Submissions are now closed. We are now in the process of selecting talks. If you submitted a proposal for NarraScope, we will contact you by Feb 3rd with an acceptance or rejection.
Push the boundaries of discussion about narrative games by presenting a talk or leading a discussion at NarraScope 2023! Speak to a diverse audience and share your knowledge and expertise to help bring the genre to even higher levels.
We’re looking for talks that explore the field in detail. Our net is being cast wide to get as many perspectives as possible, in order to serve up a conference rich with information for gamers, writers, academics, and aficionados alike.
Speakers and panelists will receive a complimentary membership in NarraScope 2023. We also offer a small honorarium; the amount depends on fundraising, but in the past has been around US$100.
Please plan to attend the event in person to present your talk. If this is not possible, or if you have specific needs, please contact us and we will work to accomodate you. We cannot cover travel or other expenses for speakers.
Dates
- January 20, 2023: Deadline for proposals.
- February 3, 2023: Notification of acceptance or rejection.
- March 3, 2023: Deadline for your confirmation of acceptance.
- June 9–11, 2023: NarraScope 2023.
Presentation categories
Individual Presentations
These talks should focus on everything from the very technical to comparative and informational. This is not a time to sell your game or self-promote. We want to hear how you made your game, what you learned, what games you’ve studied, and what knowledge or ideas that you have that can help push the genre forward.
Individual talks will have a 60-minute slot, which will include 5-10 minutes for Q&A.
Panels
Panels will consist of a group of 4-6 people discussing a central topic. This can be anything from a postmortem for a game to a group of experts in a field such as VR or Twine. If you propose a panel discussion, you must be willing to lead and moderate said discussion. We would strongly prefer that you suggest names for panelists, but this is not required. Include topics and potential questions that will be asked of panelists in your proposal.
Panel talks will have a 60-minute slot, which will include 5-10 minutes for Q&A.
Lightning Talks
Lightning Talks are brief explorations of a topic in great detail, or the sharing of specialized information. Want to talk about one particular piece of poetry, and why it changed the entire theme of a game? How about an overview of how quest items were used to further the plot?
Lightning talks will have a 10 minute slot. Q&A duration is to the presenter's preference.
Tips
- We want in-depth discussions about specific fields or styles of IF, narrative writing, and game design.
- Everybody at the conference will already know what interactive fiction is and why narrative games are important. What’s the next question?
- Specifics are always better than overviews.
- Talk about a problem you solved or a problem you didn’t solve.
- Tell us something that your players and fellow authors don’t know about your workflow. Show your work. Show your spreadsheet.
- Who hasn’t been heard? What have we missed?
- Find the sweet spot between “so obscure that I can’t make use of it” and “so well-known that I learned it in school.” Tell us something that makes us want to run off and start a new project just to try it out.
- Reveal a wonderful secret.
A springboard of other possible topics to think about:
‧ Histories of interactive fiction, adventure games, or lost subgenres ‧ Teaching narrative games ‧ Art contexts and narrative games ‧ Narrative gaming and computing subcultures (the demoscene, etc.) ‧ Identity, trauma, and other challenging topics in narrative games ‧ Design tricks lifted from other kinds of games ‧ Simulating worlds ‧ Strengths of new development systems/platforms ‧ Postmortems on particular games ‧ Readings/critical discussions ‧ Modeling conversations, characters, or environments ‧ Representation and appropriation of culture ‧ Interactive narrative outside of videogames: television, museum exhibits, alternate-reality fiction, interactive theater ‧ Puzzles: do we have a grand theory after forty-five years? ‧ Tools to manage narrative complexity ‧ Domain-specific languages of IF and narrative design ‧ AI tools for narrative games ‧ What different types of players want from narrative games