6
Definition-narrative:
“How do you communicate pattern-type information to a pattern-recognizing mental module using a sequential medium such as language? In computer terms, the data is in the wrong format for the communications link!
What’s needed is a reformatter, something that converts one thinking format to the other. Narrative is that reformatter. It’s an ad-hoc solution to an ugly interfacing problem that arose early in the development of language.”

“When I think about these [story/media] outlets, I think about them in terms of like OK if they have the individual arc and then I have the overall arc in the full story, and it becomes about how I pace it, how I get it to an audience, and how I have them interact with it.”

Definition “story architecture”:
“Story architecture to me is kind of the idea of what effectively is a kind of fluidness of creative, technology in terms of how you actually deliver these things, how do you scale them, how do you get them to these various outlets. How do you make it an experience that somebody is going to be engaged by and want to continue to you know hopefully tell somebody else about. And then, you know, business. The last part is kind of entrepreneurial, you know, how do you actually derive your revenue streams from this. How do you actually look at it in a meaningful way, so it is ?impactful? [5:26 min] for yourself.”

“Once you have the data, and it is the future of everything, you know, if we look and we say search was the future, you know, a number of years back, it really is about discovery, it really is about filtering. And a lot of this discussion throughout the day, throughout this whole thing, you know, this conference, is going to be about how do people discover and find you in a world that is swelling with content.”

“What is interesting is, like, normally we started with like a three act structure in a screenplay. In the case of some of the work we have been developing it starts with the build of a universe, bible, game bible, show bible, where we kind of go through and define the world, define the interactions, define the characters, define the rules, and then from there it becomes this amazing kind of depth of information where you know more about the subject than you ever did before.”

“Probably the most devastating blow comes when artist tools are so un-enjoyable to work with that they discourage experimentation. If your artists are unwilling to play with the tools they are given, then there is no chance that any visual innovation is possible for your product.”

“Probably the hardest thing to come to terms with while designing an aesthetically holistic virtual world was handing the keys and future of its design to its members.”

121
“I want to introduce an important third term into this discussion – spatiality – and argue for an understanding of game designers less as storytellers and more as narrative architects.”

122f
Definition “environmental storytelling”: see Carson, D ~ Environmental Storytelling. I think Jenkins calls this “embedded storytelling”, p128?

124
“Increasingly, we inhabit a world of transmedia storytelling, one that depends less on each individual work being self-sufficient than on each work contributing to a larger narrative economy.”
“One can imagine games taking their place within a larger narrative system with story information communicated through books, film, television, comics, and other media, each doing what it does best, each a relatively autonomous experience, but the richest understanding of the story world coming to those who follow the narrative across the various channels. In such a system, what games do best will almost certainly center around their ability to give concrete shape to our memories and imaginings of the storyworld, creating an immersive environment we can wander through and interact with.”
“Spatial stories are not badly constructed stories; rather, they are stories that respond to alternative aesthetic principles, privileging spatial exploration over plot development.”

125
“Eisenstein used the word “attractions” broadly to describe any element within a work that produces a profound emotional impact, and theorized that the themes of the work could be communicated across and through these discrete elements.” Jenkins calls these elements “micronarratives”. A story can consist of story chunks that consumers put together themselves in their own minds.

126
“As inexperienced storytellers, [game designers] often fall back on rather mechanical exposition through cut scenes, much as early filmmakers were sometimes overly reliant on intertitles rather than learning the skills of visual storytelling. Yet, as with any other aesthetic tradition, game designers are apt to develop craft through a process of experimentation and refinement of basic narrative devices, becoming better at shaping narrative experiences without unduly constraining the space for improvisation within the game.”
“Russian formalist critics make a useful distinction between plot (or syuzhet) that refers to, in Kristen Thompson’s (1988) terms, “the structured set of all causal events as we see and hear them presented in the film itself,” and story (or fabula), which refers to the viewer’s mental construction of the chronology of those events (Thompson 1988, 39-40).”
“Read in this light, a story is less a temporal structure than a body of information.”
The “classical Hollywood narrative [...] the law of three suggests that any essential plot point needs to be communicated in at least three ways.”

