Torill Elvira Mortensen writes on Story Construction . . . worth seeing:
One point sounds familiar: how the creaters of games, the designers, are creators not of stories, but of narrative potential. I know I worded this argument years ago, but was that in one of the many sessions of discussion – argument – supervision with Espen, or did it actually make its way into the thesis? It does not really matter now, all it does is create a flashback to the past: the point when I tried to understand the mass of material I had gathered, and then position it.
A central idea of the presentation which I am delighted to see is how Eladhari underlines the creative process of playing: how a virtual world depends on the activities of the participants in order to unfold into many-faceted narrative environments in the same way as reality holds an endless amount of stories.
This entry belongs in so many categories here at once but I’m quickposting so it is going into interactive drama as it’s most relevant to some things I’ve been thinking abour recently.
My classes on critical theory (both undergrad and graduate) this semester have been examining and experimenting with the notion of narrative, plot, and story and how these are constructed. The undergrad class this week looked at the old Russian structuralists and the 31 elements and the various forms. This stuff is still used in game design. Every other interactive fiction site seems to have the same faq files based upon the folktale studies. This resonates well with some of the post-structuralist ideas inherent within the very act of interactive drama, freeforming, and live action roleplaying game.
I wrote about the nature of the LARP being a form of hybrid theatre, improvisation, game all in one and how the performance is both within and before the audience. They really do fit.
Recently, I’ve been doing the initial stage work for a new Journal of Interactive Drama which will in essence be a forum for just such critical discussion of the LARP and it’s cousins of various persuasions. Gonna be a ride worth taking. When the webpage and CFP go up later this week, I will be posting them here.
