Storyworlds

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From the course by Vanderbilt University

Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative

67 оценки

Vanderbilt University

Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative

67 оценки

Intended for both newcomers who are curious about video games and experienced gamers who want to reflect on their passion, this course will explore what happens to stories, paintings, and films when they become the basis of massively multiplayer online games. The Lord of the Rings trilogy—the novels, films, and video game—are our central example of how “remediation” transforms familiar stories as they move across media. The course is designed as a university-level English literature class—a multi-genre, multimedia tour of how literature, film, and games engage in the basic human activity of storytelling. Our journey will enable us to learn something about narrative theory, introduce us to some key topics in media studies and cover some of the history and theory of video games. It will also take us to some landmarks of romance literature, the neverending story that lies behind most fantasy games: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, a bit of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and poems by Keats, Tennyson, Browning, and others. Drawing on centuries of romance narrative conventions, the twenty-first century gaming industry has become a creative and economic powerhouse. It engages the talents of some of our brightest writers, artists, composers, computer engineers, game theorists, video producers, and marketing professionals, and in 2012, it generated an estimated $64 billion in revenue. Anyone interested in today’s culture needs to be conversant with the ways this new medium is altering our understanding of stories. Join me as we set out on an intellectual adventure, the quest to discover the cultural heritage of online games.

From the lesson

Space and Time in Three Media

Week 4's initial focus is our natural concepts of space and time, and how these dimensions inform the "storyworld" of a narrative. We then examine how directors, authors, and video game developers use these innate frameworks to tell stories, invoking Seymour Chapman's book "Film and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film." Close attention is paid to the mechanics of point of view, and how its use allows artists to connect with audiences. ***For details about this week's Readings, go to the Syllabus page in your Resources tab.

Mental Models and Cognitive Mapping in Narrative7:57

Storyworlds5:09

Meet the Instructors

Jay Clayton
Professor
English

[MUSIC]

Far from merely providing descriptive background or ornamentation for the

primary action for the story,

spatial reference helps constitute narrative domains.

What does he mean by, constitute narrative domains?

Wayne.

>> I think he means the world of the story.

>> Yeah, I mean I think that he's suggesting that

the setting is actually creating, the possibility for that story.

>> So, do story worlds, always play the same kind of role in every mode?

How, how do they work in video games?

Don.

>> Well, I think in video games, the setting may be even more

important than terms of the idea that one wants to be immersed in any

universal world, so things like graphics and,

and music and sound effects that could

be considered descriptive elements of the game

as opposed to or alongside plot-based elements.

Are the, are very, very key in terms of,

feeling like, there's a coherent world, in front of us.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> Video games, take this element of story world and raise the stakes.

Video games can turn setting, space into a pleasure all into itself.

>> Yeah, it's interesting you say that because when you get a, game

like Minecraft, you don't actually have

chunks generated, until you go explore them.

Which not only makes the game different every time you play it,

but it makes, the terrain actually a huge part of your game play.

>> So, let's look at the entire scene from Tolkien again.

The sun was now high, and and it shone down through the half-stripped

branches of trees, and the lit path with the bright patches of light.

There stood the trolls: three large trolls.

Strider walked forward unconcernedly.

It is broad daylight with a bright sun, and in any case.

You might have noticed, that one of them has

an old bird's nest behind its ear and it's daylight.

Why is that significant?

>> Because trolls turn to stone in daylight.

>> Everybody knows, trolls turn to stone in daylight.

Here is an aerial view, of the game

scene, focusing on the bird's nest on the shoulder.

This image brings up, a radical capacity of gaming

that's not shared, by written text or by sentiment.

And that's, the player's ability to manipulate the camera.

Now every game allows you to do this in somewhat different ways.

Sometimes you have more control, sometimes you have less.

If Peter Jackson wanted to show you, the bird's nest.

He would have had to have given the view, and none other.

How does this change the feeling?

>> It adds an element of discovery, to the unfolding of the narrative.

In terms of like one would have to find this bird's nest.

It doesn't, it's not simply presented, in front

of, right in front of you and, moreover,

if you've read the book or seen the

movie, it's something you can look for specifically.

>> Well, you can't look for birds' nest if you've seen the movie

because the birds nest is not in the movie, it's in the book.

You're, but not in the movie, we'll see it

in a second, Jackson Hank was the same really different.

>> We also have an element where we have, camera

control of being able to switch the mode of narration, that

we're experiencing in the game and I think particularly with

video games and camera angles because we're used to watching cinema.

This shift in narration based on the camera position, is really, obvious to us.

>> Yeah and liberating.

>> Right.

>> You know, I, I've noticed that you often like to play in

first person mode with the camera zoomed all the way into the, character's head.

>> That's a bad habit [LAUGH]

>> If it's a habit, I don't know if it's bad or not.

And you know, the older the shoulder camera angle that IĂ˘ÂÂd tend to use.

So, the ability to control the camera can be

really empowering because you have a sense of freedom, as

a player and it really changes your entire relation to

space, in narrative, this becomes your space in a sense.

Now, that's an illusion because you can only move,

where the game designers have allowed you to move.

You can only take your character to the borders of the game

and you can only see in the ways they've enabled you to see.

But, it all storytelling [LAUGH] is illusion, the different modes create

that, different kinds of illusions through their control of space.

[MUSIC]

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