June 1, 2005
Yet Another Story and Game Lecture
I gave a lecture on Story and Games [slides in PDF] to the CIS 564 class on game design here at Penn. The first half was straight narratology; then we looked at the nature of games as simulations, game time as distinct from time in stories, etc., and I had the class play Varicella in two groups so that we could discuss it in some detail. Fun stuff.
June 1st, 2005 at 9:29 pm
Stephen Lane, who teaches CIS 564, asked me if I knew of a good list of narrative structures to which students could refer when designing games.
Books such as Seymour Chatman’s Story and Discourse go through many of the options as they develop a theory of narrative, but I don’t really know of anything that is a good catalog of structures, online or in print. The most interesting-looking resource I was able to find right off is Bite Me: Narrative Structures + Buffy the Vampire Slayer, published by the Australian Center for the Moving Image.
Does anyone have any ideas?
June 2nd, 2005 at 11:29 pm
Manfred Jahn’s ‘Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative‘ is pretty good.