's Knot**
Analogue: A Hate Story***

*You will likely have to provide a walkthrough for getting all the endings in these two games as they're a little obtuse
**This is a straight up kinetic novel with no gameplay, so maybe that's not what you want? The writing is incredibly strong though.
***Analogue has some light dating sim stuff that is admittedly not to its benefit, but the rest of the game is good enough for me to recommend it anyway.

All of these are digestible as short stories/novellas and can be beaten in one sitting, except Analogue which is a bit longer. FYI most of these have strong LGBT themes, that's just what I happen to read so my list is necessarily full of it, especially after I took out games with too much gameplay.

colliding posted...

not really, but part of my deal for teaching this class is that the games "have to be enjoyable to people who haven't played a game before" according to my department head. it's the first time the school's ever done a class like this before (we're an English department).

how many college students in 2025 have never played a video game

my guess is not many

(I realize this is coming from the department head and not you)

colliding posted...

...what games would you include?

The only real stipulations are that they need to be relatively short (less than 20 hours tops) and relatively easy in terms of gameplay (nothing that requires skill or strong hand/eye coordination). Need to be in English. Nothing pervy.

colliding posted...

more of the first one. critique of the writing and how the writing and gameplay intersect, but nothing on the technical side.

and yeah, I wish I could push back against the gameplay thing, but since it's being delivered as a gen ed class, the higher ups are being weird about it not being exclusionary toward students who don't normally play games but are taking it for credit

Gears of War 1

10 hour game, probably 6 on easy mode and there you can just hold forward and chainsaw everything to death. still pretty spectacular bossfights for onlookers, with a lot of environmental storytelling and graphics that imo still hold up

there's some plot, but mostly it's back ground stuff in an already decaying world and a soldier being brought back to fight in a losing war

tbqh i think that'd be a perfect game to critique

Papers Please (a "bad ending" is still an ending) was my first thought with the constraints.

Depending on how clear you want the story to be, The Path is probably okay too.