Digital affordances enable new ways of interacting with and experiencing stories. Digital stories can incorporate a playable/playful dimension. Digital games have also been used to explore new ways of telling stories. Together playable stories and digital games offer new gameful experiences that extend the possibilities or storytelling.
Having it the Player’s Way: (Sub)Way and the Illusion of Narrative Choice by Daniel Rosen
Games and narratives have a complicated relationship, particularly when it comes to authorial control over the narrative and the decisions made within it. The issue being that there is no “proper” way through a game the same way there is a prescribed path through, say, a movie or book. Narrative implies a beginning, middle and end, but does not then prescribe a path between those three states, nor that those three states specifically link to each other exclusively. That gap between beginning, middle and end can be defined as an infinite narrative opportunity space, and many game narratives choose to ignore it for the sake of a more streamlined narrative design. (Read more..)
“Malandia” was conceived as a hands on exploration of contemporary issues related to game theory. In How to Do Things with Videogames, Ian Bogost writes “we can understand the relevance of a medium by looking at the variety of things it does” (3). In this case, he is making reference to exploring specific productions of a medium before passing judgement on that medium. As an academic and someone who has a long history enjoying videogames as entertainment, Bogost’s notion forced me to ask myself what do I really knew about videogames and what specifically can they do? (Read more..)
Stories in Play 