Category Archives: First Readers

IF: visuals greater than regular video games?

The reading this week, titled “Interactive Fiction,” discussed what encompasses Interactive Fiction. It involves a text-based role playing game in which you can give a variety of different commands (such as touch, smell, exit, go north, etc.) to the player. … Continue reading

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Dramatic Storytelling in Games

I attended the “Dramatic Storytelling in Games” lecture at 12pm in the JC Cinema.  In this talk by Seamus Sullivan, he describes two different tests that can be used when writing to help with character development. The first test is … Continue reading

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How to Pack on a Story – Laura Packer

I attended Laura Packer’s presentation from 4:30 to 6:00 pm. Laura Packer first and foremost is a story teller, and a phenomenal one at that. In her presentation she outlined the history of storytelling and how it is the human … Continue reading

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“Dialogue, World Building, and Characterization”

As part of the “Writing for Games” conference, Seamus Sullivan presented a seminar entitled “Dialogue, World Building, and Characterization,” in which he offered tips and insights on the process of designing the world of a game.  The seminar first began … Continue reading

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Writing for Games

I was able to make three of the presentations for Tuesday’s conference, and I’m so glad I did. I’ll be going, fingers crossed, into the games industry as a game artist, but I’ve had a little taste of game writing … Continue reading

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> THINK ABOUT Interactive Fiction

So far we have covered interactive videogames, hardcore vs casual games, and counter games. But one genre that has been overlooked is interactive fiction. Unlike traditional games, interactive fiction is a text based game that is not concerned with aesthetics … Continue reading

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Interactive Fiction Versus The World

MC Frontalot (and to a similar extent, the video editor Jason Scott) demonstrates an understanding of what makes the text adventure so very fun. Which is sort of the odd thing, text adventures aren’t really gone, they’ve just had to … Continue reading

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Inspiring Future Game Writers

I attended a lecture by Roland Cox, Community Director at Bioware Mythic in Fairfax, Va. He was speaking in order to inspire future game developers or writers, to give them advice and first-hand knowledge on what a job in the … Continue reading

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The Interactive Fiction Experience

After playing the interactive fiction games listed on the syllabus and reading Nick Montfort’s explanations of interactive fiction, I have found that it is really not something that I enjoy. I do not find interactive fiction to be a videogame, … Continue reading

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Just a little bit of everything

I managed to attend nearly all the sessions at the conference, but I was recording video of the presentations and workshops, so I didn’t really get to pay as much attention or participate as much as I would have liked. … Continue reading

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Five Qualities

I attended the 3:00pm lecture by Rowland Cox.  Mr. Cox spoke about how a group of people develop an amazing videogame that people want to play many times.  He said that you need five things to be a great videogame … Continue reading

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History Channel, nope. FOX, nope. MSNBC, nope. Xbox, yes!

I completely agree with Gonzalo Frasca when he introduces the idea that games can gain a better understanding of real-life social and political issues and can help us think more critically about these things. Until I played Flight to Freedom … Continue reading

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Games as a Medium for Forum Discussion.

In the Videogames of the Oppressed article, Frasca attempts to break away from analyzing games from the perspective of Aristotelian theater. He argues that their interactive nature makes video games more akin to a simulation than to a narrative, and … Continue reading

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Arising Social Context in Video Games

Videogames of the Oppressed focused on many ideas but one interesting point was the lack of video game simulation of social and/or political context. The article itself was written back in 2004 so the author might be surprised by the ongoing … Continue reading

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Critical Thinking and Video Games: Videogames of the Oppressed

As my post this week, I’d like to focus on Videogames of the Oppressed by Gonzalo Frasca. This was particularly interesting, as it explores how video games can be used to help people gain a better understanding of reality and … Continue reading

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