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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Story and Narrative Development for Video Games by California Institute of the Arts

4.7
stars
1,208 ratings

About the Course

In this course, you will examine how storytelling acts as a vital mechanism for driving video gameplay forward. Looking at several historical and contemporary games, you will be asked to evaluate and interpret different story styles with the goal of identifying themes and procedures for your own game ideas. We'll examine traditional narrative story processes, such as three-act structure, and how they fit into game story flows and the strategic elements of gameplay. Ultimately, you will learn how to define character, setting, and structure to create a compelling game concept....

Top reviews

CS

Dec 30, 2015

This is my favorite course ever. Dariush teaches in such an engaging way and it shows you how to have a creative yet objective and analyzed mindset for creating a story and narrative for a Video Game.

DA

Nov 6, 2017

This is so helpful. It covers all the essentials of developing a good story, applicable in any form of media, then it focuses on converting the story to a game by adding interactive gameplay elements.

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226 - 250 of 289 Reviews for Story and Narrative Development for Video Games

By Nadezhda B

•

May 13, 2020

Super!

By Licínio S

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Mar 19, 2018

great!

By EasyKaos 7

•

Oct 21, 2023

Good.

By Xavior T

•

Nov 18, 2015

good

By Abdulaziz A A

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Dec 13, 2020

Ok

By Santiago D

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Jan 19, 2021

The information in the course and the presentations were interesting and well-explained. I wish we had more of an opportunity to get more educated feedback from people involved in the making of the course. While peer feedback can be useful, it's not nearly as in-depth and peers don't have the same context for the goals of the course (and what constitutes a complete/effective turn-in) than the professors. At least one final instance of that kind of feedback would be appreciated. If not, then asking more detailed questions about the work might help make peer feedback better. Perhaps give an opportunity to incentivize interaction rather than giving feedback to complete the task? Something like incorporating a response feature for the feedback or an option to chat with the person who gave it. I don't know, but I wish I could've gotten a bit more out of that.

By Jenny F

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Sep 23, 2016

I feel that the course was great but I felt confused on the last assignment, we covered a lot of things during the last week but then I was unsure if I should've applied that on our assignment... Also I'm not sure if it is possible but if we could have a chance to ask the teacher questions would be great. I know that there is a lot of people going this courses and maybe it is not possible but still there are things that I feel only the teacher could answer. Overall the course was good :)

By Kilian S

•

Jun 30, 2020

The course material was fine, I just imagined a bigger focus on narrative development *in videogames* not narrative development in general, which is like 70% of the course. I woudlve been interested in studying, how narrative design and mechanical design need to come together in video games.

I like the tasks that you get at the end of each week. They are fun and modular, allowing for little work, or quite the deep dive into the task, depending on what you want.

By Tsur D

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Oct 3, 2020

3 first weeks were pretty good, I oonly felt like there was not enough examples and reading materials, I also felt that the 4th week was too condense and unclear i went throguh the 4th week materials twice and didn't get a good sense of what are is expected of us in the last submission.. i improvised as best as i can but i belive the outcome was not good enough, we were suppossed to gamify the story but the instructions were not clear enogh on the how.

By Paul R

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May 22, 2016

Enjoyable content and presentation but the coarse seemed very short compared to others I've taken. Not a criticism but rather and observation. If it was short on purpose that is one thing but I believe there is more to be said on this topic fundamentally and hope to see this course expanded or a second one produced.

I would like to that those involved int its creation.

By Julian A

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Oct 29, 2018

I love the material on this course, it really helps to improve. However, the peer evaluation system is the worse option for this course, only one person evaluates your work, and sometimes you must ask for help for the evaluation because no one will do it for default as its supposed to happen. Coursera needs to find a solution for this.

By sean o

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Jul 15, 2017

At the end of the course I'm happy with it. I learnt about structure of stories and how they can be implemented in games, how to help people connect emotionally with a story and characters. I think the beginning was a little weak. I didn't like any of the example stories and I know there are a lot of great stories out there.

By Marcus J

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Jul 7, 2020

This course taught me a lot of important story-writing essentials and brainstorming techniques. However, it didn't really shift into video game storytelling and what makes that medium different until the very last project. I feel like the course could have gone more in depth about writing techniques specific to video games.

By Tania A

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Nov 22, 2015

The contents were comprehensive, and the assignments helped reinforce the theory. By using pre-existing references to other works, they were tighter, which I think is useful to focus on the objectives set for a particular week. Some additional creative freedom would also have been interesting.

By Deleted A

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Nov 25, 2015

Assignments are good-intended, but I am not sure how helpful they are, as they are really boring and unnecessarily time-consuming. I do not know how could one make them better. In contrast, the videos are really good, they are worth your time even if you know your way around these things.

By Sarah P

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Nov 19, 2015

I really enjoyed this course, The only thing I would have liked to have learned more about was how to do Game Design Documents and how they are made. I would have liked to have seen more examples as well as how to do these examples as well.

Thank you, I learned a lot.

Sarah Prewitt

By Gregorio M

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Oct 25, 2022

Really well structured course with the first 2 lessons mainly focused on the storytelling part of video games and the last 2 parts, on how to apply those storytelling techniques to videogames related document.

By Juan U G C

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Aug 11, 2021

it was good but i think more visual elements would have been pretty cool. Also more examples of official documents that they use in big studios, those are pretty cool but i would like some more.

By VANSH P

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Jul 12, 2020

The course is really good and really educational and i would recommend people about it. Though the thing that i didn't like was that i wanted some more examples for different types of games.

By Víctor F M R

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Aug 26, 2023

The teacher means well and outlines the usual pattern of story writting. The problem is that teaching future writers to follow patterns is how we create an industry run by mediocre writers.

By Alexey Z

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Mar 14, 2018

A very good course to a beginner with no education in script-writing. A good relation to game industry. Interesting methods of organizing your work. Good cooperation with classmates

By Ramon M L

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Mar 9, 2016

I learned good stuff. i gave four star because there could be more content some parts were written instead of a lecture. But i will recommend this course.

By Büşra T

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Nov 14, 2021

It was an enjoyable course. maybe better ideas could be given on how to start writing the story because sometimes you don't know where to start.

By W B

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Mar 28, 2019

I really enjoyed this course and the instructors materials, I just wish we were given the chance to work on our own games in the assignments.

By Ganesh D

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Sep 17, 2023

In this course, I learned about how to tell a game story that is interesting so players stay engaged and excited to complete each level.