Albert Goes Narrative Contracting

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Newman Ken Grigg Robert
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

RPG’s (Role Playing Games) and improvisational theatre have some obvious similarities. Both require the participants to work together in real-time to construct dynamic narrative elements. Seeing communication in terms of ongoing narrative contracts is a well-accepted principle of improvisational theatre (Johnstone 1981). The recipient of an offered narrative element can accept the offer, block it, or make a counter-offer. This paper describes a methodology for studying subjects engaging in a controlled online role-playing ‘encounter’. The encounter is titled ‘Albert in Africa’ and the study draws on the previously described Fun Unification Model (Newman 2004). In this study, subjects’ individual responses were correlated with the number of acceptances, blocks and counter-offers they make during their encounter. Comparisons are then made with observations of the massively multiplayer game World of WarCraft. From this emerges a methodology for analyzing the complex interactions of RPG encounters.

 

Albert Goes Narrative Contracting

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Newman Ken Grigg Robert
2002 Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings

RPG’s (Role Playing Games) and improvisational theatre have some obvious similarities. Both require the participants to work together in real-time to construct dynamic narrative elements. Seeing communication in terms of ongoing narrative contracts is a well-accepted principle of improvisational theatre (Johnstone 1981). The recipient of an offered narrative element can accept the offer, block it, or make a counter-offer. This paper describes a methodology for studying subjects engaging in a controlled online role-playing ‘encounter’. The encounter is titled ‘Albert in Africa’ and the study draws on the previously described Fun Unification Model (Newman 2004). In this study, subjects’ individual responses were correlated with the number of acceptances, blocks and counter-offers they make during their encounter. Comparisons are then made with observations of the massively multiplayer game World of WarCraft. From this emerges a methodology for analyzing the complex interactions of RPG encounters

 

The Troubled Transition to Game Study Projects

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Newman Ken
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper reviews the experience of Students in HE level Game Courses making the transition from taught units to self–managed study projects – particularly the problem of choosing and refining a good study topic. This review draws on examples of 40+ student projects from 3 universities, and the experiences 6 supervisors in informal discussion with the author over a period of 4 years. The paper identifies common trends, mistakes and problems. Patterns emerge of students struggling with the multi-disciplinarity and newness of the field, the lack of authoritative canon, the difficulty of articulating a topic, and the tendancy of game students to stray into domains beyond their experience. From these common problems the paper proposes a checklist of steps to guide the topic selection process.

 

Cross-format analysis of the gaming experience in multi-player role-playing games

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Tychsen Anders Newman Ken Brolund Thea Hitchens Michael
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Forming one of the major genres of games, Role Playing Games (RPGs) have proven an extremely portable concept, and the games are situated across various cultural and format-related boundaries. The effect of porting RPGs between formats is however a subject of which very little is known. This paper presents results of an empirical study of multi-player RPGs, evaluating how the transference between formats affects the player experience; including the effect of including a human game master in computer-based RPGs. The tabletop format emerges as the consistently most enjoyable experience across a range of formats, even compared to a computer-based RPG directed by a human game master.