Abstract
The fourth layer of narrative in Interactive Narrative Systems (INS), such as games, is the players’ re-tellings of the stories they have experienced when playing. The occurrence of re-tellings can be considered as an indicator for a well designed INS and as an instrument of critique - the experiences of play are important and memorable to such a degree to the players that they find them worthy to tell others about. The notion of the fourth layer is added to the structural model of IN Systems having (1) a base architectural layer giving conditions for a (2) second layer of narrative design, while a (3) third layer is the narrative discourse - eg. the unique, session-specific played or traversed sequences of events. In relation to this, the Story Construction model is described.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The use of the terms story and narrative in this text conforms to Genette’s theoretical framework for narrative analysis. Genette’s definition of histoire, or in the English translation, story, reads as follows [15, p. 27]: ‘I propose [...] to use the word story for the signified or narrative content’. Slomith Rimmon-Kenan uses Genette’s definition in her book Narrative Fiction, but accentuates the chronological aspect of the concept: “Story’ designates the narrated events, abstracted from their disposition in the text and reconstructed in their chronological order, together with the participants in these events.’.
- 2.
When Genette uses the word narrative he means ‘the signifier, statement, discourse or narrative text itself’ [15, p. 27]. The French word Genette uses for narrative is récit.
- 3.
An example of an abstract entity that has an expressive and performative role could for example be weather, such as a storm god manifesting by changing the conditions in an environment.
- 4.
As noted earlier this lens for seeing narrative is adapted towards the creation of interactive narratives rather than analyzing them.
References
Aarseth, E.J.: Cybertext, Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins University Press, September 1997
Bolter, J.D.: Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1991)
Budniakiewicz, T.: Fundamentals of Story Logic: Introduction to Greimassian Semiotics. John Benjamins Pub. Co., Amsterdam (1992)
Burkinshaw, R.: Alice and Kev - The story of being homeless in The Sims 3. https://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/
Burkinshaw, R.: Selflessness—Alice and Kev. https://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/selflessness/
Campbell, J.: The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press, Princeton (1949)
Cavazza, M., et al.: The IRIS network of excellence: integrating research in interactive storytelling. In: Spierling, U., Szilas, N. (eds.) ICIDS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5334, pp. 14–19. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89454-4_3
Chatman, S.: Story and Discourse. Cornell University Press, London (1978)
Cherny, L.: “Objectifying” the body in the discourse of an object-oriented MUD. Stanford University, Technical report (1994)
Cook, M., Colton, S., Gow, J.: The ANGELINA videogame design system-part i. IEEE T. Comp. Intel. AI Games 9(2), 192–203 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1109/TCIAIG.2016.2520256, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7429751/
Danzyger, K., Rush, J.: Alternative Scriptwriting. Focal Press (1995)
Eladhari, M.P.: Characterising action potential in virtual game worlds applied with the mind module. Ph.D. thesis, Teesside University, September 2010
Fencott, C.: Agencies of Interactive Digital Storytelling (2003)
Fencott, C.: Virtual storytelling as narrative potential: towards an ecology of narrative. In: Balet, O., Subsol, G., Torguet, P. (eds.) ICVS 2001. LNCS, vol. 2197, pp. 90–99. Springer, Heidelberg (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45420-9_11
Genette, G.: Narrative Discourse - An Essay in Method. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (1983)
Greimas, A.J.: Sémantique structurale. Larousse (1966)
Greimas, A.J.: Narrative Semiotics and Cognitive Discourses. Pinter (1990)
Hellekson, K., Busse, K.: The Fan Fiction Studies Reader. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City (2014)
Jenkins, H.: Game Design as Narrative Architecture. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2003)
Juul, J.: A clash between game and narrative - a thesis on computer games and interactive fiction. Ph.D. thesis, University of Copenhagen (1999)
Klastrup, L.: The Death Stories Project. [Electronic Publication] (2006). http://www.death-stories.org/
Koenitz, H.: Towards a specific theory of interactive digital narrative. In: Interactive Digital Narrative: History, Theory and Practice (2015)
Landow, G.P.: Hypertext: The Converge of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (1992)
Laurel, B., Strickland, R., Tow, R.: Placeholder: landscape and narrative in virtual environments. SIGGRAPH Comput. Graph 28(2), 118–126 (1994)
Mateas, M., Stern, A.: Structuring content in the Façade interactive drama architecture. In: Proceedings of the First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, AIIDE 2005, pp. 93–98. AAAI Press, Marina del Rey (2005)
Meadows, M.S.: Pause & Effect - The Art of Interactive Narrative. New Riders (2003)
Microsoft Corporation: Asheron’s Call 2 - Fallen Kings [Computer Game - Virtual Game World]. Turbine Entertainment (2002)
Murray, J.H.: Hamlet on the Holodeck. The Free Press, New York (1997)
Propp, V.: Morphology of the Folktale. University of Texas Press, Austin (1968)
Rimmon-Kenan, S.: Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. Methuen & Co (1993)
Ringer, C., Nicolaou, M.A.: Deep unsupervised multi-view detection of video game stream highlights. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games - FDG 2018, pp. 1–6. ACM Press, New York (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3235765.3235781, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3235765.3235781
Ryan, M.L.: Beyond Myth and Metaphor - The Case of Narrative in Digital Media. Game Studies, July 2001
Ryan, M.L.: Avatars of Story (Electronic Mediations), 1 edn. University of Minnesota Press (2006)
Sega AM2: Shenmue II [Consol Game]. Sega, Microsoft Game Studios (2001)
Sony Online Entertainment: Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. Lucas Arts [Computer Game - Virtual Game World], June 2003
The Sims Studio: The Sims 3. Elactronic Arts [Computer Game] (2009)
Tronstad, R.: Semiotic and Nonsemiotic MUD Performance. Holland (2001)
Vogler, C.: The Writers Journey. Michael Wiese Productions (1993)
Wagner, J.: Second Life: Notes from a New World. Electronic Publication (2003). http://secondlife.com/notes
Wardrip-Fruin, N.: Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Eladhari, M.P. (2018). Re-Tellings: The Fourth Layer of Narrative as an Instrument for Critique. In: Rouse, R., Koenitz, H., Haahr, M. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11318. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04027-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04028-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)