The Narrative Quality of Games and Play
Author
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2017
Submitted on
2017-06-02
Pages
154
Abstract
This thesis will describe a new framework for analysing and describing how games, narrative, and play work together. The framework, called the "Narrative Quality of Games"-framework, describes the relationship between a game and its narrative, the mechanics and context of the design, and highlights how the narrative is created through play by the relations between a game's ludic and non-ludic elements. A narrative is further divided into a game's rhetoric, aesthetic and afterstory---a result of emergence. The framework is defined to describe the contentious and often uncertain relationship between how a game is made by an author, and how a game is played, and what narratives both parties get out of that. With the framework, five games are analysed, and the framework thus far shows promise for analysing many various games, to highlight their narrative and discoursal content. Further work on using the framework for design is still in question, but potentially possible.
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