Chris Crawford's 'Dragon Problem': how to create meaningful interactive game narratives that respond to player choice without requiring exponential amounts of authored content.
Understanding the potential and vision of the medium through the lens of narratology and ludology theorists, resulting in ideas for Modular Narrative System Design that can offer a breadth of playstyles, player choices and meaningful consequences.
Some practical tools to rein in the combinatorial explosion of content through systemic and thematic scaffolding such as the use of a Protostory (Koenitz), design frameworks (GFI, SPP), Quality and Salience based structures (Emily Short), or through my own innovation used in my game Media Circus - the use of underlying binary oppositions inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural study of cultural myths.
Attendees should leave with an understanding of games as both narrative and systemic media where stories can emerge from rules, pressures, and player decisions rather than linear writing. They will see how a difficult theoretical problem can be turned into concrete design methods to craft game narratives that are simultaneously authored and emergent, coherent and variable, meaningful and playful.
