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A master's thesis from Aalborg University
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Masters Thesis: Environmental Storytelling in Storyworlds

Author

Term

4. term

Education

Publication year

2019

Submitted on

Pages

68

Abstract

This thesis investigates how the choice and design of environmental storytelling elements influence the creation of emergent narrative in a storyworld format. Drawing on narratology—especially embedded and emergent narrative—environmental storytelling, and the evolving notion of storyworlds, the author derives design requirements for an evaluative prototype. Two versions of a digital environment were built to embed the same underlying story through different types of environmental storytelling elements. The application was evaluated via content analysis of participant interviews, in which participants interpreted the environments and articulated their own storyworlds using five predefined categories. Findings indicate that environmental storytelling elements can effectively prompt audiences to infer and construct emergent narratives; however, the study could not validate how specific design choices shape these outcomes due to a small participant sample. The work offers an initial approach to seeding storyworlds with environmental storytelling and highlights the need for larger studies to assess the impact of particular design decisions.

Dette speciale undersøger, hvordan valg og design af miljøfortællende elementer påvirker skabelsen af emergente fortællinger i et storyworld-format. Med afsæt i narratologi—særligt indlejrede og emergente fortællinger—miljøfortælling og det endnu uafklarede begreb storyworlds udleder forfatteren designkrav til en evaluerbar prototype. Der blev udviklet to versioner af et digitalt miljø, som indlejrer den samme underliggende fortælling via forskellige typer miljøfortællende elementer. Applikationen blev evalueret gennem indholdsanalyse af deltagerinterviews, hvor deltagerne fortolkede miljøerne og formulerede deres egne storyworlds ud fra fem foruddefinerede kategorier. Resultaterne peger på, at miljøfortællende elementer effektivt kan få publikum til at udlede og konstruere emergente fortællinger; studiet kunne dog ikke bekræfte, hvordan specifikke designvalg påvirker disse resultater, fordi deltagergrundlaget var begrænset. Arbejdet præsenterer en første tilgang til at bruge miljøfortælling som afsæt for storyworlds og peger på behovet for større studier for at vurdere effekten af konkrete designbeslutninger.

[This apstract has been generated with the help of AI directly from the project full text]