Workshop Game and Interactive Narrative

Course goals

• Translate knowledge and skills into the design of an interactive medium.
• Analyze and evaluate meaning-making strategies in existing serious games and adapt the identified patterns to inform their own design work.
• Identify and compare the possibilities of accessible game design tools (like e.g. NanDeck, virtualtabletop.io, Twine or Bitsy).
• Use one of these tools on a sufficient level to produce a prototype of a game or interactive narrative.
• Work and communicate effectively within teams and plan collaborative workflows design.

Content

The Workshop Games/Interactive Narrative offers you the opportunity to use your research skills and media studies knowledge for the development of an interactive audiovisual narrative. Students gain insights into flexible digital tools for game prototyping, and practice skills that are important in the creation of games and interactive storytelling, research, interactive concept development, narrative design, designing game mechanics, user testing, and pitching.
 
Students are free to choose a topic for their project. They can choose from a variety of interactive media and game genres as a reference point, from board games and interactive fiction to a Bandersnatch-style interactive video, a physical environment such as an Escape Room or a simple digital game. Students receive technical introductions as well as guidance in identifying key technical features for their projects, which they then learn to implement through self-study. Both the proposal and the final prototype are created in small teams, and assessment is done by project group rather than by student.

This workshop focuses on professional practice at the basic level. Students experience project-based teamwork, designing workflows and delegating tasks, project planning/management, and productively evaluating their own work and that of others. Participants also learn how to creatively use, reuse and recombine the functionalities of simple digital design tools. They also learn how to design a game or interactive digital narrative (IDN) prototype that effectively uses existing skills, knowledge and ideas present in the group.

Additional information

This course has priority rules and a waiting list. Your enrolment is guaranteed if you
- are a student in the BA Liberal Arts and Sciences or Taal- en Cultuurstudies and this course is part of your specialisation (kernpakket)
- are enrolled in the Games & Play in a changing Society minor 
In all other situations, you will be placed on a waiting list if you enrol in this course. For any remaining slots in the course, lots are drawn among the students on the waiting list.

The Workshop is an intensive course with some technical and design-oriented instructions as well as group work (e.g. brainstorming, preparation, writing, component and procedural design) outside the formal seminar times.
Therefore, we ask you to block timeslots A and D for this course. The teams for the productions are formed during the first seminar, in consultation with the participating students.