The Next Generation of Narrative Games
Five ideas from a conversation with Arthur Gradstein, Creative Director & Senior Principal at Episode.
Arthur is a writer, narrative director, and creative leader with 20 years of experience across TV and interactive fiction. He has produced and written hit shows for Nickelodeon such as Drake & Josh, Victorious and iCarly. At Pocket Gems, he has created some of Episode’s biggest hits, and launched its latest franchise, Episode: Reality Stars.
In this article
Why entertainment is becoming medium-agnostic
How AI changes the economics of game development
Why more creators will build games
Why innovation is becoming increasingly global
Why IP matters more than platforms
For decades, different entertainment mediums have been siloed into neat categories.
Books, film, television and games have occasionally complemented each other, but were usually distinct experiences. Each had its own audience, business model, and creative process. But now, the boundaries between those experiences are blurring.
Netflix makes games. Games borrow television's storytelling techniques. TikTok influences game discovery. Publishing changes its acquisition strategy to capitalize on social media. Successful franchises move effortlessly between comics, streaming, games, and merchandise.
The next generation of narrative games will exist inside a much larger entertainment ecosystem. That was one of the recurring themes in my conversation with Arthur Gradstein, whose career has spanned television and interactive storytelling. Rather than talking about where games are today, Arthur kept returning to a more interesting question:
What happens when the barriers between mediums—and between creators and audiences—continue to disappear?
Here are five ideas that stood out.
Entertainment Is Becoming Medium-Agnostic.
Arthur believes we may soon stop thinking about games as a separate category altogether.
"Gaming has never been less defined than it is today.
I think we'll see gaming split into two categories: traditional games and immersive interactive entertainment experiences. I wouldn't be surprised if streaming services eventually present shows and games side by side as different forms of entertainment rather than completely separate categories. Subscription models will likely become increasingly important as free-to-play continues to evolve.”
This is a pretty accurate observation based on how many people already consume entertainment. Especially in fan communities, people have their favorite mediums like gaming or television, but many want to spend more time with stories they care about—wherever that may be. That's why Marvel can exist simultaneously as comics, films, streaming series, games, and theme parks. For some, the medium matters less than the relationship people have with the world.
Netflix seems to understand this. It's becoming an entertainment platform, adding games, live sports, and interactive experiences alongside films and television.
Arthur's prediction isn't that games replace television. It's that, for some audiences, mediums matter less than worlds.
“The explosion of vertical video is already pushing audiences toward new formats, and eventually the distinction between games, television, and social media will continue to blur.”
AI Doesn't Replace Creativity. It Accelerates Learning.
Much of today's AI conversation revolves around replacing artists. Arthur's perspective is more practical.
"I don't want AI writing stories for me, but it's an incredible production partner. It helps analyze scripts, maintain character consistency, strengthen archetypes, and accelerate many of the repetitive production tasks that used to consume enormous amounts of time."
The key point here isn’t about automation. Automation and efficiency are often hailed as the biggest benefits of A.I. because they often lead to lowering costs and increasing output. But Arthur argues that the biggest gain is iteration.
Historically, game development has been expensive. Teams spend months building prototypes before discovering whether players actually enjoy the experience. It’s a high cost of learning and puts the entire studio at risk. I’ve personally experienced promising game ideas take months to years to come to fruition, only to fail in testing, resulting in studio restructuring and job losses.
What if, instead, with AI you could prototype that game idea in 3 months, test it, iterate, invest or kill it; and move on without having to break your team? Perhaps you don’t need as big of a team as you did in traditional production, but you have a better chance of keeping that team employed through cycles of iteration.
Arthur described shipping a multiplayer event in six weeks with a tiny team; something he says would previously have felt impossible.
“We recently launched a large multiplayer live event inspired by Dress to Impress. In the past, something that ambitious would have been intimidating, especially with multiplayer systems. This time, three of us built and shipped it in six weeks.”
A faster production means faster feedback. And the studios that learn fastest may build the best games.
Lower Barriers Create Better Ideas.
Every major creative tool lowers the cost of experimentation. Digital cameras lowered the barrier to filmmaking. YouTube lowered the barrier to broadcasting. Unity lowered the barrier to building games.
Now, AI is lowering the barrier to prototyping them. Arthur believes this democratization will lead to a creative and diverse new era of game-making.
"People with strong ideas, but without funding, technical expertise, or large teams, can now prototype and build games that previously would have been impossible."
The need for experienced developers will still be critical. But enabling non-technical creatives to visualize and test rough ideas means more ideas can survive long enough to prove themselves.
Some of those ideas will inevitably fail, but a few may become entirely new genres.
Innovation Is Becoming Global.
For much of the industry's history, Western studios largely defined what successful games looked like. But that paradigm has changed. Arthur pointed to Love and Deepspace as an example of a game combining cinematic production values with emotionally driven progression systems.
“Its integration of progression systems with intimate character moments is especially clever because players are motivated by emotional payoff rather than mechanical rewards.”
Rather than simply copying games like Love and Deepspace, Western developers should try to understand why those experiences resonate; and how to apply those lessons in a way that works for Western audiences. I think it’s incredibly inspiring that creative innovation is happening across the globe; those influences are going to result in richer, more varied storytelling and game design. Younger audiences already watch Korean dramas as much as they do Western ones. The same is bound to happen with other entertainment formats.
Intellectual Property Is the Last Durable Advantage.
While technology and platforms will evolve, the core appeal of storytelling will remain consistent. Arthur kept returning to this point throughout our conversation.
"Ultimately, I think intellectual property will become even more important. Building worlds and characters that people genuinely love creates opportunities across many different entertainment formats."
If entertainment really is becoming more medium-agnostic, then intellectual property becomes increasingly valuable because it isn't tied to any single platform. A great character can move from games to streaming. A compelling world can become books, podcasts, films, or social experiences.
Technology changes how audiences experience stories, but strong IP endures for generations.
Final Thought.
"Gaming has never been less defined than it is today."
I think this is Arthur’s most important idea, and you can see it currently playing out in the industry. In the future, the very idea of what a game is may become much harder to define.
