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Phantom Nostalgia: The Grass Used to Be Greener, We Promise.
With the release of Stranger Things Season 5’s trailer this week, my social media algorithms have been inundated with speculation and conversation by the show’s fandom. The idea of a Stranger Things stan account as always been interesting to me, especially when considering the tone (and reception) of the first season; an atmospheric sci fi…
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‘The Most Dear and the Future’ is AOTY.
ear’s music has changed the game so successfully I have trouble telling you what game they were playing.
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What are the Backrooms for?
Liminal Spaces have been all over the internet for years. What purpose do they serve?
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Theory Fodder: Narrative and Marketing.
A few years ago, I used this website for a piece of coursework on narrative through the videogame format, and now I’m resurrecting the blog for more general use. That said, in rereading my earlier posts, I had one more thought on the subject of narrative in gaming that I wanted to explore: using enigmatic…
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Additional Content: Self Made Story
The three previous posts on this blog were originally designed to represent a cohesive discussion of the different ways developers can use videogames to convey a story to the audience, however due to some extra time I have decided to add at least one side point to discuss the relationship between narrative and play. This…
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Theme Through Non-Linearity
Player involvement is the key difference between videogames and all other artistic mediums. Previously, this blog has gone over how this affects the audience experience in a fairly surface level way, but this post will go over how the theme of a game can be uniquely expressed through the medium, especially when games lack linearity…
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Character Through Player Choice
In the previous post, I outlined how videogames can use the setting to convey a narrative, but it is also important to note the importance that player choice can have in a story. Some games are built around this idea, such as the work of Telltale Games (most famously their Walking Dead series), while some…
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Storytelling Through Level Design
When discussing narrative opportunities provided by the videogame format, perhaps the clearest example is the use of environmental storytelling. This is where the level design is used for exposition, instead of dialogue and character action telling the story. Many games do this mostly for the sake of worldbuilding, and still tell their stories through character…
Heryland 