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International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling

ICIDS 2021: Interactive Storytelling pp 499–508Cite as

Toward Narrative Instruments

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 13138))

Abstract

Interactive narrative systems are often embedded in games: works of playable media that enable players to participate in or experience a story through game mechanics. But play practices directed toward the expressive creation of story seem to challenge a games-centric understanding of narrative play. Consequently, we propose that some interactive narrative systems can be better understood as a different form of playable media: narrative instruments, analogous to musical instruments in their provision of support for authorship-oriented forms of play.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Though the systems Wardrip-Fruin highlights here are textual, they are not narrative; therefore we depart from his term in attempting to characterize the class of instrumental playable systems that produce narrative structure as narrative, rather than textual, instruments.

  2. 2.

    As related to us by Cat Manning, a high-profile member of the Blaseball fan community who has also worked together with the Blaseball team on systemic and narrative design directions for the game.

  3. 3.

    In fact, there exists an entire academic conference—New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME)—dedicated to the development of experiential new musical instruments. Parrish’s New Interfaces for Textual Expression project [24] extends the NIME ethos to the development of textual instruments, much like those called for by Wardrip-Fruin in his own writing on the subject.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, USA

    Max Kreminski & Michael Mateas

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  1. Max Kreminski
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  2. Michael Mateas
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Correspondence to Max Kreminski .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Alex Mitchell

  2. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Mirjam Vosmeer

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Kreminski, M., Mateas, M. (2021). Toward Narrative Instruments. In: Mitchell, A., Vosmeer, M. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13138. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_50

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_50

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-92299-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-92300-6

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