A narrative designer, or interactive narrative designer, is a role in contemporary video game development, the focus of which is to design the narrative elements of a game based on how players interact with its story, which differentiates it from video game writing.
In their 2018 talk at the Game Developers Conference, writer and narrative designer duo Molly Maloney and Eric Stirpe describe the difference as one where the writer focuses on the characters within the game, while the designer focuses on the player's experience of the story of the game. [1] Thus the role of the narrative designer in interactive storytelling is unique in that it is an active process to create story through a player's navigation of a dataspace. The confusion about the role comes from it being used interchangeably to describe roles like content designer, quest designer and game writer, due to the relative overlap in their activities. In smaller game development studios, narrative designers will often be tasked with these responsibilities, as well as co-directing voice acting and sometimes even motion capture recordings.
Because of this, narrative designers need to actively collaborate with many other departments to coordinate their efforts towards a unified narrative vision. In larger game development studios this task is often also overseen by a narrative director. [2]