Functions and Powers of Barks in Video Games: Reclaiming the Margins of Video Games Narrativity

This paper examines video game barks, the short, unanswerable lines spoken by non-player characters during routine moments such as walking or fighting, which game designers and critics have long treated as peripheral to narrative. Its central argument is that barks, though marginal in the collective imagination, are costly to write and repeatedly heard by players, making them a productive site for understanding how narrative margins are negotiated by both creators and audiences. The study combines a formalist analysis of barks as composite units of text, character, behaviour, sound design, and programming with a practice-based account of the authors' own research-creation project.

The formalist analysis draws on a corpus of six contemporary role-playing games, including Skyrim, The Witcher III, Divinity: Original Sin, Dishonored, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Tales of Berseria. From this material the authors identify three non-exclusive functions of barks. Gameplay barks provide redundant instructional cues that shape the rhythm of play and contribute to systemic immersion. Diegetic barks build the impression of an autonomous world by suggesting incomplete stories, characterising NPCs in typological rather than individual terms, and reflecting the player-character through group membership and comment. Reflexive barks create distance through humour, intertextual reference, and fan-circulated memes, while collectively overlapping one-liners generate a sensorial atmosphere.

The second part of the study turns to the authors' own project, RecovR, a game addressing sexism, racism, and ableism. Its barks depict everyday discriminatory remarks to foster familiarity without didacticism. Early versions conceived these lines as rumours the player could not confront, which the authors found could feel violent; the system was revised to give players agency to respond, while keeping the dialogue optional and marginal. The authors conclude that the minor status of barks makes them a relatively free creative space within normative industry practice, one that may empower queer and marginalised creators.