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Aristotle would have admired BioShock while Shakespeare would have played Dragon Age

Published: 06 May 2010 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, I use two current successful video games to illustrate advances in narrative in game design and compare their style to that of two theatrical models from the past.

References

[1]
Juul, J. 2005. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press. 162.
[2]
Zimmerman, E. 2004. "Narrative, Interactivity, Play and Games: Four Naughty Concepts in Need of Discipline." In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Wardrip-Fruin, N. and Harrigan, P. Eds. MIT Press. 154--164.
[3]
Brockett, O. and Hildy, F. 2003. History of the Theatre. 9th ed. Allyn and Bacon. 161--375.
[4]
Wainscott, R. and Fletcher, K. 2010. Theatre: Collaborative Acts. 3rd ed. Allyn and Bacon. 290.
[5]
Mateas, Michael. 2004. "A Preliminary Poetics for Interactive Drama and Games." In First Person: NewMedia as Story, Performance, and Game. Wardrip-Fruin, N. and Harrigan, P. Eds. MIT Press. 19--33.
[6]
Aristotle. 2010. Poetics. Butcher, S. H. Trans. The Internet Classics Archive. 1994--2009. 31 Mar. 2010. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.mb.txt
[7]
Murray, Janet. 2004. "From Game-Story to Cyberdrama." First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Wardrip-Fruin, N. and Harrigan, P. Eds. MIT Press. 2--11.
[8]
Knight, Jonathan. 2010. Interview by Jamin Brophy-Warren. Speakeasy. The Wall Street Journal. 8 Feb. 2010. 31 Mar. 2010. http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/02/08/dantes-inferno-do-classic-poems-make-great-videogames/

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  1. Aristotle would have admired BioShock while Shakespeare would have played Dragon Age

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    Futureplay '10: Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology
    May 2010
    282 pages
    ISBN:9781450302357
    DOI:10.1145/1920778
    • Conference Chairs:
    • Bill Kapralos,
    • Andrew Hogue,
    • Simon Xu
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 06 May 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. BioShock
    2. Dragon Age
    3. aristotle
    4. catharsis
    5. empathy
    6. immersion
    7. narrative
    8. performance studies
    9. poetics
    10. shakespeare
    11. theatre
    12. video game design

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    Futureplay '10
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    Futureplay '10: Futureplay '10 @ GDC Canada
    May 6 - 7, 2010
    British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

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