Interactive Media and Game Development 1 Thoughts on Critical Game Studies II David Finkel Computer Science Department Interactive Media and Game Development

2 Purpose of this talk Previously: An overview of the Critical Game Studies course In this exciting episode: A more detailed look at one of the topics in the course: storytelling and games –This topic might occupy one week of the course.

Interactive Media and Game Development 3 Why stories? The role of stories in life. Why do we tell stories? –A way of organizing our experiences –To inform other people about our experiences –To amuse other people –To create a shared emotional experience

Interactive Media and Game Development 4 My theory about storytelling In our brain’s visual system, we have a series of centers responsible for interpreting colors, objects, scenes. Similarly, I believe we have special brain centers for organizing events into stories.

Interactive Media and Game Development 5 Storytelling and games Why do we have stories in games –May have no story … Tetris –Or minimal stories … Space Invaders –To motivate the game play –To create a more long-term interest than the game-play alone can create –To provide an emotional experience –To provide an experience different from our everyday lives

Interactive Media and Game Development 6 The role of stories in games The backstory The story of the game –Who is the storyteller? –What is the role of the player in determining the narrative? The stories the players tell each other

Interactive Media and Game Development 7 Backstory Examples Phantasy Star Warcarft III Max Payne

Interactive Media and Game Development 8 Another classification (Shamelessly stolen from Dean’s course description) Linear Branching Emergent Examples …

Interactive Media and Game Development 9 The rest of the presentation … is intended to tell students about some specific approaches to constructing stories and to convince them that it’s worth learning something about how to create stories before starting to write their own stories.

Interactive Media and Game Development 10 Sources Andrew Rollins and Ernest Adams on Game Design, Chapter 4 Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction, by Michael J. Toolan –“While functions proper are distributional, sequential, ‘completed’ further on in the story – and so have a kind of syntagmatic ratification, indices are said to be integrational, hierarchically-oriented, realized by relating them to some higher, integrated level, a paradigmatic ratification.”

Interactive Media and Game Development 11 Approaches to story telling - 1 One approach: –The monomyth / the hero’s journey –Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) –Christopher Vogler “A Practical Guide to the Hero’s Journey” – see handout

Interactive Media and Game Development 12 Approaches to Story Telling - 2 Propp’s analysis of the Russian fairytale –31 functions –See handout –Analysis of child’s story

Interactive Media and Game Development 13 Multipart-stories – Series Different narrative formats for multi-part series (Terminology from Rollings and Adams) Series: Story is broken into epsiodes, each of which resolves its own story line and also advances the overall theme.

Interactive Media and Game Development 14 Multi-part stories - Serial Serial: Episodes, but there are multiple overlapping story lines. Each episode advances one or more story lines. No overall story, so potentially infinitely many episodes.

Interactive Media and Game Development 15 Story telling - Episodic Epsiodic: Overall story line developed throughout, with tight integration between episodes and significant overlap of plot threads.

Interactive Media and Game Development 16 Topics for class discussion Different styles of presenting back story, and why they might be appropriate for different games. For different games, identify the types / organization of the stories. For a new game, discuss the way to present the story.

Interactive Media and Game Development 17 Thoughts on Critical Game Studies II David Finkel Computer Science Department Interactive Media and Game Development