Central Issues in Interactive Narrative – A discussion with Chris Crawford

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I wrote a paper summarizing central issues in interactive narrative, to be published in the Springer Lecture Series in Computer Science: Five Theses for Interactive Digital Narrative.

My intent was to start a discussion on the state of affairs in the field, on achievements, pertinent questions and areas for future research.

Chris Crawford reacted quickly and we entered in an ongoing discussion, which Chris and I decided to present here, inviting readers to comment and offer their views.

As it has grown long (and is still continuing at this point) I decided to present it in installments, although the complete discussion will be available, for those who want to read it in its entirety.

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Interview: Jason Rohrer on games and narratives

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David Jackson published an interview to indie designer Jason Rohrer: “With art games in general the idea was really about coming up with something that I wanted to explore that couldn’t be put into words, because if it could be put into words I would just go ahead and write it or say it. Something that seemed like it could be expressed well through interactive game mechanics directly and then crafting mechanics that would express what I was trying to express through the systems I was building”.

Read the full interview at http://playablestories.org.uk/part-1-of-my-interview-with-jason-rohrer/

Interactive Narrative: Ice-Bound

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Ice-bound is an upcoming narrative experience combining a printed book with an iPad app. Telling a multi-layered story about a polar base sinking into the ice, a famous author’s unfinished final novel, and a doubt-riddled artificial intelligence given an impossible task, the project uses procedural generation and augmented reality to help create a truly unique experience where story and gameplay melt into one another.

A collaboration between Aaron Reed and Jacob Garbe, two award-winning writers and game artists, and inspired by the fractal narratives of Borges, Danielewski, Calvino, and Nabokov, Ice-bound is expected to debut in early 2015.

The official website for Ice-Bound is http://www.ice-bound.com/

Aaron A. Reed has shown projects at IndieCade, IGF, and the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemakers Festival. His 2009 interactive fiction Blue Lacuna was named one of the top ten text adventures of all time by the IFDB, and he served as lead writer for the ambitious AI-driven storygame Prom Week, which garnered both IndieCade and IGF nominations in 2012. His experimental narrative collage-maker 18 Cadence was a Kirkus”Best Book App” of 2013 and an IGF Nuovo Honorable Mention.

Jacob Garbe is a writer and new media artist working with augmented reality and procedural narrative. He was the recipient of the 2010 International Aeon Award for short fiction, and was recently featured as an electronic literature artist in the Pathfinders: 25 years of Experimental Literary Art exhibit at the Modern Language Association. He is currently working with Storybricks exploring dynamic text generation for the upcoming MMO Everquest Next.

Save the Date – Cross-session Memory, Metanarrative and a Challenge to Endings

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Save the Date is a real gem from the perspective of interactive digital narrative. This game puts the affordances of digital media to great use by demonstrating how procedurality and interactivity can extend narrative. At the same time, this work challenges long-standing conventions in both games and narrative.

So what does this game do? Save the Date reflects the player’s growing knowledge in consecutive replays though an evolving narrative. In addition, this work extends the notion of metanarrative in an important way and challenges the player to consider abandoning the game to reach a successful ending.

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The Future of IDN: ICIDS 2014 Workshop

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The Games & Narrativ group invites participants to a workshop on the future of Interactive Digital Narrative at ICIDS 2014 in Singapore.

After more than 25 years of fruitful research, starting with Brenda Laure’s 1986 PhD thesis, and productive practice in interactive digital narrative, it is a good time to consider future directions amid a maturing research field and a growing market for narrative-based interactive media. The Games & Narrative group invites participants to discuss ongoing issues as well successful methods and projects with us. On this foundation the workshop will enter into a phase of “futuring” – productive speculation – how will IDN look like in 5, 10, 25 or even 50 years? In addition to this, we will also take this opportunity to debate concrete initiatives, like joint research proposals, exploratory projects, forums for interdisciplinary dialogue, a central repository for projects or an academic/professional organization. The results of the workshop will be made available on the Games & Narrative website.

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Thesis: Narrative Construction in a Board Game

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Let’s Play a Story Together: Narrative Construction in a Board Game is an interesting thesis by Samu Lattu from the University of Helsinki.

He writes: “This study delves into the relationship between stories and games with a cognitive perspective. The subject of narrative in games in the past decade has overheated running in place. With this in mind a game medium previously untapped – board games – was chosen as the means of study and an approach to narrative untested in the context of games previously was chosen as the lenses of inquiry. The study considers what in board games gets players to interpret the flow of the game as narrative; how players pick and choose parts of the game experience and use them to construct a chain of events; how players picture a world and its inhabitants; how players experience the character they play; what is their relationship with the game world; what games tell us about the narrativity of games and whether a narrative tool or way of meaning is particular to games”.

Read the full thesis at http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2014053026064

Interactive narrative: “The Writer Will Do Something”

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“The Writer Will Do Something” is a Twine story by Matthew Burns in which you play as the lead writer for an upcoming AAA game. “The year is 2012. You are the lead writer for the third game in the wildly popular ShatterGate™ franchise. Expectations are through the roof: fans of the series are waiting for the biggest, most bad-ass entry in the series yet, and your publisher is expecting the best-selling title in its history. But the game’s development hasn’t gone as smoothly as planned. One morning, just a couple months before E3 and six months before ship, an emergency meeting is called…”

Play it at http://mrwasteland.itch.io/twwds

Book: The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games

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This is one of those books that I would have liked to write. Jennifer Grouling Cover, a student and colleague of the famous narratologist David Herman, analyzes the practices to create narratives in tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. I have read this book and it is actually quite valid – creating the bases for more advanced analyses.

From the book blurb: “This work explores tabletop role playing game (TRPG) as a genre separate from computer role playing games. The relationship of TRPGs to other games is examined, as well as the interaction among the tabletop module, computer game, and novel versions of Dungeons & Dragons. Given particular attention are the narrative and linguistic structures of the gaming session, and the ways that players and gamemasters work together to construct narratives. The text also explores wider cultural influences that surround tabletop gamers”.

Download it in ebook format at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=xl7P7GwME3gC

“Her Story”: a narrative procedural video game

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“Her Story” is a video game where player listen to the interview of a woman whose husband has gone missing – and they are cast into the police researcher trying to piece the truth together. Game designer Sam Barlow says: “In most games, because the story is communicating your challenges, it’s a usability thing. Everything has to be on the surface: ‘Go here, kill this, do that’. This mechanic of searching the woman’s words kind of forces you to engage on a deeper level – it highlights those layers of meaning. The heart of any human story is subtext.”

Read the full article at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/27/her-story-computer-game-true-detective-meets-google