The role of imagination in narrative indie games

Abstract

This paper will argue that a key feature of narrative indie games is their reliance on the player’s imaginative input while playing. Although this reliance on the imagination tends to be borne out of restricted resources and the size of indie game teams, the effect is nonetheless a set of games whose modes of representation and game mechanics are designed to work tightly together to stimulate the player to explore novel game systems and mentally fill in gaps in representation. This is in stark opposition to mainstream, big budget games, which tend to deliver familiar game systems coupled with photorealistic representation that are easier for the player to take up, but leaves less room for the player’s imaginative investment.