Agenda

After Ghost of Yotei's release, reactions online have made something very clear: players around the world find themselves so engaged with our open world content that they continue to delay their main story playthrough, sometimes for countless hours, as they instead choose to bask in the wandering ronin fantasy of our game.

However, during development, this was not always how playtesters felt. In fact, there was a time when playtesters chose to skip most of our open world content while rushing into the main story instead, causing onboarding, comprehension and progression issues. So how did we manage to turn things around?

Join Senior Writer and Narrative Designer, Ariadna Martinez, for a deep dive into how narrative design was instrumental in solving the challenges of engaging and retaining the player's investment in Ghost of Yōtei's open world. Discover how effective narrative design was able to identify and tackle the underlying issues that were causing players to lose interest in our open world content, allowing us to increase player retention, and ensure full investment in our core gameplay loops, progression systems, and story during those first crucial hours (and beyond) primarily through non-linear content.

Takeaway

Attendees will gain insight into specific narrative design processes and strategies used to tackle issues such as lack of player engagement and retention in our open world, poor comprehension and usability, and narrative dissonance within the first foundational hours of a modern open world game like Ghost of Yōtei.

Intended Audience

This lecture is intended for those looking to add tools and strategies to their own design process when tackling open world development, from narrative designers and writers to level and world/systemic designers.

It is also meant for any Ghost of Yōtei fans looking to get a behind the scenes look at the game's development process.