How we role: The collaborative role-playing poetics of the Secret Story Network

In 2018, a group of ten academics and industry professionals created ‘The Secret Story Network’. This practice-research initiative produced ten 60‐90-minute role-playing games conducted on the social media platform WhatsApp. In the process, we worked to identify and refine design strategies that incentivize engagement with the type of narrative collaboration that media scholars commonly call ‘collective storytelling’. Via the participatory action research methodology, this study evolved through cycles of prototyping, testing, feedback, reflection and modification. This article analyses our study in relation to the ‘Threefold Word Model’ for RPGs proposed by Kim. Based on the affordances of the WhatsApp interface, we suggest a modification of this conceptual frame, in line with scholars such as Edwards, Bøckman and Bowman that extends investigations into four theoretical lenses that we use to examine the stories in our study. These modes are (1) drama, (2) game, (3) simulation and (4) immersion. The observations made also suggest new avenues for ‘writing’ and creating interactive digital narratives

INDCOR White Paper 2: Interactive Narrative Design for Representing Complexity

This white paper was written by the members of the Work Group focusing on design practices of the COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR, WG1). It presents an overview of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) design for complexity representations through IDN workflows and methodologies, IDN authoring tools and applications. It provides definitions of the central elements of the IDN alongside its best practices, designs and methods. Finally, it describes complexity as a feature of IDN, with related examples. In summary, this white paper serves as an orienting map for the field of IDN design, understanding where we are in the contemporary panorama while charting the grounds of their promising futures.Comment: 11 pages, This whitepaper was produced by members of the COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR - https://indcor.eu

INDCOR white paper on the Design of Complexity IDNs

This white paper was written by the members of the Work Group focusing on design practices of the COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR, WG1). It presents an overview of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) design for complexity representations through IDN workflows and methodologies, IDN authoring tools and applications. It provides definitions of the central elements of the IDN alongside its best practices, designs and methods. Finally, it describes complexity as a feature of IDN, with related examples. In summary, this white paper serves as an orienting map for the field of IDN design, understanding where we are in the contemporary panorama while charting the grounds of their promising futures

Negotiated narratives - the Eleven Commandments

This presentation is part explanation and part analysis of my practice based PhD at St Mary's University, Twickenham. My research project will create an interactive film script set in contemporary Northern Ireland. The 'script' will be devised specifically with transmedia practices in mind and will be constructed with audience participation. This presentation aims to argue for the creation of a 'prototype' rather than what we usually understand to be a script. In it I describe the ways in which I build audience participation into the writing and devising process. I hope that this work will unearth a model for participative writing practice in transmedia projects, one that will allow the development of a complex narrative that can more effectively mirror the complicated political situation in Northern Ireland

Storyworld: the Bigger Picture, investigating the world of multi-platform/transmedia production and its affect on storytelling processes

My investigations into transmedia and multi-platform production practices reveal that writers for film and TV could soon need to become content creators (directors or producers or craftspeople in addition to being writers), blurring the distinctions between concept, creation, production and post-production. This article explores this phenomenon of multi-platform/transmedia production, mostly in the United Kingdom, and in particular its storytelling processes through a study of a small but successful company, Bellyfeel, based in Manchester, United Kingdom. Bellyfeel have given me complete access to their work and established an online environment where I can study their practice/writing. I will contextualize the creative practice of the company with the work of Henry Jenkins, and suggest that, in the contemporary marketplace, it may be necessary for the writer to be focused on the production process and the technological aspects of this process in order to understand how product is created and functions in this new environment

Bolton Storyworld - you make the story? Assessing a transmedia narrative/work in progress.

'Bolton Storyworld' is an online entertainment media environment that has been created and developed by students and tutors at the University of Bolton in association with Bellyfeel, a transmedia company based in Manchester. It is a development that is still in its initial trial stage and includes the narrative outputs of a diorama model of the story characters, a geo-locative website, a Facebook page, competitions, live student events, an online game and sequenced delivery via text and e-mail. This article will concentrate on an investigation of the narrative structures created to date by Bolton Storyworld and is the first in a series that the staff and students of the university will write together to consider issues raised by the project as it continues to develop

Design of complexity interactive digital narratives: Design/workflow/methodology – Best practice – Authoring tools

INDCOR – COST Action CA1823

INDCOR white paper on Complexity IDNs

This white paper was written by the members of the Work Group focusing on design practices of the COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR, WG1). It presents an overview of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) design for complexity representations through IDN workflows and methodologies, IDN authoring tools and applications. It provides definitions of the central elements of the IDN alongside its best practices, designs and methods. Finally, it describes complexity as a feature of IDN, with related examples. In summary, this white paper serves as an orienting map for the field of IDN design, understanding where we are in the contemporary panorama while charting the grounds of their promising futures