Videogames and Storytelling (NEW)
We all love stories, but stories have their own rules, structures and devices.
Welcome to Storytelling and Videogames, a course that not only will explain how a story works, but also will help students to analyze and dissect fiction from all over the media.
To understand how to create stories, we’ll see and, yes, also play, lots of stories and different narratives. Starting with literature and ending with recent examples of videogames, we’ll travel through the story of storytelling. Once we start understanding how a story works with its structure, devices and narrative it’s time for us to start creating stories of our own.
Storytelling has evolved at the speed of light, and, as we say in Spanish, “literature walked so cinema could run”. Focusing on how words were the first way of telling stories, we’ll jump to how images and sound build on narrative to end up analyzing how playing adds a new layer on telling and making us experience the story.
There are two main goals on this course.
First, be ready to be changed and see fiction as you’ve never seen it before. Through projection and discussion of examples, you’ll see how films and TV shows tell us stories and make their narrative as effective and surprising as possible. Also, to see and experience videogames with critical thinking, understanding tricks used in game design and narrative.
Second, using the projections and discussions, create your own original ideas and plots. We will use different creative exercises to warm up until you can start working on your first script drafts.
Even though the course includes videogames in its title, students with no experience in videogames are welcome to enroll. The examples and videogames included in the course are not the usual Fortnite, Call of Duty or FIFA, but games that excel in storytelling and narrative by breaking the conceptions of what we think is a videogame.
| Week | Contents | Teaching/learning activities |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
What is, exactly, storytelling?
|
Lectures. Fiction projections, analysis and debates Writing exercises: Plot and history. |
| 2 |
Storytelling and media
|
Lectures. Fiction projections, analysis and debates. Writing exercises: script and characters. Game narrative and theory. |
| 3 |
Storytelling and videogames
|
Lectures. Videogame study through gameplay. Loglines and videogame ideas. |
From Monday to Friday.
From 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The course will be evaluated through three main elements:
1. Weekly essays (60%)
a. Essay 1 (20%): Week 1 mini project.
b. Essay 2 (20%): Week 2 mini project.
c. Essay 3 (20%): Week 3 mini project.
Every mini project will summarize the contents for every week.
2. Final Project (30%)
The final project will be the elaboration of an idea and genesis of an original fiction.
3. Class participation (10%)
Measured through participation and gamification in the sessions.
Pau Lluis Gumiel is a substitute teacher in the Department of Audiovisuals and advertising. He obtained his PhD at UAB, focusing on how information and entertainment merge and intertwine. As a researcher, he was a member of GRISS (Grup de Recerca en Imatge, So I Síntesi).
From 2019, he has been a professor of different courses, focusing on Storytelling, narrative and videogames. Right now, he is focused on different research fields such as Ludo-narrative, videogames genre, game theory, disruptive narratives, popular culture and the spectacularization of information.
Email: pau.lluis@uab.cat
Department of Audiovisual and Advertising.
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How to write a video game story - Polygon. (2019). https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/1/10/18165611/how-to-write-a-video-game-story-narrative-building-tips.