“Storytelling in Video Games” is the nineteenth chapter of Volume 1 of Teaching the Game: a collection of syllabi for game design, development, and implementation. This peer-reviewed publication was invited in 2020 and published July 1, 2021.
- Winchell, A.E. “Storytelling in Video Games.” Ferdig, R.E., Baumgartner, E., & Gandolfi, E. (Eds.) (2021). Teaching the Game: A collection of syllabi for game design, development, and implementation (Vols. 1-2). Pittsburgh, PA: ETC Press.
Chapter 19: Storytelling in Video Games
Teaching the Game: a collection of syllabi for game sign, development, and implementation
The goal of this book was to collect interdisciplinary syllabi of courses that implement, utilize, and/or teach the development or analyses of games. Chapters include a catalog description, course purposes and objectives, context, pedagogy, assignments, assessment, an expanded course outline, and a set of best practices for instruction. Readers will be able to develop or adapt their own syllabi drawing on the expertise of international leaders in gaming.
This chapter will examine how stories are crafted to fit the new interactive media of video games, how these new stories resemble traditional stories from the literary canon, and how these unorthodox plots, characters, and games are used to create a new form of literature. Throughout the semester, students will play and analyze a course video game, Fable III, in order to give students a common game to discuss. Students do not need a background in video games to succeed.
