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Games and Storytelling
Tuesday, 5th October 2004 Frans Mäyrä, Research Director, Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere, Finland Mika Tuomola, Artistic Director, Crucible Studio/Media Centre Lume and Medialab, University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland Frans Mäyrä's and Mika "Lumi" Tuomola's presentations provide an introduction to the themes of the year and open up the key concepts of games and storytelling. Lectures illustrate the fundamentals of games' relation to the structures of storytelling, as well as game as a world and simulation. While on the task, Lumi will demonstrate how the mainstream games industry has so far made little, hardly any, use of other storytelling structures and rhetorics than those of age old hero epics and action movies, as well as introduce recent artistic research on how different, associational structures are likely to be more suitable to games and interactive stories design. Frans will approach the fundamental character of games by presenting some key ludological concepts (ludology being the academic study of games). Definition and theories of games and play are followed by quick introduction to concepts of gameplay, game thematics, gameworld and the relationship between simulation and narrativity. Lecture will conclude with examples that illustrate the continuities and differences between narrative and ludic cultural forms. |