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Games, Page 4

A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer

There are a lot of things in Neal Stephenson‘s The Diamond Age which I love. If I’m honest with myself I hope to see mediatronic paper and animated digital chops, for example,  become real in my lifetime. There are other aspect of the world created in that novel, for example massive inequality in a post-scarcity society, which I hope we won’t see, but I fear we are already walking down the path towards. Continue reading →

Is the narrative in the game, or in the head?

In his post, The Simulation Dream (which I’ll forever thank Twitter for pointing me to), Tynan Sylvester sets out the Player Model Principle, which is “The whole value of a game is in the mental model of itself it projects into the player’s mind.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week, wrestling with the sometimes incredibly didactic way in which cultural heritage organisations can tell their stories. Continue reading →

A little epiphany

Today I saw a diagram that looked a bit like this: It was in the chapter on Narrative from Tynan Sylvester’s Designing Games. He explains that with this this sort of structure, “any given player misses most of the content”. There’s another problem too – with this sort of structure, it’s incredibly difficult to pace the emotional rhythm of the narrative. Continue reading →

A little epiphany

Today I saw a diagram that looked a bit like this: It was in the chapter on Narrative from Tynan Sylvester’s Designing Games. He explains that with this this sort of structure, “any given player misses most of the content”. There’s another problem too – with this sort of structure, it’s incredibly difficult to pace the emotional rhythm of the narrative. Continue reading →

Emotional Triggers

In his book, Designing Games, Tynan Sylvester says: If we look around, we find interactive narrative everywhere. Museums and art galleries are interactive nonlinear narratives where visitors explore a story or an art movement in a semi directed, personal way. Ancient Ruins and urban graffiti tell stories… These interactive forms – museums, galleries, real spaces, and life  - should be our first touchstones as we search for narrative tools. Continue reading →

Twitter is your friend

I note that one of the most popular searches driving traffic to this blog is “narratology vs ludology.” I must admit, I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve written only one post addressing that debate, and over all, I guess I’m taking quite a narratological point of view. This post however may begin to address the balance, as this is where I begin to get all “ludological. Continue reading →

Music, narrative and space

I’m thinking about music. Which is slightly scary for me, as I’m not very good with music. I have no sense of rhythm, I’m not tone deaf, but I do struggle to tell the difference between notes, and though I enjoy singing, people around me don’t enjoy my singing. This might have something to do with two of my favourite musicians being Bob Dylan and Shane McGowan whose own singing voices are a matter of some division among critics. Continue reading →

Home from the range

My wife told me “You can stop studying for your PhD now, you’ve done what you wanted.” Last night I hit the end credits of Red Dead Redemption. My wife isn’t entirely right, but yes, reading about Red Dead Redemption was one of the “triggers” (forgive me) for thinking about what Cultural Heritage might lean about telling stories in three-dimensional spaces. In February I decided I had to actually play the thing, and went out to buy a cheap XBox and the game. Continue reading →