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1. The Machinimatic Moment

   "The Machinimatic Moment" discusses a type of filmmaking that uses videogame engines (commonly referred to as machinima). I contend machinima exists within a liminal space between a number of diapoles including: production/consumption, play/cognition, and synthesis/critique. While much of machinima can be considered self-referential in that it consistently remarks upon the game itself and, in many ways, its limitations, other productions reveal sophisticated, compelling stories that are neither game nor traditional filmic narrative. I conclude by arguing that its liminality gives machinima distinctive and interesting qualities.

   (Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)

   Scott Rettberg - 09.01.2013 - 14:41

2. Ergodic Characters

   While much of the attention towards ergodic fiction has been focusing on plot (either dynamic or multiple-path), its characters still lack complexity and expressiveness. In this paper we will explore two different techniques to face this problem.

   One major issue in videogames is the lack of personality in user-controlled characters. In other words, the author of a videogame cannot give a deep personality to her character, because the user will be the one who will control it. For example, you cannot design a melancholic, non-violent character, if there is a knife available in the environment. Many users would just take the knife and start a Doom-like game, turning the originally pacifist character into a serial killer. The designer can obviously prevent the user from manipulating harmful objects. However, through this arbitrary rule, users will see their freedom limited. This would also diminish the environment's coherence: why some objects can be manipulated and other cannot?

   Scott Rettberg - 19.01.2013 - 13:24

3. Game-Based Digitally Mediated Narrative Construction

   There are various ways of constructing a short story or a novel ranging from detailed planning of characters, back story, and plot before beginning to write to fluid writing. Somewhere in the middle, but near fluid writing, is the approach taken by the late television writer Sydney Sheldon who visualized the flow of the story and narrated what he saw and heard to a secretary. The paper surveys practices in narrative construction both current and speculative, such as a possible future use of advanced functional brain imaging, but emphasizes a particular game-based approach currently being attempted in a pilot project.

 At the Virtual Environments Lab researchers are developing a system that generates a text based on game play. The game has two purposes: entertainment for the player and generation of a work of fiction that describes the experiences of the player. Many of the characters and situations come from Through the Looking Glass. The player character, as Alice, explores an 8x8 grid and interacts with non player characters. The NPCs ask questions, and the PC gives free response answers. The PC can also ask the NPCs questions.

   Audun Andreassen - 10.04.2013 - 13:09

4. Netprov: Elements of an Emerging Form

   While improvisational theater has a well-documented history, the role of improvisation on the Internet has been only the topic of passing speculation (Laurel; Murray), either applied metaphorically to the user interface or in speculation on the nature of computer-mediated textual exchange particularly in the context of identity formation (Turkle). While improvisation is deeply connected to the authorial practices of players of MMORPGs and their MOO precursors (LaFarge) and to players of story-generation games such as Jason Rohrer’s “Sleep is Death” and to participants in ARGs, we are specifically interested in text-centered improvisation that has as its goal the creation of a narrative or narrative world, rather than primarily the development of a game experience.

   Scott Rettberg - 25.06.2013 - 14:30

5. Textopia: Experiments with Locative Literature

   textopia is a design experiment situated in humanist media studies, and based on a simple idea: Making it possible for someone who is walking through the city with a mobile phone to listen to literary texts which talk about whichever place she is walking by. The aim of this exercise has been to explore the relationship between places and literary texts – not just what the relationship is and has been, but what it can be in the new medium. Inspired by the ideas embedded in hermeneutics, open source philosophy and agile software development, I have outlined a methodological approach that I call "agile media design". In the course of the practical process I have ialso dentified three key principles for locative media design, summed up in the "G-P-S" model: Granularity, Particiation and Serendipity. Together they describe the unique characteristics of designs like textopia – a category I call "annotative, locative media".

   Scott Rettberg - 26.06.2013 - 13:19

6. Cyberdrama

   Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin introduce Cyberdrama, the first section of First Person.

   Andre Lund - 26.09.2017 - 13:23