Workshop: Dialogue and Agency in Video Games

Interactive dialogue is a key video game mechanic for constructing characters, building game worlds and giving the player a sense of agency. How can we use inspiration from real life conversation to improve player experiences in games?

In this workshop, we’ll share our research on where dialogue goes wrong in games, and reveal some secrets from linguistics about how to fix these issues. We’ll also put our own ideas to the test! We’ve created a game prototype with our own unique mechanics, which we’ve tested with project partners GoTestify: we’ll share some playtesting data and what we’ve learned.

Special Guest Talk

Matt Gibbs (writer, narrative designer, and editor at Talespinners) will talk about ‘Agency and Effective Choices in Games’.

Are you ...

• A game dev looking for new dialogue mechanics?
• A writer looking for tips to make your dialogue more engaging?
• A games researcher looking for tools and resources to study games?

... then this workshop is for you!

Sign for a free ticket, and we’ll send you a link to join in online.

This is a Trope Informed workshop, led by Steph Rennick and Seán Roberts, with funding from the University of Stirling’s Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory. Steph is a philosopher and Lecturer in Interactive Media at the University of Stirling. Her research lies at the intersection of analytic philosophy, game studies, and popular culture, with a particular interest in the connection between tropes and the boundaries of possibility. Seán is a linguist at Cardiff University. He studies how linguistic structures adapt to the constraints and affordances of cognition and conversation. Together, Steph and Sean are Trope Informed, helping game makers understand tropes in games to make more informed decisions. Get in touch to find out how we can help you!

Matt Gibbs has worked on BAFTA award winning and nominated games, and is a Partner at Talespinners, a cooperative providing writing, narrative design, and consultancy for games. Alongside his games work, he is part of Improper Books, a studio focused on creator-owned stories that have a touch of the fairy tale or otherworldly about them. Based in Puppet Place, Bristol, he has collaborated with other residents, puppeteers, and animators on a variety of interactive experiences, films, and theatre pieces.