Worlds, Stories, and Games

Title
Worlds, Stories, and Games

Course website
http://game.itu.dk/index.php/events

Lecturers
Yun-Gyung Cheong, Espen Aarseth, Georgios Yannakakis

Dates of the course
18-20 May 2011

Time
9-19h

Course description
This seminar invites PhD students to investigate theoretical and practical problems of interactive storytelling in computer games or related media from the perspectives of computer sciences (part I) as well as humanities based research (part II).
Part I: Computational Models of Storytelling and Interactive Storytelling
The user’s dual roles as story producer and consumer in the game environment have complicated the direct application of narrative theories into interactive storytelling.
This seminar is looking for approaches to problems like: How can we efficiently use the interaction of a user into storytelling? Is the interactive storytelling more like a story or a game? Should the story components be present in the story world that the user navigates through or be present in a retrospective way when she recalls the game play? How much does narratology come into play in interactive storytelling?

Part II: Ludo-Narratology and Beyond
The seminar will explore the ludological limits of narratology and present some new models from recent game research, and examine the utility of classical narratology. Through lectures, close-playing analysis and discussions, the goal is to attain a better grasp of the aesthetic challenges and solutions involved in game-story production and analysis, through new models and concepts developed specifically for these new forms.
The seminar will furthermore give introductory talks on the state of the art in interactive storytelling techniques such as story generation, procedural content generation, and automated camera control. The seminar also includes an interactive session to demonstrate the use of interactive story authoring tools.
PhD students from the fields of game studies, narratology, interactive storytelling, computational story generation and related fields are invited to submit papers which offer new insights or solutions for the presented problems. Further information will be available soon in the “events” section of http://game.itu.dk.

Prerequisites
Some knowledge in either computational interactive storytelling techniques or narrative and computer game theory is preferable but not obligatory. A refreshment of knowledge will be made possible with a compendium of theoretical texts provided prior to the course. Furthermore, it is advised to play at least three of the example games (HEAVY RAIN (2010), FAÇADE (2005), FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS (2010), DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (2010), THE MARRIAGE (2006)) prior to the course in order to have a comparable frame of reference in terms of examples.

Exam
The students will present their work according to the topic both as a presentation and as a written paper. Evaluated will be the originality of the idea, the execution and presentation, as well as the critique of the own approach.

Credits
5 ECTS