Playable Stories

To Do This Week

Journal: Consider any of your favorite video games that involve storytelling. How do the game goals and puzzles/challenges involve the player or "interactor" in uncovering or finding meaning in the narratives? Are the narratives just an excuse for strategic gameplay or is immersion in a story world—with characters and conflict— essential for the game? How do the works engage your imagination and/or emotions? Describe the world-building in the game.

Notes

Discuss favorite narrative games.

Hypermedia Narrative: 10%
Due April 16th

• Story plot: Is there a clear goal or purpose? Does the plot reveal internal or external character change? (system operations)
• Interaction: Are there patterns in user interaction or exploration (unit operations)? Do these interactions reveal theme or meaning?

What is the relationship between world simulation, interaction, and story plot? What is the world? What is your role in it? What patterns determine that role?

System and Unit Operations

Ian Bogost:

• system operations (big goals, narrative arcs)
• unit operations (small actions, steps in a process)

System operations are familiar narrative shells of gameplay: kill aliens, find treasure, complete quests. Film genres—romance, adventure, thriller—also rely on system operations.
“protracted, dependent, sequential, and static”

Unit operations are small, repetitive actions that carry gameplay forward.
“succinct, discrete, referential, and dynamic”

Four Strategic Forms of Interactivity

External exploratory: networked lexia, scrambled story, puzzle structures (Twine, 3rd person)

Internal exploratory: embodied navigation, detective-like exploration (Twine, 2nd person)

External ontological: god-like perspective, simulations, branching narratives

Internal ontological: total immersion, agency, Holodeck-style experiences

Final Project: 30% - DUE April 30th

The final project is to be a digital story that incorporates at least two of the modules covered in this class: diagrammatic, visual, cinematic, hyperlinked/interactive, game-like storytelling. The work may be a significant reworking of a previous project or a new idea and direction.

The final project will be monitored in class by me during workshops in the last two weeks. There should be progress each week until it is due. Our class time will be focused on building these stories so that you can get help from me and your classmates. Do not leave everything to the last minute, or this will be reflected in your project and participation grade.

Virtual Story Spaces

Interactive Fiction (IF):
Simulating virtual space through navigation.

Before video games, interactive fiction allowed players to explore worlds through text commands—an early form of story simulation.

IF dream: story simulation as literature and experience.
(Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray)

Colossal Cave Adventure (1975, Will Crowther)

A detailed simulation of a cave system where players explore, collect objects, and solve puzzles using text commands.

Simulating Worlds

Façade (2006)
Simulated interaction with characters using natural language processing.
internal ontological

The player inhabits a social role, shaping a dramatic narrative through dialogue rather than predefined choices.

The Sims

A sandbox life simulation where narrative emerges from systems rather than fixed goals.

Simulations in Reality

Augmented Reality, Mobile, and Location-Based Games
external ontological

Interactive Cinema

Screens, Mobile, and Location-Based Games
internal exploratory

Immersive Games

Immersion and agency in a story world

Grounded: The Making of The Last of Us