Environmental Narrative - Online Lecture

During my travels across the internet I found a lecture online which was actually, shock horror, relevant to my honours project. It focused specifically on narrative environments for games and is the first of it's kind I've managed to come across. Every other source I've found has either been more relevant to films or more inclined towards narrative in general, rather than environment-specific.

The lecture was presented at the GDC 2010 conference from two speakers, Harvey Smith - Game Director at Arkane Studios and Matthias Worch - Senior Level Designer at Visceral Games

Details can be found here http://www.worch.com/2010/03/11/gdc-2010/
and although I'm, going to go into detail about their lecture and apply their knowledge to my own research, the slides and speakers notes can be found directly here http://www.worch.com/files/gdc/What_Happened_Here_Web_Notes.pdf


The lecture examines game environments as a narrative device with focus on player interpreting/pulling information, in opposition to traditional fictional exposition.

The session is divided into five sections;

• 1. Game Environments- Lays the foundation and looks at what a game environment actually is and what it represents.
• 2. Environmental Storytelling - Define it, and looks at examples
• 3. Practical Techniques - 
• 4. Systemic Environmental Storytelling - The two main forms of environmental storytelling, designer-authored and systemic. Presenting techniques and ideas.
• 5. Conclusion

In following blog posts I'll be covering these chronologically and relating them to my own research where I can.