Use of story-telling in games

Videogame Content: Game, Text, or Something Else?

by Mia Consalvo

PAGE PROOFS from my chapter in: The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies: Media Effects/Media Psychology, First Edition.
Edited by Angharad N. Valdivia and Erica Scharrer.
© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

This chapter surveys the most recent scholarly work done on videogame content. It identifies several lines of research... more This chapter surveys the most recent scholarly work done on videogame content. It identifies several lines of research that have emerged in this area, including debates over the best methods for studying game content, representation-based versus gameplay-based approaches, and theoretical foundations for studying games. In addition to providing a broad overview of recent work in such areas, the essay also provides a more detailed account of how such research works, through an examination of the author’s past videogame
studies. These include studies that have examined titles such as The Sims and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, among other examples. These studies demonstrate how theory may and may not be useful in studying games, how methods must be adapted to best scrutinize dynamic content, and the many meanings that can be taken from contemporary games. The essay ends with a discussion of how future research on games should proceed, and the identification of the areas most pressing in terms of investigation.

Puzzle Art in Story Worlds: Experience, Expression and Evaluation

by Veli-Matti Karhulahti

Presented at The Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Madrid 2012.

This paper discusses the aesthetic value of a specific video game challenge, the fiction puzzle, though cases such as... more This paper discusses the aesthetic value of a specific video game challenge, the fiction puzzle, though cases such as L.A. Noire, Grim Fandango and Leisure Suit Larry. The discussion is carried out through John Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics.

De (de-) constructie van interactieve film, een onderzoek naar de versmelting van film en games

by René Glas

MA thesis, Department of Mediastudies, University of Amsterdam, 2003.

Game Spaces Speak Volumes: Indexical Storytelling

by Clara Fernandez Vara

Paper presented at Think Design Play: Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA)  Conference, 2011, in Utrecht.

In the problematic exploration of the narrative potential of videogames, one of the clearest aspects that bridge... more In the problematic exploration of the narrative potential of videogames, one of the clearest aspects that bridge stories and games is space. This paper examines the different devices that videogames have used to incorporate stories through spatial design and what is known as environmental storytelling, focusing on the design elements that make the story directly relevant to gameplay beyond world-building and backstory exposition. These design-related elements are accounted for with the term indexical storytelling.
As a refinement of the concept of environmental storytelling, indexical storytelling is a productive game design device, since reading the space of the game and learning about the events that have taken place in it are required to traverse the game successfully. Storytelling becomes a game of story-building, since the player has to piece together the story, or construct a story of her own interaction in the world by leaving a trace.

Mechanic/Aesthetic Videogame Genres: Adventure and Adventure

by Veli-Matti Karhulahti

NOTES BEFORE READING.
Not all games are genre games. A term that refers to a group of games does not necessarily make a genre – a "facebook game," for instance, is only a term that can be used to imply that the particular game is played on Facebook. This approach is not a comprehensive theory of videogame genres. It examines videogames from a limited aesthetic point of view to employ the concept of genre into a tool for understanding the aesthetic evolution of videogame art. Eventually, the goal of this paper comes close to how Grant Tavinor (Art of Videogames, 2009) describes his nominalist definition of video games: to "allow us to understand something very important about games, that is their continuity with other cultural forms." There is more than one approach to videogame genres. This is one of them.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without... more Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
MindTrek’11, September 28-30, 2011, Tampere, Finland. Copyright 2011 ACM 978-1-4503-0816-8/11/09....$10.00.

Games in de openbare bibliotheek ('Here come the gamers: een onderzoek naar de informeel- en formeeleducatieve waarde van games', Biblion Uitgeverij 2010)

by Joris Steenbakkers

Gametime: History, Narrative and Temporality in Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 2

by Patrick Crogan

in Mark J P Wolf and Bernard Perron, The Videogame Theory Reader (NY: Routledge 2003)

"Game Characters as Narrative Devices. A Comparative Analysis of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2".

by Kristine Jørgensen

In Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture, vol 4, no 2. 2010.

