Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0106 - Introduction to Narrative Design: Story, Systems, and Meaning in Games

Narrative design is a rapidly growing and evolving discipline that shapes how we tell and experience stories through systems. This course gives students a strong foundation not only in the craft of creating interactive narratives, but also in interpreting them and identifying the values expressed through various media. Students will play a wide variety of games (both digital and analog) and become familiar with common frameworks for interactive storytelling while also gaining hands-on experience with narrative design tools like Twine and Ink. The course also examines the role that a narrative designer or game writer plays in the production of various games and equips students to develop design documents, dialogue scripts, character bios, and other related materials. Keywords:Narrative, design, games, interactive, story

Media and Tehnology Students should expect to spend 6-8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time Library Materials: Games: Dog Eat Dog (Liam Liwanag Burke, 2012), Immortality (Half Mermaid, 2022), Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (Intelligent Systems, 2004), 80 Days (Inkle, 2014), The Walking Dead (Telltale, 2012), Baldur's Gate 3 (Larian, 2023), Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo, 2020), 1000XRESIST (Sunset Visitor, 2024), Zork Anthology (Infocom, 1989)