Stephen Dinehart


Stephen Erin Dinehart IV is an game maker, writer, and narrative designer. Trained at USC School of Cinematic Arts while on scholarship from Electronic Arts and The David Lynch Foundation, his works range from show writing for major theme parks, VR/AR, mobile and AAA video games. Dinehart has worked with franchises and characters ranging from The Marvel Universe and Mario to Batman and Lord of the Rings. Best known for his work in video games and themed entertainment, Stephen claimed to have written the job description and taken the first "narrative designer" position at THQ in 2006. Dinehart is an alumnus of companies such as THQ, Electronic Arts, Activision and others.
As defined by Dinehart, interactive narrative design combines ludology, narratology and game design to form interactive entertainment development methodologies. It is a narratological craft which focuses on the structuralist, or literary semiotic creation of stories via viewer/user/player navigated dataspaces. These interactive narrative experiences allow the player to witness data as navigable, participatory, and dramatic in real-time: The goal of which he calls in his book narrative designer "unlocking experience so we might synthesize it for dramatic purposes, imbuing play within interactive narrative systems with strong neural coupling potential and using the subsequent cognitive bias to make for a better world within which we all may love and play."
Relic Entertainment was a final nominee for "Best Writing for a Game Production" for at the 2nd Annual Canadian Awards for the Electronic & Animated Arts, and the game won "Nokia Award for Outstanding Innovation in Gaming."
Dinehart earned an MFA from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Division, and a BFA in Animation & Digital Media from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

Works