Elder Scrolls and WoW

Kate posted this, and it seemed worthwhile to me to start a new thread for it:

you know, it occurs to me that as you turn toward the idea of the non-linear story, something like The Elder Scrolls games might be interesting to explore. There is a definite story and plot... but it is up to the player to get there. In the most recent of these (Oblivion), you could take hours out exploring sub plots, tangents, and little flurries of story that had nothing to do with the main plot. Some people had trouble deciphering where that main plot started and stopped - and in several of the Elder Scrolls games, the game itself doesn't end when the plot does. You are allowed to continue interacting in a very changed world, sometimes still completing quests you had left undone for as long as you want. World of Warcraft (I know, I know) is another interesting idea when it comes to plot - every event in the story is somehow incorporated into Warcraft myth - every NPC has a past, every fight is explained. It is an ever evolving story, kept track of by players and developers alike - and you can look up any of those stories on a variety of websites dedicated to the game... and each of the instances has its own story as well (though there are occasionally gaps - characters revealed as being spies, enemies, etc... and standing around town again five minutes later, waiting for the next adventurer to discover the truth...) Each character you create has their own path they walk through the game from level 1 to 70 and beyond... if you just take the time to stop and read the quests when you get them. ;) talk about an unstructured plot!

Draft Syllabus and Welcome

Haldo!

Welcome to the weblog for the games/narrative course I'm trying to pull together for this spring. I welcome any comments you might have -- what are your ideas about these texts? What texts should be on here? What shouldn't?

I can't fit everything, but I *can* set up a post to facilitate further discussion among us about each and every subject (I've done it with the course subjects so far). Thank you guys so much for your help... for those of you who wanted the conversation about this topic to continue, here's where you can do it!

Best,

Matt


Course: English R1A
Section: 3
Topic: Games in Narrative/Games as Narrative
Instructor: Matthew Sergi
Time: MW 4-5:30
Location: 222 Wheeler

The R1 series is built to hone your critical thinking, and to train you in the basic reading and composition techniques necessary to organize, sharpen, and communicate that thinking. Each section is formed around a discussion topic; since anything in this world can (and should) be subject to critical thought, anything is fair game.

Even games are fair game. As contemporary America saturates itself with new gaming media, a scholarly approach to the tales which games tell—at their present moment and in their historical context—is increasingly relevant. English R1A/3 discussions will center on the interplay between gaming and narrative (stories created from games, based on games, told through games, etc). The more playable a narrative is, the less linear it becomes—approaching, though never reaching, a simulated (manipulated) reality, “an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times” (to use Borges’s words). This is as true of Grand Theft Auto as it is of chess (What story does chess contain? What stories contain chess?).

By spring’s end, you will be trained in how to look deeper into things that, because they are playful, may seem simple—but never are. At the same time, you will be trained in how to use clear prose to create and participate in a written discourse about those subjects (whether in essay-writing or weblogging). The syllabus will incorporate literary, cinematic, and playable narratives (role-playing, board, and video games), as well as secondary texts drawn from gamer culture. Our approach to playable texts will be limited by, and adjusted to, student access to media (console games, especially newer ones, will be demoed in class); however, you’ll be expected to play certain easily accessible (and usually free) games as homework, just like any reading or screening assignment (though sometimes the instructor will provide cheats or strategy guides).

READ ME(be sure to get the correct edition):
1. Selected Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
2. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (Lewis Carroll)
3. Dragons of Autumn Twilight (Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman)
4. A course reader, including secondary material, and short stories/poems by William Gibson, Jorge Luis Borges, and Geoffrey Chaucer.

SCREEN ME:
1. The Matrix (dir. Wachowski Bros.), with selected shorts from The Animatrix and demos from Enter the Matrix and The Matrix Online
2. Clue (dir. Jonathan Lynn)

PLAY ME:
1. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonlance 1, Dragons of Despair (Hickman)
2. Adventure (Crowther/Woods)
3. Alice (McGee)
4. Chrono Trigger (Square-Enix)
5. Cluedo (aka Clue) (Waddington’s/Parker Brothers)
6. Fable (Molyneux)
7. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar)
8. Myst (Robyn and Rand Miller)

Intro and Diagnostic: Adventure and Clue

R1A students are required to write a short response paper in the first week of class, to help the instructor diagnose their writing goals and issues.

