Explore how games convey and create story through game mechanics and procedure, and empower participants to use such techniques in their own design.

Class Description

Games (and similar interactive experiences) are a unique storytelling medium in that they can
a) leverage process and embodiment to allow players to experience stories for themselves;
b) permit reciprocal narrative exchange, where players can add to existing stories or create wholly new ones.
In this session, we'll play some weird games, discuss how narratives function within games devise & critique ideas for interactive storytelling experiences.

Featured Topics

We'll start by playing various games in small groups, then come together to deconstruct and discuss them. Following that, we'll explore some theoretical ideas of how narrative is created in games, and how to use those techniques. Finally, we'll have design exercises in groups, which we'll playtest and critique as a large group. NOTE: our focus will be analogue games, but we'll certainly explore digital games as well.

Instructor Bio

Sharang Biswas is an award-winning game designer, writer, and artist based in New York City. He has taught and lectured about game design for institutions such as NYU, Games for Change and the Museum of the Moving Image, and at conferences such as IndieCade and the Boston Festival of Indie Games. He has performed live storytelling games at galleries, museums, and theatres throughout New York, and has published fiction, interactive stories and essays on games with Kill Screen, ZAM, Sub Q, and recently, the tabletop RPG HYPERLANES. His latest board game, Mad Science Foundation, was published by Cryptozoic Entertainment in 2016, while his tabletop RPG Feast, won the Dark Horse Award at Indiecade 2017.

Sharang holds a Masters from ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) at NYU-Tisch, and both a Bachelors of Engineering from Dartmouth. He is currently an experience designer with The Medici Group, a global consulting firm focussing on innovation and diversity.