This assignment has two parts: first, you will read the following material, and then you will spend some time browsing the additional course materials to see what grabs your attention. To finish up, you will write up a blog post with your thoughts.
Up until this point, we have talked about games from a purely ludological viewpoint. That is, we have looked at games as a system of rules, with the implicit assumption that the rules are the game, and that a narrative of any kind is just window dressing. (Any word with the root lud- or ludo- is referring to games; the root is Latin for play. We use words like ludology and ludography and ludic because everything sounds more distinguished if you say it in Latin.)
But this is not entirely true. As mentioned when we talked about kinds of decisions, some player choices may have absolutely no meaning within the game system, and yet they are still meaningful because they are emotionally charged.
Those of you who play tabletop Role-Playing Games are probably more keenly aware of this. Think of the most interesting play session you’ve ever had. You’re probably not thinking of a die roll or an interesting strategic decision that a player made in combat. You’re remembering something dramatic, emotional. You remember the story, not the die-rolling.
Here we look at these works and their effect on game design. We will build up a set of guidelines for how to tell a good story within a game. we then look at an analysis of the design of the game narrative and conclude with a video looking Game story(narrative) design.
Readings
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- What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story, by John Sutherland. [Links to an external site]
This article summarizes the book Story by Robert McKee (which itself is essentially a practical guide to Aristotle’s Poetics), rounding out the Holy Trinity of storytelling for game designers. - Mass Effect 2: A Case Study in the design of Game Narrative [academic paper)
- What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story, by John Sutherland. [Links to an external site]
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Additional Readings
Blog
When you are done browsing, write up a blog post with your thoughts about what you have read
For the blog post, use “Games Stories” in the title, with “Reading”, “Week 10” as the labels, and include at least one image (with image information). Here is the Declaration for Reading:
| DECLARATION: Reading Options I spent at least 30 minutes browsing the readings. I have published a blog post with my notes. POST TITLE: I used the phrase “Games Stories” in the post title. POST LABELS: I used the label “Reading”, “Week 10” for the labels. LINKS: I included at least three links to items of interest, with my thoughts. IMAGE: I Included at least one image with image information. |
