Roundtable

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Narrative design is one of the newer specializations to emerge from the evolution of video games. These specialists must balance the constraints of storytelling with those of interactivity: telling a compelling story while creating space for “play.” Although the practice is relatively recent, it is evolving rapidly. Each new game proposes a different recipe for blending narrative and player agency, a perfect pairing for some, an incompatible duo for others.

What is the current state of narrative design? How have its methods and practices evolved? What challenges does it still face? What promising directions can we see on the horizon?

This roundtable, organized by the Concordia University Behaviour Interactive Research Chair in Game Design, will bring together professional narrative designers and academic researchers to explore these questions in the context of a friendly and accessible conversation.

This activity is presented as part of the 2026 Interdisciplinary Encounters.

View on 4^th Space website.

Schedule

About the Speakers

Dominic Arsenault

Dominic Arsenault is a video game professor and researcher at the department of art history, cinema and media studies at UdeM. He hosts the show La Grande Ludothèque at CISM, mixes metal music and retro games under the name Multi-Memory Controller, and creates games for Arsenic & Domino.

Emmanuel Aubert

Emmanuel Aubert has been working in the video game industry for over ten years. He has held roles as a Game Designer, Quest Designer, Writer, and Narrative Director, and is currently a Narrative Designer at Krafton Montréal. His work focuses in particular on narrative systems and prototyping.

Jonathan Lessard

Holder of the Behaviour Interactive Research Chair in Game Design, Jonathan Lessard teaches in this field as a professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University. He has been designing and developing games for over 20 years, now within a research-creation context that focuses in particular on the playful appropriation of new technologies such as natural language processing, social simulations, and generative artificial intelligence. Since completing his PhD on adventure games, he has also taken an interest in the history of games from a design perspective.

Catherine Robinson

Catherine Robinson has worked in the industry for eight years as a creative producer and narrative designer on video game and ARG projects (Alice & Smith, Youville Haussmann Park, Lowbirth Games, Eden Creative). She also teaches at ISART Digital and specializes in transmedia storytelling and worldbuilding.

Elise Thrin

Elise Trinh (she/they) is a senior narrative designer who has worked for a wide range of projects and studios (Ubisoft, ZA/UM). She has also taught game design at schools and universities. She is currently working on a research-creation project about the emotional potential of micro-interactions in narrative games.

For any questions, please contact marcantoine.jetteleger@concordia.ca.

Cover picture : ^ⒸElise Trinh, Conversation Starters.

Published on April 7, 2026

Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)