Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Games, narrative and the design of interface

Games, narrative and the design of interface There is a potential disconnection between the experience of narrative and the active decision-making necessary for successful gameplay. Gameplayers must oscillate between a hypermediated participation in game decisions, and the transparent pleasure in the narrative frame of the game (Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Manovich, 2001). This paper analyses one critical locus for facilitating player oscillation and bridging the gap between narrative pleasure and gameplay interaction. Narrative dynamics can be designed directly into the focus of active gameplay – the game interface. This paper identifies and explicates four separate design approaches for integrating narrative within the game’ interface: (1) a narrativised ‘look and feel’ of the interface; (2) behavioural mimicking and behavioural metaphors; (3) narrativised perspective and (4) ‘bridging’ and mixed-reality interfaces. These concepts are useful for describing, analysing and understanding how narrative experience can be instantiated within the game interface. Application of these concepts can help to reveal useful strategies for conjoining ludic play with narrative pleasure. Collectively, this approach is a step towards creating a common theoretical vocabulary for discussing the phenomenon of narrativised game interface. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Journal of Arts and Technology Inderscience Publishers

Games, narrative and the design of interface

Download PDF
20 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/inderscience-publishers/games-narrative-and-the-design-of-interface-6WFFNCOa0f

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Inderscience Publishers
Copyright
Copyright © Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. All rights reserved
ISSN
1754-8853
eISSN
1754-8861
DOI
10.1504/IJART.2011.043445
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

There is a potential disconnection between the experience of narrative and the active decision-making necessary for successful gameplay. Gameplayers must oscillate between a hypermediated participation in game decisions, and the transparent pleasure in the narrative frame of the game (Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Manovich, 2001). This paper analyses one critical locus for facilitating player oscillation and bridging the gap between narrative pleasure and gameplay interaction. Narrative dynamics can be designed directly into the focus of active gameplay – the game interface. This paper identifies and explicates four separate design approaches for integrating narrative within the game’ interface: (1) a narrativised ‘look and feel’ of the interface; (2) behavioural mimicking and behavioural metaphors; (3) narrativised perspective and (4) ‘bridging’ and mixed-reality interfaces. These concepts are useful for describing, analysing and understanding how narrative experience can be instantiated within the game interface. Application of these concepts can help to reveal useful strategies for conjoining ludic play with narrative pleasure. Collectively, this approach is a step towards creating a common theoretical vocabulary for discussing the phenomenon of narrativised game interface.

Journal

International Journal of Arts and Technology – Inderscience Publishers

Published: Jan 1, 2011

There are no references for this article.