Paws & Affect
I think the best thing Mark Meadows' Pause & Effect accomplished for me was the explication of the structures and concepts that shape so much of the media we consume, but internalize almost without notice. It aids in understanding why a videogame's plot may seem "by-the-books" or a horror film may seem too predictable.
His exposition on Aristotle and Freytag's story triangles is valuable, because he doesn't just take them at face value to be the be-all and end-all of effective narrative structure. By understanding "the classics" we can also better understand what structures motivate us to push a story in a certain direction and, interestingly, how to breakaway from these structures. In essence, it's about getting a new perspective.
One quote that really stuck out to me was the one atop of page 60, where Doug Church discusses the difference between games (as a form of interactive narrative) that allow the "reader" to shape the narrative and ones that allow the reader to "figure out how to turn the prewritten pages". This is extremely relevant to me, because I'm thinking of ways in which to meld real and meaningful interactivity with our project. I want the player of our game to feel like their presence, choices, decisions, etc (basically their interactions) has effects on the universe (or multiverse?) of our narrative as a whole.
But I have to balance this with the reality of being able to produce such concepts, with my current knowledge and the time I have been alotted, when I put the game together in Multimedia Fusion. I guess one way of simplifying the above paragraph is by referring to steps of interactivity. We have observation, we have exploration, but do we have modification and change? I've got a great team though, I'm sure we can figure it out!
As far as Meadows' views on imagery, I'll just say I agree with him and then defer all further questions to this brilliant masterpiece: http://boingboing.net/features/morerock.html
His exposition on Aristotle and Freytag's story triangles is valuable, because he doesn't just take them at face value to be the be-all and end-all of effective narrative structure. By understanding "the classics" we can also better understand what structures motivate us to push a story in a certain direction and, interestingly, how to breakaway from these structures. In essence, it's about getting a new perspective.
One quote that really stuck out to me was the one atop of page 60, where Doug Church discusses the difference between games (as a form of interactive narrative) that allow the "reader" to shape the narrative and ones that allow the reader to "figure out how to turn the prewritten pages". This is extremely relevant to me, because I'm thinking of ways in which to meld real and meaningful interactivity with our project. I want the player of our game to feel like their presence, choices, decisions, etc (basically their interactions) has effects on the universe (or multiverse?) of our narrative as a whole.
But I have to balance this with the reality of being able to produce such concepts, with my current knowledge and the time I have been alotted, when I put the game together in Multimedia Fusion. I guess one way of simplifying the above paragraph is by referring to steps of interactivity. We have observation, we have exploration, but do we have modification and change? I've got a great team though, I'm sure we can figure it out!
As far as Meadows' views on imagery, I'll just say I agree with him and then defer all further questions to this brilliant masterpiece: http://boingboing.net/features/morerock.html
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