Game narrative jam part 1 - we had some ideas

Last Friday I was invited by Caro Williams to run a game narrative jam with the game design crew she started facilitating here in Madison a few months ago. Turn out was a little small probably owing to the fact that we're at the end of the semester and AERA is around the corner (getting back to work on my poster as soon as I finish up this post), so I had to augment the activity I had in mind. That said, I think we floated some really cool ideas in the conversation that ensued, and as I'd promised in proposing the session I'm re-posting those ideas here.

Even games as abstract as the Bit.Trip series have a core narrative conflict lurking around somewhere . . . not that we talked about those games at all, but I like this image anyway. Writing this post took longer than expected, so what you have here is part 1 (expect part 2 later this week after I've got a finished poster for AERA). Something about in-game moral systems and narratives of loss after the jump.

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Some people just can't leave well enough alone

I was reading in the Escapist about Roger Ebert's most recent rant on how games aren't art. Oh wait, I mean how games "can never be art." I've made my own thoughts on the matter at least moderately clear. Under the circumstances I think I'll just link to this post from Love's creator Eskil Steenberg and drop in this image from Dear Esther as a sort of minimalist rebuttal.

A screen shot from Dear Esther, I still need to play it

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Intergalactic space operas, we need more of 'em

Last week's post marked the first in my proposed copy left series. Today I'm going to continue giving away ideas while clearing out some backlog in the process. You see, I had this notion a while back that developers were being rather limited in their thinking about what could be done with Guitar Hero controllers. Yahtzee posted about this issue as well about a year after I started babbling about it to my colleagues (my friends and colleagues have to put up with a lot of this sort of thing). I picked this largely unrelated (but otherwise irresistible) image out of Blossom_Morphine's photobucket (click to go there). More about why Croshaw and I stumbled across the same general idea, and a few specifics after the jump.

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OKC + Raptr = Booyah!!!

Before there were services on the internet where single male gamers could purchase online escorts to game with, I  too had the notion that it might be possible to fuse powerful forces like online classifieds and gamer networks. Of course, I was thinking something more like OK Cupid meets Battle.Net, but I suppose I was being a bit optimistic. At any rate, this post is part of a new copy left series I'm doing because I'm tired of the ways people talk about IP in relation to games (among other things). I'm giving away ideas!!!

Ideas, possibly good for something. More on both topics after the jump.

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"But we don't use griffins, and I think that is what separates us from them."

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture? I've put this video here because it invariably requires repeated viewing.

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