Hello Samantha Taylor

please check the resources

Hi Nirmala, these are brilliant, thank you so much!

Hi Samantha

Check out the essay by Britta Nietzel in the Living Handbook of Narratology

http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/narrativity-computer-games

Also recent work by Marie-Laure Ryan may be helpful.

These are fantastic thank you Elana, I have added these in for research, and the books look great for expanding the search further again.  Thank you for this!

i think you can up vote my answer.

Sorry Nirmala I did not realise, I have done this now.

Dear Samantha,

Please check the following.

Regards

SM Najim

http://www.few.vu.nl/~vbr240/onderwijs/pim/Narrative%20in%20Games.pdf

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/99e5/1926e2062aa65c88b257c25c802abe368453.pdf

www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/.CREATE/local/story/mthesis_jakub.pdf

www.ncte.org/library/nctefiles/resources/journals/ej/1026.../ej1026exploring.pdf

www.digra.org/dl/db/05164.54179.pdf

Thank you Salah I will look into these!

I guess y need to check italo calvino's novel "if on a winter's night a traveler" and essay's wrote about it, the entire novel is a game of unfinished stories, cut in the climax, to irritate the reader/hero to look for the ending only to fall in another broken story. I worked on this novel in my master degree, but unfortunately  it was in Arabic, so I don't think it'd be beneficial for u

Have you looked at the work of Ian Bogost? His book Unit Operations was helpful in an independent study I did with a student on narrative in video games.

Thanks for both of these Asmaa and Ziba; I'm familiar with Italo Calvino (particularly his 1967 essay Cybernetics and Ghosts - was this one of the papers you used in conjunction with your work by any chance?), some of his essays are available in English translated from the original Italian so I will have a look for this work too. I think I may have strayed across Bogost previously but in game design rather than literature, I will check the lead out thank you!

Hello,

This might be interesting.

Games Telling stories?

-A brief note on games and narratives

by Jesper Juul

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220200714_Games_Telling_stories_-_A_brief_note_on_games_and_narratives

Article Games Telling stories? - A brief note on games and narratives

This might also be interesting. Please let me know if you cannot find full-text.

Game Design as Narrative Architecture

Henry Jenkins

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238654339_Game_Design_as_Narrative_Architecture

Article Game Design as Narrative Architecture

This might also be of interest.

Espen Aarseth (2012). A narrative theory of games

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254006015_A_narrative_theory_of_games

Article A narrative theory of games

Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2001. (A very good entry point is chapter six "From Immersion to Interactivity"

See also:

Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Eds. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan: Routledge, 2005.

Best,

Jörg

Dr. Amy Green at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, though she approaches it through a class she teaches on "visual storytelling". Part of the students' "required reading" is that they play through the entirety of Bioshock 3 and The Last of Us (she even successfully petitioned to have the university build a "video game lab" this year so that her students could have access to the "reading materials" if, like "The Last of Us", they were only available on console and not on Steam). She contributes regularly to the annual Far West Pop Culture Conference that happens here in Las Vegas every February (contact Dr. Felicia Campbell or google Far West Pop Culture Conference 2017 for more information or to submit an abstract for presentation) and is very open to sharing and expanding her research with students and other researchers alike. I hope this helps! She's been writing on video gaming with a special focus on narrative itself for a few years now. Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't get targeted during the high crest of that repugnant Gamergate horror show. How she avoided getting doxxed or swatted I don't know, but I have immense respect for her and she's a very driven, easy-to-talk-to individual. I suggest taking a look at both her work and some of the other papers and presentations from the FWPCC over the past few years and, if your research fits, submitting it and spending a weekend in Vegas yourself. It's a small, relaxed, and fun conference, and you'll get to have the opportunity to hear a lot of great folks discuss their research on topics ranging from the queering of Sherlock Holmes to creative writing panels inspired by punk rock music. Plus, weekend in Vegas. Again, hope this helps.

Some more:

Mukherjee, S., 2015. Video Games and Storytelling. Reading Games and Playing Books. 

Grodal, T., Stories for eye, ear, and muscles. In Wolf and Perron, ed., Videogame thoery reader.  

My (2011), Player Character Engagement in Computer Games. Games and Culture utilizes cognitive narrative theory, even it is not about narrative as such.

Thanks Petri, the last addition in particular will be very useful as I am trying to look at ways of describing the process of narrative development when there is no game narrative as such, but more a narrative process internal to the player based on game cues.

Thanks Jorg, I have been looking into Ryan and think her works may be a good starting point.

Michael thank you, an actual researcher to speak to would be great!  So would a Las Vegas weekend, I am sure it would be better weather than the UK!

I would also look into a few of the following games specifically in terms of your analysis. Obviously, Bioshock: Infinite and The Last of Us (since that's what Dr. Green uses as her required reading for her visual storytelling course). Also, The Binding of Isaac is a relatively simple game (quite graphic, downright crude at times) but provides an interesting backstory depending on the number of ways you beat the game and the variety of characters available, all thrown against a Catholic-nightmarescape in terms of the visual elements (and a lot of the gameplay elements as well). And this is a personal opinion and one other might argue with, but I found Final Fantasy 8 to be so damned in love with the "story" that it was telling that elements of gameplay etc. lacked the development necessary to make it a great game, especially following FF7. I found myself about 3/4s of the way through going "well, I just paid 50$ for a 2 1/2 hour soap opera shown through cutscenes with mediocre gameplay thrown in between." Binding of Isaac is especially interesting though, especially given the game's simplicity.

Bioshock I can definitely see the interest there, and I think the desire for a stronger storyline is evident from its successful digital re-release very recently in a boxed set style. Have you tried Final Fantasy XV? What are your thoughts on that one? I have heard mixed feelings, and have not bought in so far as a result. I think the re-telling of old, previously successful franchises really needs to be looked at carefully!