Overview

This course blends theory and practice in an exploration of digital narrative: how stories can be told with digital and new media technologies, and how narrative can be experienced in games and immersive environments. We will work critically and creatively with linear and nonlinear narratives in a range of media: writing, graphics, animation, games, multimedia, virtual worlds, and interactive media.

The overall theme of the course will focus on moving image narratives--both linear and non-linear--that explore ideas about storytelling, time, and memory. In particular, we will consider how interactivity changes narrative, and whether there are new kinds of digital narratives and aesthetics emerging, especially in games, and in what games might become. Students will make movies, games, websites, DVDs, and online installations that illuminate ideas about story, plot, character, time, and narration, comment on their creative work using the critical concepts they learn, and experiment with word processing, graphics, machinima capture, video editing, game design, and web design software programs.

All students will analyze their own responses to the games, films, readings, and other media we encounter in terms of the key concepts from the course in order to deepen their understanding of how meaning is made in digital narrative and interactive media, to enhance the production of their own creative projects, and to explore the nature and complexity of the role of digital media in our society and culture. Students in the Video Game Scoring Minor will focus on deepening their understanding of the subjective experiences of game play and narrative in a range of interactive media in order to be better able to score video games effectively and creatively.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1) Evaluate current theoretical and practical tendencies in the emerging field of Interactive Media.

2) Formulate a critical framework for analyzing traditional and new forms of narrative.

3) Develop narratives that employ the theoretical and critical concepts explored.

4) Apply new media tools and aesthetics to create digital narrative.

5) Analyze the subjectivity of a game, immersive, interactive, spectatorial, or narrative experience so that you are better able to compose music for that medium, and be better at communicating with the people who make the kind of media you will score.

6) Synthesize theory and practice in an interdisciplinary exploration of narrative and technology.

7) Connect academic studies and the changing world in which we live.

COURSE MATERIALS: Required Books, available at bookstore & online
The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich (LNM)
Game Design Workshop , Tracy Fullerton (GDW)
Recommended: Man, Play, and Games, Roger Callois