Some folks, namely those who haven’t touched a joystick since Super Mario Bros., might have a hard time imagining a game whose narrative value rivals film or television. But in the fast-growing gaming world, cutting-edge designers aren’t just out to give players a moving target to shoot at: They want to immerse them into a story as engrossing as that of the finest films.
That explains the title of a weeklong game-design “boot camp” that the UT Department of Radio-Television-Film will host Aug. 16-20: Interactive Storytelling for Computer Game Design. According to Thom Gillespie, a new media professor who developed the course out of one he teaches at Indiana University, it’s a high-intensity workshop in which participants try to develop a game concept that balances interactivity and narrative, without sacrificing either. The operative word, though, is “try.”
“I would like to think that the story experience of film or television carries through into games,” Gillespie says, “but nobody’s quite gotten there yet.”
The problem, of course, is that compelling narratives are hard to build even in the noninteractive world (exhibit A: every bad movie you’ve ever seen.) Giving players the freedom to act within a virtual world means sacrificing the kind of fine-tuning of plot and dialogue that separates a good story from a flop.
But even if interactive storytelling requires wedding two seemingly incompatible goals, Gillespie insists it’s a worthy endeavor nonetheless.
“Many people,” he explains, “are trying to build real art and a real story that really has the ability to affect you.”
Thus, his course is one in which story development trumps technology. While participants need to know (or learn in a crash course the first day) a little flash, they also need to have some game ideas in mind. The class will revolve around pitching, refining, and storyboarding ideas in small groups, delving into such literary questions as character motivation and plot advancement. The people who really shine at this, says Gillespie, are those who would be just as comfortable working “in a cave with a campfire.”
“One of the best students I ever had was a kid who was studying folklore,” he says. “You wouldn’t trust him with Microsoft Word, but he understood myth, metaphor, and archetype like no one else.”
Not all participants, however, have high art as a goal. One is Michael Anderson, who works at the UT TeleCampus, which offers fully online courses for distance education. He wants to get a better understanding of what makes a good game so he can elevate online courses, whose only interactivity is often turning from one virtual page to another, beyond the level of the glorified correspondence course.
“We want to figure out ways to make online learning as engaging as what goes into the classroom,” he says.
For example, the TeleCampus is exploring the idea of teaching economics through role-playing simulators, in which players would take on the roles of people in a corporation or the government. However, Anderson hopes to leave the boot camp with a whole new way of thinking about games.
“I want to see what it is that gets teenagers interested in gaming, and what makes them respond to games,” he says. “Basically, I’m just a 50-year-old man trying to be cool.”
This article appears in August 13 • 2004.