129
Kevin Lynch (1960, The Image of the City, p116) describes city planning as “the deliberate manipulation of the world for sensuous ends.” City planning is like storyworld/-bible building!
“In each of these cases, choices about the design and organization of game spaces have narratological consequences. In the case of evoked narratives, spatial design can either enhance our sense of immersion within a familiar world or communicate a fresh perspective on that story through the altering of established details. In the case of enacted narratives, the story itself may be structured around the character’s movement through space and the features of the environment may retard or accelerate that plot trajectory. In the case of embedded narratives, the game space becomes a memory palace whose contents must be deciphered as the player tries to reconstruct the plot. And in the case of emergent narratives, game spaces are designed to be rich with narrative potential, enabling the story-constructing activity of players. In each case, it makes sense to think of game designers less as storytellers than as narrative architects.“

p 177
“Pervasive games generally tend to require a lot of content to function properly. Insectopia circumvents this by using the existing infrastructure around a player to generate resources for a game.”

p160
They discern crossmedia games from multiplatform games.
Crossmedia games are “played across different devices and media channels and that emply a wide variety of gameing devices and media channels in the game play, including state-of-the-art mobile and stationary computing devices as well as more traditional communication and information channels such as television broadcast or print media.” Lindt et al 2005
Multi platform games: for example GTA3 is available on PC, PS3, and XBOX
“[In crossmedia games] different tasks are performed on different interfaces. This is supposed to generate and support interesting gameplay across different media.” Lindt 2007
“[Epidemic Menace] was situated in tangible reality, taking place not just on the various interfaces, but also between them.”

137
“In many pervasive games, the design of tangible experiences is central. The goal should be to provide players with the feeling that they are, right at that moment, experiencing something unforgettable.”

143
“[The players] must believe “this is not a game” in order to enjoy the immersive pleasures of its realistic aesthetic. They must disbelieve “this is not a game” in order to maintain the ludic mindset that makes realistic murders, apocalyptic science, cyberterrorism, and other dark plots pleasurably playable.” McGonigal 2006

144
“Don’t let players leave the game. One way to create a strong life/game merger in long-duration games is to let players carry on with their ordinary lives, only to run constantly into game-related events and information. Utilizing temporal expansion in this way leads to a state of mind where the players are constantly in game and will start to connect anyting they experience to the game. Eerie coincidences are often reported as one of the most enjoyable experiences in pervasive games.”

147
“Games striving for a predetermined yet interactive plot often require game masters to control the pace of the game or to subtly steer players in the right direction. [...] If players see this steering too clearly, there is a risk that they will lose their sense of agency.”

149
“Some games are based on narratives whereas others are not. Stories are particularly relevant for pervasive larps, alternate reality games, and urban adventure games, whereas assassination games, treasure hunts, and smart street sports do not typically feature them. A compelling game narrative provides players with a frame for the play experience: Solving the puzzles of The Beast was motivated by the need of discovering the narrative. The narrative was both a reward for discovery and an excuse for spending endless hours looking for clues.”
“Games with strong stories are usually games of progression instead of games of emergence. Games of progression feature a series of particular challenges presented in sequence, and a player progresses through the game by overcoming them. Games of emergence feature relatively few rules, but complex and changing gameplay emerges from those rules.” Jesper Juul (2003)
“A game of progression is only compleded once. [...] Games of emergence tend to be much shoreter, but they are played over and over again.”
“Some hybrid games offer a story world that is more of a sandbox to play in. Exploring the story world is not only common in digital games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, but also in sequential pervasive larp campaigns, reality games, and urban adventure games. The completeness and coherence of the diegetic world are extremely important in these games.”