This article presents a comparative analysis of how characters are used as narrative tools in Bioware’s computer... more This article presents a comparative analysis of how characters are used as narrative tools in Bioware’s computer role-playing games Dragon Age: Origins (2009) and Mass Effect 2 (2010). The analysis aims to demonstrate how sophisticated narrative features can be integrated in gameplay through the development of interesting characters. Using a comparative analysis, the author shows that the two games’ have different approaches to using characters as narrative tools within the same genre, while also incorporating these narrative features tightly into gameplay. Central to the argument is the idea that presenting the player as protagonist is not necessarily the most fruitful approach to narrative experiences in games, and that narrative coherence may be better established and maintained through letting non-player characters carry the weight of narrative progression.

A multiplicidade estética nos filmes 'Smoking'e 'No Smoking', de Alain Resnais

by Cesar Baio

Let me understand the poetry: embedding interactive storytelling within panoramic virtual environments

by Karol Kwiatek

Kwiatek, K. & Woolner, M. (2010a) 'Let me understand the poetry. Embedding interactive storytelling within panoramic virtual environments'. EVA 2010. London: British Computer Society, pp 199-205. Available at: http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.36090 (Accessed: 21.07.2010).

This paper presents a method for the merging of poetry into interactive storytelling that is based
on still and... more This paper presents a method for the merging of poetry into interactive storytelling that is based
on still and video panoramas. This non-linear approach aims to give a young audience a new
understanding of poetry, by exploring the poet Charles Causley’s house and the town of
Launceston in England where he spent most of his life. His poetry mentions a number of locations
from this town and artefacts located in his house. The user of the interactive application based on
Adobe Flash plug-in and Lucid Viewer (panoramic viewer), take a number of narrative journeys in
order to search for hidden poems, voice marks or trails signs that have references to the town. Still
panoramas localised at decision-making points were linked by using video panoramas (360-degree
video), which were recorded with a spherical video camera – Ladybug2 mounted on a motorised
wheelchair. Still and video panoramas are elements that create a branching narrative. The aim of
this application is to develop the interest not only in the Causley’s biography but also in literary
output of the poet.

I Chose Rapture: Het Objectivisme van Ayn Rand in BioShock

by Eline Muijres

Interpretive Cooperation and Procedurality. A Dialogue between Semiotics and Procedural Criticism

by Gabriele Ferri

published in "E|C, special number, computer games between text and practice"

Which Narrations for Persuasive Technologies? Habits and Procedures in Ayiti: The Cost of Life

by Gabriele Ferri

With Riccardo Fusaroli. Presented at the AAAI Spring Symposium 2009, Stanford, USA

The Key to Adventure Game Design: Insight and Sense-making

by Clara Fernandez Vara

Co-authored with Scot Osterweil, from The Education Arcade (MIT)

This paper aims at understanding how adventure games can support educational goals by understanding the foundations of... more This paper aims at understanding how adventure games can support educational goals by understanding the foundations of their design, and what how inherent properties lend themselves to specific types of learning. The potential of adventure games as educational tools has been repeatedly discussed from the standpoint of education (Carroll, 1982; Cavallari, Hedberg & Harper, 1992; Ju & Wagner, 1997; Amory, Naicker Vincent & Adams, 1999; Moser, 2002; Dickey, 2006), usually focusing on the narrative framing that adventure games provide (Dickey, 2006), but not on their specific design conventions. Understanding adventure games entails understanding how their design helps the player learn.
There are two key aspects of adventure games that are discussed here, derived from the puzzle-driven nature of adventure games: domain knowledge and insight. The domain specifies the knowledge that the player must have in order to solve the puzzles in the game, whereas insight takes place when the player figures out the solution to the puzzle. This paper analyzes how game design can set up the domain, what are the aspects of the game that facilitate insight and, more importantly, how these design properties of adventure games can be harnessed to develop educational games.