Mobilization of Knowledge and Narrative Improvisation in Storygames
Résumé
Storygames are communication devices specifically designed to spark collective improvisation in natural language, using different parts of a fictional diegesis : characters, objects, actions, places, relationships, issues... Often overshadowed by video games or confused with tabletop role-playing games, these recently developed games remain overlooked by most scholars, although they provide ideal observation conditions and new research avenues for narratologists and interactivity theorists. Since the publication of Once Upon a Time (1994), dozens of games have enriched the diversity of available narrative traditions in this field: fairy tales, horror B-movies (Polar Base), historical drama (Montségur 1244) or the Coen brothers’ universe (Fiasco). As a product, a storygame does not display any narrative, but provides rules and tools (dice, cards, blank forms) that can generate a continuously renewed narrative production. This is why the issue of how knowledge is mobilized during storygame sessions is crucial to the ethnographic study of the links between narration and interactivity. Collective encyclopedias – in Umberto Eco’s sense – allow the sharing and the development of a plot, on the basis of sparse diegetic information, in “rotating narrator” devices where interpretative cooperation failures often lead to in-game conflict.
Domaines
SociologieOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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