Levelling up the Narrative Evaluation Practices of Indie Video Game Developers

Abstract

Narrative is a core component of many games but is difficult to evaluate because it is subjective, distributed across game systems, unfolds over time, and is not well understood due to fragmented literature and conflicting games user experience (GUX) frameworks across industry and academia. These issues are more pronounced in constrained production contexts such as indie development, where limited time, budget, and access to games user research expertise make narrative evaluation challenging. This project aims to understand and support narrative evaluation in constrained production contexts using a multi-study qualitative design. Initial interview findings with 10 indie developers suggest narrative evaluation in constrained production contexts is informal, adaptive, and shaped by emotional, epistemic, and practical challenges. The subsequent studies will focus on surveying players to develop a shared framework of narrative GUX and running co-design workshops to create and validate lightweight tools and approaches to support narrative evaluation in indie development.