Creating and Capturing
Show, Don’t Tell: New Methods of Digital Storytelling and Game-Based Learning in Rime
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Holly Blockley
This paper is a case study into the narrative and cinematographic techniques influenced by the visual arts of television and cinema onto the digital games, Rime and Journey. Though both styles of gameplay feature structural components commonly found in open-world and puzzle games, the distinct lack of any verbal communication (whether spoken or written) is a very unusual trait in narrative-driven games. Puzzle games are often bereft of substantial plot, and adventure games use language to explain the intricacies of their narratives. Rime in particular circumvents both these traditions by telling a complex story of grief using cinematic cut scenes, suggestive camerawork and instrumental music. This paper therefore adopts the following structure: I begin by discussing Rime and Journey in relation to the generic conventions of adventure, puzzle and walking simulator games. They will then be examined in relation to Chekhov’s notion of “show, don’t tell” narratives, and I analyse the cinematic techniques the games adopt to convey narratives with characters and plots without using any verbal language. Overall, I aim to establish the technological ways contemporary games can replace language with alternative methods to successfully sell an immersive narrative experience to the players.
Story-chasing: The Changing Role of Audiences in the Creation Immersive Narrative Prototypes
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Jackson, Rachel Genn, Toby Heys
As design thinking is increasingly applied to the production of new narrative experiences, the role of the audience is shifting from media consumer to co-producer. Audiences are involved in prototyping and concept testing from an early stage in the development of all aspects of narrative (plot, aesthetic, interactive dynamics). An example of this approach can be seen in the workshops and approaches used by Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Labs. The use of artificial intelligence technologies in these experiences is also blurring the line between maker and audience. Technologies, such as natural language processing, learn in response to the actions and utterances of users. Meeting the requirements of these systems requires new methods of co-design that are partly in preparation for a later narrative and partly a form of the emerging narrative itself. This paper briefly outlines the context for this new approach before engaging audience members in a narrative co-design experience demonstrating the methodology, benefits and issues inherent in this process. This experimental approach has been developed during an earlier iteration of the prototype at Doc/Fest international documentary festival (UK).