We'll spend our first week in class playing through, and lightly examining as we go, ADVENTURE (aka Colossal Cave Adventure, the first-ever text adventure computer game) and CLUE (aka Cluedo, the board game).

We'll screen scenes from the Clue movie during the first week, too; students will be asked to write a response paper on either Adventure or Clue, analyzing what either one does to the linearity of its storylines.

Forking Paths: Chrono Trigger, Myst, and Fable

We'll look at three examples of games which exploit the ability of game narrative to work the element of choice -- or the illusion of choice -- into a story: Myst, Chrono Trigger, and possibly Fable (if students are able to access it easily).

If we haven't already, we'll also read Borges's "The Garden of Forking Paths" at this point.

Jack Thompson, GTA, and the Politics of Gaming

We'll spend a short time in class reviewing (and debating) various perspectives on video game censorship, beginning of course with the online gaming community (especially Penny Arcade) and its response to cases against games made by Jack Thompson.

Cyberspace

Beginning with a short foray into William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" (the story in which the term cyberspace was coined, and full of conspicuous references to gambling, chess, cards, etc), we'll tackle The Matrix, a franchise which just begs for college essays to be
written about it (right down to the strategic placement of Baudrillard's Simulation and Simulacra in Neo's hand, just before he sees the white rabbit). We won't do the full trilogy (should we?), but will consider The Animatrix and the interesting project of Matrix videogames.

Dragonlance

We'll study live D&D games (student-run, or observed at one of many local gaming shops in downtown Berkeley), as we read the first book of the Dragonlance series, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, which was composed through a D&D game. We'll take a close look at the 1984 iteration of D&D that was used to produce the novel.

Alice

We'll use the Annotated Alice (looking mainly at Through the Looking Glass) and read it as we demo American McGee's Alice, and a bit of Kingdom Hearts, in class.

Thoughts? Post them.

Canterbury Tales

My plan: to study the game/frame narrative and its interruptions, pausing on the Cook, the Pardoner, and the Knight.

Any thoughts? Post them here.

Draft Syllabus for Spring 2008 R1A/3

Course: English R1A
Section: 3
Topic: Games in Narrative/Games as Narrative
Instructor: Matthew Sergi
Time: MW 4-5:30
Location: 222 Wheeler

The R1 series is built to hone your critical thinking, and to train you in the basic reading and composition techniques necessary to organize, sharpen, and communicate that thinking. Each section is formed around a discussion topic; since anything in this world can (and should) be subject to critical thought, anything is fair game.

Even games are fair game. As contemporary America saturates itself with new gaming media, a scholarly approach to the tales which games tell—at their present moment and in their historical context—is increasingly relevant. English R1A/3 discussions will center on the interplay between gaming and narrative (stories created from games, based on games, told through games, etc). The more playable a narrative is, the less linear it becomes—approaching, though never reaching, a simulated (manipulated) reality, “an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times” (to use Borges’s words). This is as true of Grand Theft Auto as it is of chess (What story does chess contain? What stories contain chess?).

By spring’s end, you will be trained in how to look deeper into things that, because they are playful, may seem simple—but never are. At the same time, you will be trained in how to use clear prose to create and participate in a written discourse about those subjects (whether in essay-writing or weblogging). The syllabus will incorporate literary, cinematic, and playable narratives (role-playing, board, and video games), as well as secondary texts drawn from gamer culture. Our approach to playable texts will be limited by, and adjusted to, student access to media (console games, especially newer ones, will be demoed in class); however, you’ll be expected to play certain easily accessible (and usually free) games as homework, just like any reading or screening assignment (though sometimes the instructor will provide cheats or strategy guides).

READ ME(be sure to get the correct edition):
1. Selected Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
2. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (Lewis Carroll)
3. Dragons of Autumn Twilight (Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman)
4. A course reader, including secondary material, and short stories/poems by William Gibson, Jorge Luis Borges, and Geoffrey Chaucer.

SCREEN ME:
1. The Matrix (dir. Wachowski Bros.), with selected shorts from The Animatrix and demos from Enter the Matrix and The Matrix Online
2. Clue (dir. Jonathan Lynn)

PLAY ME:
1. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonlance 1, Dragons of Despair (Hickman)
2. Adventure (Crowther/Woods)
3. Alice (McGee)
4. Chrono Trigger (Square-Enix)
5. Cluedo (aka Clue) (Waddington’s/Parker Brothers)
6. Fable (Molyneux)
7. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar)
8. Myst (Robyn and Rand Miller)