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This here is also a great game with emergent narrative: "One Hour One Life". Each time you only have one hour of lifetime and act in a evolving multiplayer world. Just copy pasting the first comment on steam to show what kind of stories unfold: I was born mere seconds before my twin sister in a once prosperous town. Through the years and hardships, the townsfolk seemed to be dwindling in numbers and there were not ma…
To have "emergent narrative" IMO requires a much larger set of verbs than "door, lock, hallway, monsters types A-Z, etc..."
Personally, as a writer and game designer, I find most emergent narrative is actually simulation, and the ones that work depend on the players imagination injecting meaning into the game events. Another version is basically just social media, with game rules and a sandbox aspect. That’s cool, and it can pay off massively, but narrative just feels like a strange word for it. World of natural consequences without impos…
Narrative "emerging" because the level of risk, broad array of "ways to fail" and/or simulation complexity enables players to tell the story of their playthrough in an interesting way. (See: 'boatmurdered', Kenshi).
Narrative "emerging" out of inter player conflict and politics in large multiplayer games. See guild politics in PvP-with-consequences focused MMORPGS such as Lineage II (at least back in the day, it's a bit of a different game now), and EVE Online. (This sort of narrative blends with the first as well, see: http://www.wirm.net/nightfreeze/part1.html)
Narrative "emerging" as a result of very intricate procedural generation that actually does create logically consistent histories and conflicts in a single player world. (See: Dwarf Fortress and Ultima Ratio Regum). I guess things like GPT generated dialog belong here too, but that hasn't really achieved the "logically consistent" part yet.
This article seems to exclusively talk about the first one.
Personally, as a writer and game designer, I find most emergent narrative is actually simulation, and the ones that work depend on the players imagination injecting meaning into the game events. Another version is basically just social media, with game rules and a sandbox aspect. That’s cool, and it can pay off massively, but narrative just feels like a strange word for it. World of natural consequences without impos…
The ones I have seen are optimized for VR but support normal screen WASD players.
They have a real time cast following a narrative script at showtime, but there is improv feedback with the audience built into the experience.
There are quite a few efforts in this direction: [1] is a good example and [2] is an active producer
[1] themetamovie.com
I have a hard time seeing most of these as "emergent narrative". They're just random level generation. By that metric Asteroids is "emergent narrative". 5 astroids approached, 2 from the left, one from the top, 2 from the right. I decided to target the one on the top. It broke in 2 but my quick reflexes swiftly took care of the one heading toward me. I gave chase to the other clearing the universe of one of its origi…
Pixel Dungeon is an Open Source roguelike dungeon crawler with procedurally generated maps. It also has high replay value because every play through feels different.
Personally, as a writer and game designer, I find most emergent narrative is actually simulation, and the ones that work depend on the players imagination injecting meaning into the game events. Another version is basically just social media, with game rules and a sandbox aspect. That’s cool, and it can pay off massively, but narrative just feels like a strange word for it. World of natural consequences without impos…
Tynan Sylvester (creator of Rimworld, and author of "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences") has some great thoughts on this in the early part of his GDC talk on building a 'story generator' rather than a game. He talks about 'apophenia' - the propensity of players to ascribe narrative meaning to events - and the way in Rimworld they strive to create simulation systems that facilitate that kind of playe…