Zimmerman's 'Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games

Eric's structural analysis of narrative and games is very useful:

http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/ludican-do

key writing on interactive narrative design

Ernest Adams: 'Interactive Narratives Revisited'

http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/Interactive_Narratives_Revisit/body_interactive_narratives_revisit.htm

Henry Jenkins: 'Game Design as Narrative Architecture'

http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html

Henry Jenkins: 'Transmedia Storytelling'

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/13052/

Marie Laure Ryan 'On Defining Narrative Media'

http://www.imageandnarrative.be/mediumtheory/marielaureryan.htm

Ryan: 'Beyond Myth & Metaphor'

http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/ryan/

O'Flynn: 'Memento as a Model for Interactive Narratives'

http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/filmreview.php?id=122&issue=4

http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/filmreview.php?id=122&issue=4

games as art

also, if you haven't played any of the games below, they're worth a few minutes for thinking about

games as art:

Jason Rohrer

Passage: http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/

Rod Humble:

Marriage: http://rodvik.com/rodgames/marriage.html

Stars over Half Moon Bay: http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/SOHMB.html

Amanita:

Samarost: http://amanita-design.net/samorost-1/

http://amanita-design.net/samorost-2/

www.machinarium.com

Jeneva Chen:

Cloud: http://www.jenovachen.com/flowingames/cloud.htm

must read essays

Vanevar Bush: 'As we may think' 1945

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush

Lev Manovich: 'Database as a Symbolic Form' 1998

http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/warner/english197/Schedule_files/Manovich/Database_as_symbolic_form.htm

Lev Manovich: Software Takes Command. 2008 Downloadable book under CC.

http://www.manovich.net/

Manovich's Soft Cinema:

http://softcinema.net/?reload

Review of Soft Cinema: 2005

http://www.imageandnarrative.be/surrealism/manovich.htm

Scott McCloud

Key theoretical approach to comics and to interactive comics online - very useful for thinking about narrative juxtaposition and the imaginative gap:

http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/index.html

archetypes, patterns, game design

'A Practical Guide to the Hero's Journey' - useful summary of Joseph Campbell's theory by Bob Bates

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050617/bates_01.shtml

'What every game designer needs to know about story' - useful overview of McKee's Story by John Sutherland

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050727/sutherland_01.shtml

Summary of Ernest Adams' 'A New Vision of Interactive Stories' - counter to Aristotle, Campbell, & McKee in the context of game design

http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2006/03/gdc_a_new_visio.html

digital interactive narrative design

Colleen De Courcey on digital creativity

Gamasutra article on 'how to prototype a game in under seven days'

Social storytelling in current digital media:

http://www.slideshare.net/andyangelos/social-storytelling

genre as contract

Never underestimate the power of genre expectations!

Henry Jenkins on an old idea:

http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/05/genre_theory_and_implicit_cont.html

Genre criticism overview:

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/Shariyar-51127-Genre-Criticism-as-Education-ppt-powerpoint/

Genre as a reusable pattern:

http://www.webwritingthatworks.com/CPATTERNGenres.htm

roots of narrative

The roots of Western narrative form begin here:

Aristotle's poetics:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/resources/poetics/poettran.htm

Aristotle's six principles of drama:

http://www.agamemnon.com/aristotle.html

Fryetag's triangle - a structural map of plot building on Aristotle:

http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/freytag.html

Robert McKee updates Aristotle for the screen:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/20/031020fa_fact

The oral epic as encyclopedia - ancient models of database organization:

http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/2i/8_foley.pdf

Northrop Frye's theory of archetypes is still relevant

Good overview of basics of fiction:

http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/tools.html

Northrop Frye Anatomy of Criticism