We've outlined the schedule for NarraScope, but we haven't said much about what will be on the program.
Time to leak some more exciting rumors! Let me dig into our confirmed program list...
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Ian Thomas (Talespinners) on "Making Horror: Hacking the Brain In Games". Getting into the player's head and stirring the bits. Techniques from videogames, immersive theater, and the LARP world.
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Dietrich Squinkifer with "Queer Stories in Videogames: A Performance". Stories from Squinky's life, with audience interaction.
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Rebecca Slitt (Choice Of Games) on "Consent and Continuity: Writing Interactive Romance". Agency in interactive narrative, agency in the romance genre.
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Chris Martens, Brian Magerko, and others: "Narrative Intelligence in Interactive Storytelling". Character AI, drama management, natural language processing, and other modern tools for storytelling.
I also want to talk about our Expo Room. Plenty of game conventions have a show floor, and it tends to be the biggest, blinkiest, flashiest attraction of the weekend. That's not what NarraScope is about. We want to build a home for conversations about interactive fiction and narrative games.
But we don't want to be entirely academic and theoretical, either. We want to talk about the games we're creating, and to play the games we're talking about.
So we've designated one room as the "Expo Room". It will be a classroom, not a giant conference event space. And you won't have to reserve a table for the entire weekend. You can sit down, demo whatever you want for a couple of hours, and then head off to the next NarraScope talk. Bring your own laptop and we'll have some kind of signup sheet for time slots.
By the same token, every time you poke your head into the Expo Room, there will be new games to take a look at!
We hope this will be a low-stress way to let people try each other's game ideas, while still allowing everybody to go to talks and panels.