Possibly up for discussion:

• Reader response theory applied to games
• Teaching writers as part of game design programs
• Narrative Design practices
• Narrative combined with game mechanics
• Teaching narrative design (to help teach writing)
• Teaching narrative design (to help teach everything else)

Proposed by:

• Aram Zucker-Scharff @Chronotope

Present:
Bryan Alexander @bryanalexander
Gavin Craig @craiggav
Melissa Peterson @mwbtle
Mark Hebert @drphilprof
Thor Gibbins @sonofodin0913
Todd Bryant @bryantt
Gerol Petruzella @gpetruzella
Stephen Slota
Jeffrey Gruen @theblondeguywiththeblackshirton
Kevin Ballestrini @kballestrini
John Murray @lucidbard
Emily Lewis @blueathena14
Jason Rhody @jasonrhody
Bill Deal @wdeal
Matt Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum

• http://www.hacktext.com/2011/02/crowd-sourced-television-goes-to-the-next-level-with-bar-karma-and-storymaker-477/
• @therealcliffyb <- I think the creator of Gear of Wars
• Interactive fiction as a way to learn in a smaller scale narrative design for interactive games.
• Emergent narratives – those that come out of sandbox designs that are a consiquence of the gamer’s interaction.
• Vast narrative – styles of writing that work in cultural properties, recognize that the story will exist everywhere. – “Third Person”
• Progression – tension between progression and emergence
• Encoded practices – what may seem emergent is actually a scripted trigger
• Story vs Discourse – discourse = presentation of story
• Narrative of a character vs the story of the game
• Player agency – the degree to which the game provides verbs to allow you to influence the world in the ways that the story suggests you can.
• reader-response theory
• Experience vs creation of the story
• Character authorship
• Tweaking notions of authorship
• Planescape Torment
• Rise of Legends?
• Comic book continuities
• satisfaction of world-building

More games:

• Passage
• Pathos
• Portal (Game Mechanics and Narrative correlations)

Concept map snapshot (Bryan Alexander, using Vue) (handy Flickr copy):
Full size, left side:

Games that express amazing stories:

• Deus Ex
• Star Wars The Old Republic
• Mass Effect (1)
• Mass Effect (2?)
• Bioshock
• Alpha Centauri
• http://www.interactivestory.net/ (Façade)
• The Stanley Parable http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-stanley-parable (interesting manipulation of player agency)

How can we teach narrative design?

• Write games (interactive narratives) teach ethics issues.
• hyperlinked stories
• Write all the supporting design documents for a simulations of late 19th century Johannesburg.
• Writing branching dialogue trees
• One-day exercises – your character, an event to complete, tell us how.
• How to make it logical
• Character goals and desires – think about it (James McGee’s Story, Invisible Ink, Etc)
• Write a backstory
• Contradictions within their own desires?
• Dimensionality
• Write a generator for a particular type of story.
• Wide Ruled
• General build a universe class
• scoping
• allow for variable skill
• What assignments would there be?
• Character building.
• Item building.
• World building.

Curriculum
Pedagogy

Reading! (yay!):

• Plotto
• Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide http://www.amazon.com/Convergence-Culture-Where-Media-Collide/dp/0814742955/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327178938&sr=8-3
• The New Digital Storytelling http://www.amazon.com/New-Digital-Storytelling-Creating-Narratives/dp/0313387494/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3BX9RSLF0MITF&colid=2R1C32GDZUIPC
• 99 Ways Tell a Story http://www.amazon.com/99-Ways-Tell-Story-Exercises/dp/1596090782/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2UJI9PGKJOFV1&colid=2R1C32GDZUIPC
• Third Person http://www.amazon.com/Third-Person-Authoring-Exploring-Narratives/dp/0262232634

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hdNLa9TVnUVCY2SkzsDQA18PCI8jVpMZFaK3sEqg_IA/edit