Overview
My biggest takeaway from Henry Jenkins’s “Game Design as Narrative Architecture” is that game designers do not simply write stories. They create spaces in which stories can be experienced, discovered, or constructed. What particularly interested me was the tension between designing possibilities and predetermining outcomes. A designer might give a player several choices, but the designer still decides which choices exist.
Notes from Reading on Game Design as Narrative Architecture
In my sketches, I put “SPACE” at the centre and drew a balance between freedom and story. After playing “talking to my dad,” I think that balance may be less about how many choices a game offers and more about how those choices feel within the world it creates.
Game Play 1: Talking to My Dad
Talking to My Dad, created by hatimb00, is a short, browser-based interactive fiction game available on itch.io. It uses a visual novel style and seems particularly relevant to older teenagers and adults navigating family relationships, identity, and parental expectations. I spent over an hour playing the game across multiple playthroughs.
The idea behind the game is quite simple. A young person is in a car with his dad, and they talk. The father asks about life away from home, work, family communication, wellbeing, and eventually more personal matters. The player chooses replies, including whether to answer directly or avoid a question. The developer describes the game as autobiographical and concerned with distance, mental health, and alienation.
Talking to My Dad Gameplay Screenshot 1
What the Four E’s Made Me Think About
One thing I found interesting about Jenkins’ four E’s is that I don’t think this game fits neatly into all four, and perhaps it doesn’t need to. What matters more to me is how the designer uses a very small space to create an experience.
Evocative storytelling is probably the strongest here. Almost everything happens inside one car. We see two people, the road ahead, and the sunset. Yet when the dad asks, “So you’re a graphic designer?” or reminds you to check the family chat, those questions can mean more than the words themselves. They could be ordinary expressions of interest or concern, but they can also feel like you are being asked to explain yourself. The game doesn’t have to spell out that tension. We bring our own experiences of family conversations into the car.
Enacted storytelling happens through the responses I choose. In one of the screenshots, the dad calls the name I entered, “Olu?”, and the game gives me just “Yes” or “No.” This is what I kept coming back to: the game gives me a choice, but does that mean it gives me much agency? I can select a response, but I cannot ask my own question or explain myself in a way the designer hasn’t anticipated. That feels relevant to the subject of the game. Sometimes having an opportunity to speak is not the same as feeling free to say what you really think.
Gameplay Screenshot 2
I initially thought embedded storytelling was limited because there isn’t much in the environment to explore. But thinking about it again, I think the story is embedded in the conversations themselves. Through the father’s questions, his comments about work, family, and other expectations, we gradually get a sense of their relationship. We don’t know everything about these characters from the beginning. Instead, we piece things together as the conversation progresses. So, perhaps the clues are not necessarily hidden in objects or places, but in what the characters say and how they respond to each other.
I also think there is an element of emergent storytelling here. Although the conversations have been programmed beforehand, as a player, I don’t know what question will come next, how the father will respond, or where my choices might lead. The story unfolds through these interactions, and that uncertainty makes it feel like I’m participating in creating the experience rather than simply following a script. Of course, I understand that the possibilities are limited to what the designer has programmed, so this may not be emergent storytelling in the same sense Jenkins describes. But from the player’s perspective, there is still a sense of emergence. It makes me wonder whether we should consider only how a story is programmed, or also how it is experienced.
The Format and What It Allows
I would describe this as choice-based interactive fiction with the visual presentation of a visual novel. I am not typing my own answers as I would in parser fiction, and I am not simply watching an unchanging story either. The fixed dialogue options make the game easy to enter and help the designer maintain the direction and pace of the conversation. The trade-off is that I sometimes wanted to respond in a way that wasn’t available.
I liked the use of the radio as an additional interaction. The player can change the volume or station while the conversation continues. It is a simple mechanic, but it made me think about how people sometimes use small distractions to handle an uncomfortable moment. There is also an interesting contrast: I can control the radio more freely than I can control the conversation.
Gameplay Screenshot 3
Empathy and My Response to the Game
I think the game is trying to help us understand the difficulty of opening up to a parent, particularly when there are things the young person is not sure how to say. It does this without a long explanation. Instead, it lets us sit through the questions and choose what to say. I felt a mixture of curiosity and discomfort, partly because even fairly normal questions began to feel loaded.
At the same time, I kept wondering about the father’s perspective. Take the family chat question, for example. Is he trying to control the conversation, or is he trying to stay connected with his child? Perhaps both readings are possible. We experience the exchange mostly from the young person’s side, so it is easy to interpret the father through that lens. I would have liked a little more room to understand what was driving his questions.
That is probably my main criticism. I think a game can help us empathise with one person without necessarily giving us a complete picture of the other. The question for me is whether the limited perspective is an intentional part of the experience and what we might lose because of it. I can appreciate what the game achieves without having to agree with every possible interpretation of the conversation.
What I Would Take Into My Own Design
One thing I found interesting is how little the game needed to keep me engaged. We were practically in the same car throughout, with a conversation, a few choices, and a radio to interact with. Yet I kept wondering what Dad would ask next. As someone who builds software, it’s a useful reminder that adding more features doesn’t necessarily make an experience more meaningful. Sometimes, what matters is what those few interactions allow the user to experience.
But something else kept bothering me. There were moments when I wanted to respond differently, but the options simply weren’t there. This reminded me of the learning challenge I’m currently exploring around respect for authority and children’s confidence to question. In some cultural contexts, children are encouraged to speak, but only within certain boundaries. So, I wonder, when we give players two to four dialogue options, are we actually giving them agency, or merely allowing them to choose between things we’ve already decided are acceptable?
I also kept thinking about the father’s perspective. For example, when he asks about the family chat, could that simply be a parent trying to stay connected with his child? Would the experience have been different if we could understand what was going through his mind too? If I were designing something similar, I would be interested in allowing players to explore both perspectives, rather than assuming that one person needs to change and the other doesn’t.
This is particularly relevant to what I’m hoping to explore in my own LDT ’27 learning design work. How do we create experiences that encourage young people to question, disagree, and think independently without making them feel that they must first reject the authority figures or cultural values they respect? And perhaps more importantly, how do we ensure that our own assumptions as designers don’t quietly determine the conclusions learners are allowed to reach?
Game Play 2: You’re Gone
You’re Gone Gamplay Screenshot
I also explored You’re Gone by Makyo, a short, browser-based interactive fiction game about grief and losing someone close to you. I spent 20 minutes playing it.
What I found interesting when comparing it with Talking to My Dad is the difference in how much control the player has. In Talking to My Dad, I sometimes wished I could say something different from the available options. But the version of You’re Gone I played is largely linear, so the story doesn’t depend on my decisions in quite the same way. This made me wonder whether giving players more choices necessarily makes a narrative more engaging. Could having little control sometimes be part of what the designer wants us to experience?
