Week 1, Jan. 7
Topics
Overview
Readings for next week
HoH: Chapters 1 - 3
Week 2, Jan. 14
Topics
Discuss: HoH Chapters 1 - 3
Introduce: Electronic Literature: Places & objects, links and lexia
Exercise
Play Zork I for 2 hours and play one of the IF competition entries (Photopia, For a Change, Shrapnel, Spider and Web, Shade, Bad Machine). Read Afternoon for 2 hours and choose one of the other hypertexts (cybertexts) (Grammatron, Pax, Intruder, Asteroids, Nine, Field of Dreams, From Lexia to Perplexia, Fair-e-tales, Clues). Compare the experience of IF and hypertext. What works best/worst about both forms? How does each work make use of (or not) the affordances of digital environments? How does the more recent work compare with the classic in each form (e.g. Zork vs. an IF entry, Afternoon vs. one of the more recent hypertexts). How does it feel, as an interactor, to interact with the various works? Turn in your response to the CoWeb as screenshots, charts, text, or in interactive form.
IF and Hypertext Works
Zork I
Photopia
For a Change
Shrapnel
Spider and Web
Shade
Afternoon
(Quasi-interactive work)
Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries
Download directions for IF
The Win95 and Mac versions are stand-alone versions of Zork. The ZIP version is a Z-machine file that is interpreted by a Z-Machine interpreter.
Z-machine Interpreters. A Z-machine is a virtual machine (analogous to the Java VM) that Inforcom developed for their interactive fiction products. Much of contemporary IF runs on the Z-machine (written using languages such as Inform that target the Z-machine) - all of the pieces we're looking at run on the Z-machine. On the PC, WinFrotz is a popular choice. On the Mac, Zip Infinity is a popular choice.
Readings for next week
HoH: Chapters 4 - 6
Adam Cadre's introduction to interacting with IF
Cybertext killed the hypertext star - Nick Montfort
Luesebrink's Response to Montfort
Rosenberg's Response to Montfort
Week 3, Jan. 21
Topics
Discuss: IF and Hypertext
Discuss: HoH Chapters 4 - 6
Introduce: Story Generation I: Morphemes and Grammars
Readings for next week
HoH: Chapter 7
Exercise
Pick a genre serial story (e.g. Friends, H.P. Lovecraft horror stories, Seinfeld) and develop a grammar (morphemes plus rules) that generates new stories in the genre. Demonstrate your grammar by presenting three different stories generated by the grammar.
Week 4, Jan. 28
Topics
Discuss: Story Generation I: Morphemes and Grammars
Introduce: Games vs. Narrative
Readings for next week
Towards Computer Game Studies, Part 1: Narratology and Ludology - Markku Eskelinen
Beyond Myth and Metaphor - The Case of Narrative in Digital Media - Marie-Laure Ryan
Simulation 101: Simulation versus Representation - Gonzalo Frasca
Game Design as Narrative Architecture - Henry Jenkins
Markku Eskelinen's short response to Jenkins
Ludologists love stories too: notes from a debate that never took place
Exercise
Pick one of the games (Black & White, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto 3) to play. Play for at least 6 hours with a partner who also plays for 6 hours. Compare experiences. Present screenshots/diagrams/text that indicate elements that affect (positively or negatively) the experience of immersion, agency, and transformation, and the active creation of belief. To what extent can the experience of these games be interpreted as narrative? What elements work with and against a narrative interpretation? How are these game experiences situated within the Ludology/Narratology debate?
Games
Black & White
The Sims
Grand Theft Auto 3
Week 5, Feb. 4
Topics
Discuss: Games vs. narrative
Introduce: Project 1
Week 6, Feb. 11
Topics
Present proposal for an interactive narrative
Week 7, Feb. 18
Topics
Present draft prototype and design critique
Week 8, Feb. 25
Topics
Final prototypes due
Introduce: Story generation II: Author simulation
Readings for next week
Story Telling as Planning and Learning - Michael Lebowitz
Chapters 1 & 3 of The Creative Process: A Computer Model of Storytelling and Creativity - Scott Turner
Week 9, Mar. 3
Topics
Discuss: Story generation II: Author simulation
Introduce: Characters
Readings for next week
HoH: Chapter 8
Exercise
Do a paper-and-pencil design of an author-modeling based interactive story system. The assignment should first provide a quick sketch of an interactive story experience that could potentially be implemented using authoring-modeling story generation techniques, and then provide a high-level description of the architecture and knowledge (e.g. authorial goals and plans, or story event cases + adaptation, or rhetorical devices or something you make up yourself) employed by the system. Include a description of how the player interacts with the system and the nature of the narrative experience. Don't worry about how you would implement it. Feel free to invent your own kinds of knowledge structures - you don't have to use the exact structures from Universe, Minstrel and Terminal Time. View these systems as example points in the space of author-modeling techniques. The point of this assignment is to think about how you would integrate an author-modeling-based story generation system into a complete interactive narrative experience. As always, your assignment doesn't have to be turned in as a lump of text - you can employ images, diagrams, animations, perform an interpretive dance, build physical models - whatever media helps you to work through the design of such a system.
Week 10, Mar. 10
SPRING BREAKWeek 11, Mar. 17
Topics
Discuss: Characters
Learn about Character Maker
Readings for next week
HoH: Chapter 9 - 10
TBA
Exercise
Implement a chatterbot using Janet's Character Maker software. Pick a strong "genre" character, a character who strongly scripts the interactor.
Week 12, Mar. 24
TRAVELINGWeek 13, Mar. 31
Topics
Look at chatterbots
Discuss: Interactive drama
Introduce: Project 2
Week 14, April 7
Topics
Present proposal for interactive narrative
Week 15, April 14
Topics
Present draft prototype and design critique
Week 16, April 21
Topics
Final project due