Curriculum Framework Discussion

International Game Developers Association

Game Developers Conference 2007

IGDA Curriculum Workshop

Curriculum Framework Discussion

Writing & Interactive Storytelling

Attendees:

Led by Ron Weaver - Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy

Susan Gold - Sierra Nevada College

Steve Jacobs - RIT

Laura Silva - Art Center at Pasadena

Judy Perhamus - Riverside Community College

This roundtable focused on potential assignments and lecture topics to cover interactive narrative in games. Some assignment suggestions included:

> Students evaluate the same game, go away for a while, then come together again to explain what the story was. This helps demonstrate which parts of the story resonate the deepest and why. > Have students relate stories from their own experience and then form teams to tell that story in the medium of their choosing. This assignment helps remove the judgement of whether the writing is good or bad and instead focuses on what makes the story compelling or not.

Regarding lecture topics, a list of basics arose such as the Hero's Journey, character development, archetypes, basic plot structure, and Cyd Field's Hollywood layout. Texts to follow included "First Person" and "Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Video Games".

Discussions of various narrative structures included open vs. closed models, decision trees, and the "ring of pearls". This idea allows the player to explore various plot points in any sequence they choose, as if in a ring of pearls, and once explored they must pass through a key node to continue the story. Other names for this same concept (discussed in the interactive storytelling tutorial) include "clouds and gates" and "the well fed snake". A key topic surrounding interactive narrative was the notion of how to constrain a game world since every possibility cannot be built from the content side.

A highly debated topic arose concerning how to teach story when it permeates so many media. Do you address it broadly to be comprehensive but risk never seeing enough detail to be useful in any medium? Or do you aim for detail in a particular medium, such as games, and risk missing the connections to be made across disciplines? Naturally, a mixture was suggested, erring on the side of specialization to ensure usefulness.