Скачать или смотреть Storytelling & Wargame Design with Maurice Suckling

Description
Storytelling and wargame design are activities that, on the surface, are considerably far apart. This talk explores ways in which they intersect. It looks to move beyond a broad perspective that all games are stories, and to sketch a useful framework for discussion drawn in part from the work of Marco Arnaudo.

This talk suggests that storytelling may help to inform the work of wargame designers. Both need to consider consistency and control of tone and theme. Both need to consider how to frame the scope and opening of the experiences they shape for their audience. Both may benefit from working with a broad structure of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Both would benefit from understanding the importance of delivering audience engaging reversals and revelations.

The talk also suggests that wargame design may help to inform storytelling. Both can leverage meaningful experience for their audience through emergent storytelling systems. Both benefit from the centrality of conflict and the uncertainties of its resolution. Both benefit from an understanding of when, where and how to deliver meaningful agency to audiences within the affordances of their relative mediums.

This is principally a theoretical discussion, but examples touched on include Diplomacy, Washington’s War, Napoleon’s Triumph, The Grizzled, Legion of Honor, Pandemic: Fall of Rome, Undaunted: Normandy, and Lincoln.

Bio
Maurice’s first game was Driver, in 1999. Since then he’s worked on over 50 published video games, including Killing Floor 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Mafia III, Civilization VI, and the Wii Fit series. He’s worked as a producer, a designer, and a voice director, but most often as a writer. Between 2013 and 2015 he was Narrative Director at 2K Australia. He is also a published board game designer. His games include wargames such as Freeman’s Farm: 1777, and Chancellorsville: 1863. Outside of games he works in TV and fiction, co-writing Alphablocks for BBC TV, and publishing a collection of short stories, Photocopies of Heaven. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, England, and a Master’s degree in Global History from Birmingham University, England.

He is currently Professor of Practice at RPI in Upstate NY, where he leads the writing concentration program, and teaches historical simulations and board games as storytelling systems. His research interests are storytelling in games, board and card games as storytelling systems, history in games, and history of games.

http://mauricesuckling.com/site/