150
“The distributed narrative is told in small fragments, which are hidden in different locations and in verious media.”
“In the ARG community it is customary to share discoveries with other players.”

151
“In ARGs, players produce both a description of the diegetic story, a trail, and a story of how all the puzzles were solved, The first consists of a (re)assembled distributed narrative, the latter is the collective story.” Dena 2008
“The success of [The Beast] depended on whether a community emerged and whether that community began to tell its own story.”
“First person stories are not su much stories per se as sequences of events that players experience and later turn ointo stories when reminiscing the events. Although similar first person stories can be created for severeal players, they are experienced as private, as certain particular events happen only to a certain particular player. First person stoeis are especially common in pervasive larps, assassination games, treasure hunts, and urban adventure games, as these games feature incidental coincidences with outside events, making each experience unique.”

153
“One way to increase replayability is to simply include so much content in the game that it is impossible to go through it in one go.” If you make people experience an entertainment architecture under time pressure they CAN’T go through all the details! That way they can play (and pay for) it again!

154
“[...] keep players occupied with single-player content until critical mass is reached.” Then two players, then multiplayer, then massively multiplayer.
“Conceal the lack of critical mass”
“Designing the pace for a pervasive game is one of the most difficult parts of the design [...]” Hardcore vs casual players.

155
Definition immersion:
“The experience of being transported to an elaborate simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content. We refer to this experience as immersion. Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water.”
3 types of immersion:
Sensory
Challenge-based
Imaginative (fits ARGs and larp best)

156f
3 factors might make it possible to play a pervasive game casually and therefore reach a MUCH bigger audience (not just geeks):
Choosing a simple platform (inexpensive and compatible with everything)
Keeping the social threshold low (don’t make participants wear capes and swords)
Enabling tiered participation (there should be stuff for both hardcore and casual players)

157
“The key to successful development is in mutually supportive strategical decisions, where the technology, the business model and the gameplay work well together.”

“Imagine we had a group of people who designed houses and that’s all they did, and another group of people who design skyscrapers, and another group of people who design factories — but we did not have the concept of the architect. In entertainment, it kind of feels that way. We have filmmakers over here, game designers over there. Musicians down here.”

“”mood management theory” gives a hint at how entertainment works at the deepest level.”

“There is some artistic pushback, where a lot of the people working in this fields say if you’re not seeing my movie on the bigscreen, you’re not seeing my movie. But I don’t think consumers really care about that.”

The Beast (2001)
I Love Bees (2004)
Last Call Poker (2005)
Year Zero (2007)
Free Fall (2008)

“Without easily accessible online access, a player is at a huge disadvantage.” ARGs are only possible because of an initial technological push!

“This suggests that storytelling cannot be only the passive, top–down experience familiar to content producers. Audiences demand a stage and a voice of their own.”

“ARGs are a form of collective storytelling.”

“ARGs are certainly not the end of the road, but they provide key insights into how storytelling evolves as technology continues to shift.”

“These communities are ephemeral, emerging for the purpose of a single game and dying off when the game is complete.”

“Although the game designers have a planned route in mind at the outset, the very nature of the game requires participation and player contribution. As a result, predetermined outcomes are rare.”

“Like the game designers, researchers must be adaptable and able to process the unusual diversions from planned routes. Models must be flexible to map to real–life social interactions. Currently, ARGs are dominated by their marketing purpose and tightly linked to product release. The pace and flow are tied to the product release, and data capture is only intended to guide the team of storymasters as hype reaches a critical stage. Researchers need to work with designers or create their own games to capture full sets of usable data.”

“No single methodology exists for analyzing digital social interactions. [...] Existing theories can provide windows not only into communication and game story mechanisms, but also into the gaps in this field.” Relevant theories:
Social network analysis
Actor-network analysis
Entropy-agency

Storytelling in new media: The case of alternate reality games, 2001-2009 (05.07.2009)

The Japan Times ~ Hollywood’s passion for the video game (02.03.2009)