Special Topic: Narrative Design for Interactive Media

This course provides a practical and theoretical introduction to storytelling and narrative design for applied games, entertainment games and related interactive media applications. From fictional worldbuilding, networked story structures and character and conversation design to social simulations and emergent narrative, students will explore different design patterns and approaches for delivering meaningful play experiences, while gaining experience with standard tools and technologies for constructing interactive narratives and simulations. Students will work individually on smaller design activities reflecting the specific tasks and problems commonly faced by narrative designers in the game industry as well as collaborating in a peer group with complementary skills to deliver a more fully-developed systemic worldbuilding and storytelling project.