Caroline Marchal moves from development to education.

Marchal’s name might be familiar if you played Heavy Rain or Beyond: Two Souls – she was the lead game designer for both titles. She founded a new studio last year called Interior Night with the goal to design games that can appeal to the widest audience as possible.

She teamed up with John York, a British TV producer (who worked on several series including EastEnders – he also wrote a book about the nature of storytelling) to launch a course that will take one week to complete. Story for Video Games is an online course for small groups (up to 15 people). It would encompass both theory and practice, touching games such as Uncharted, Life is Strange, and possibly Marchal’s previous work (let’s not forget that Quantic Dream’s games never had terrible stories!).

„Only 20 per cent of players complete video games, but 60 to 70 per cent complete narrative games. Story – above anything else, the need to know what happens next – is a great incentive to keep playing. The vast majority of games, regardless of their genre, are based on some kind of story. They all need meaning and context. As a writer, you need to master not only the fundamental principles of a great narrative – but also the specific techniques that adapt that knowledge to games,” the statement says.

You can find the course’s website here, but beware: the course costs 1500 GBP! Better break the piggy bank for those roughly two thousand dollars…

Source: GamesIndustry