The New Forms of Storytelling in Games

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I think some of the most interesting stuff that's happening in games is these new forms of storytelling. I was at a conference maybe 15 years ago, so just to put it in social context, but it was about science and drama and narrative. So when a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 comes out, it's not just the biggest game launch in history. It's the biggest kind of entertainment launch in History. And for the audience, because maybe not everyone is calibrated here, compare the size of the video game industry to theSize of the movie industry right now. In terms of overall scale as a, as a commercial industry, it's, it's immense.

Games play an important, and arguably increasing, role in human life. We play games on our computers and our phones, watch other people compete in games, and occasionally break out the cards or the Monopoly set. What is the origin of this human impulse, and what makes for a great game? Frank Lantz is both a working game designer and an academic who thinks about the nature of games and gaming. We discuss what games are, contrast the challenges of Go and Poker and other games, and investigate both the “dark energy” that games can sometimes induce and the ways they can help us become better people. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. Frank Lantz is a game designer and Director of the Game Center at New York University. He co-founded Area/Code games, and is the designer or co-designer of numerous popular games, including Drop7 and Universal Paperclips. He is also responsible for a number of large-scale real-world games. He has taught at New York University, Parsons School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts. Web site NYU web page Wikipedia Talk on Go, Poker, and the Sublime Talk on Logic and Emotions in Games Twitter Universal Paperclips QWOP See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.