Schedule

See the schedule in grid form.

All times are shown in US Eastern time.

Friday (June 9, 2023) – online workshops

  • 10:00–11:55 (US Eastern)
    • Beginning with ink: knots, stitches, diverts, conditions and choices – Ian Greener
      (Online)
      This two hour workshop introduces the ink scripting language, introducing participants to enough of its features and commands to make a simple game. It will be based around short introductory talks about how ink works, followed by two versions of a simple branching game to illustrate how a simple game might be written and developed. No previous experience with Ink needed. (Enrollment limit: 40)
  • 12:00–13:55 (US Eastern)
    • Branching Stories: Twisting Little Passages with Twine – Katryna Starks
      (Online)
      This two hour workshop will cover the fundamentals of non-linear narrative and how that can be implemented in Twine through live exercises. Players will adapt a story into a fully interactive Twine game. No previous experience with Twine needed. (Enrollment limit: 30)
  • 14:00–15:55 (US Eastern)
    • Inform and the Writing Process – Brendan Desilets
      (Online)
      This two-hour workshop explores Inform and its application to the Writing Process. This session will explore advantages of the latest Inform version and issues involving bots like ChatGPT. No previous experience with Inform needed. (Enrollment limit: 25)
  • 14:00–18:00 (US Eastern)
    • Something Somewhere Some of the Time: A Live Collaborative Twine Jam – Damon L. Wakes
      (Online)
      This four-hour workshop will give participants the opportunity to contribute to a collaborative branching narrative following a laundrette owner named Michelle as she navigates the multiverse (with any similarities to the film you’re thinking of being entirely coincidental). Stay for as much or as little as you’d like, whether you use the whole four hours to produce a substantial branching story or just duck in to write a little snippet. Anything submitted will be integrated into the collaborative narrative (if appropriate and practical). A basic level of familiarity with Twine is advisable! If you’ve never used the software before then Katryna Starks’ preceding workshop should get you up to speed, or have a look at my tutorials. (No enrollment limit)
      (Intro slides, play collaboration)

Friday (June 9, 2023) – in-person workshops

(Early badge pick-up will be available Friday from 3pm to 6pm.)

  • 16:00–17:30 (US Eastern)
    • Collaborative Curation of IF Teaching Resources: Introducing the EdCom-IFWiki Project – Judith Pintar
      (Ballroom)
      This session invites IF educators to join in discussing and workshopping the opportunity that the IFWiki presents for the collaborative curation of resources for teachers of IF. After a brief presentation participants will break out into ideation groups to discuss the kinds of resources teachers need most (e.g. lesson plans, syllabi, homework assignments, game reviews, lists of games appropriate for particular age groups or course topics) and how these should be indexed and organized. This Educators’ Town Hall workshop is IF teacher-focused (at any educational level), but it is open to all. (No enrollment limit)
    • Introduction to Tracery: Make an Art Bot! – Joey Jones
      (Lower Lounge)
      Tracery is a tool for writing generative grammars. It’s a great way to get started procedurally generating text and images. It can be used in games or to make social media bots. Everything from generated poetry, jokes, writing prompts, or tiny stories. Whatever you want to create with Tracery, this workshop will get you started on the basics. (Enrollment limit: 30)
    • Building Approachable, Actionable Games to Tackle Ecological Issues – Beatrice Maggipinto
      (Room 548)
      Starting with an analysis of narrative-based games like the Horizon series, Death Stranding and Abzu, this workshop invites attendees to brainstorm and maybe even game jam concepts related to ecopsychology, an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of ecology and psychology that aims at giving people that sense of reconnection with the environment for betterment of mental health and ecological practices. Games are a great way to make daunting topics feel approachable and to demonstrate the interconnectedness of our world without players feeling talked-down to or disempowered by problems feeling too hard to solve. The aim of this workshop is to bring together an interdisciplinary and diverse community of storytellers to reflect on how to infuse our practices with these important topics. (Enrollment limit: 20)
  • 17:30–19:00 (US Eastern)
    • Shop Talk (IF Educators Talking About Teaching IF) – Chris Klimas, Judith Pintar
      (Ballroom)
      This session will focus on classroom experiences, practices, and techniques for teaching Interactive Fiction in various modalities. Educators in the audience will be welcome to join the conversation. Breakout groups will identify areas of challenge and change (i.e. grading group work, ChatGPT), and share back their topics with the larger group for wider discussion. This session is IF-teacher-focused (at any educational level) but it is open to all. (No enrollment limit)
    • Crafting Interactive Stories With ChoiceScript – Joey Jones
      (Lower Lounge)
      ChoiceScript is an easy to learn language for making choice-based games. It really shines in making longer experiences, with different player traits and relationships being tracked and influencing the plot. In this workshop, we’ll learn how to make a game in ChoiceScript, as well as covering a number of ways of structuring interactive stories so you can have plenty of choices without combinatorial explosion. (Enrollment limit: 30)
    • From Spreadsheet to Playable (High-Tension) Larp in 90 Minutes – Avonelle Wing
      (Room 548)
      One well-known style of live action role playing game (larp) is the chamber larp (called different things in different regions, depending on the school of larp you came in through.) Often these games are designed to be played at conventions or other gatherings; players anticipate playing a complete narrative arc over the course of 4-8 hours. Some designers revel in creating densely written backstories that resemble novellas, but that model creates a sense that in order to design a chamber larp, you need untold hours available to toil over the writing. In this workshop, we’re going to deconstruct that impression by taking the relationship design concepts behind this style of game and streamlining the writing. At the end of 90 minutes, we will have a playable game full of dramatic tension. Will it be perfect? Absolutely not. But if we select compelling conflicts and build toothsome alliances, it will absolutely entertain a crowd for 4 to 8 hours. We’ll also talk about ways to build transformational elements into the narrative design, so it won’t just be a game - it’ll be activism wrapped in a game. (Enrollment limit: 50)

Saturday (June 10, 2023)

  • 9:00–9:45 (US Eastern)
  • 9:45–10:00 (US Eastern)
  • 10:00–11:00 (US Eastern)
  • 11:00–11:30 (US Eastern)
  • 11:30–12:30 (US Eastern)
    • Narrative Meets Multiplayer: Creating a Social Narrative Experience – Yoyu Li
      (Ballroom: video)
      For the game Whispers in the West, we embarked on a journey that few have taken: an online co-op point-and-click game. We’ll discuss our custom multiplayer engine and the challenges we faced: nonlinear multiplayer narrative, meaningful social experiences, and multiplayer testing.
      (Video)
    • Trust, Lust, and UST: Writing Effective Romance in Games – Amanda Gardner
      (Lower Lounge)
      The Deep End Games’s Narrative Director (and secret romance author) Amanda Gardner explains her individual method of how to bring the heat into games. We’ll go into detail about tackling relationships in the recently-released game, Romancelvania, and the tenets of just what makes the audience lean in and swoon for your characters. We’ll also deconstruct some of pop culture’s most iconic pairings to understand what elements work, and what doesn’t. Ultimately, it’s a balance of trust, lust, and the all important UST.
      (Video)
    • T. Tanzi and Last Match: Immersive v. Interactive Theatre – John M. Withers IV
      (Room 548, 11:30–11:45 (US Eastern))
      Trafford Tanzi (1983) and The Last Match: A Pro Wrestling Rock Musical (2022) are both Immersive musicals about wrestling. By comparing them to each other, and to the experience of live wrestling shows, we will examine the distinction between Immersion and Interactive Theatre.
      (Video)
    • Civil Disobedience in Games – Luis Garcia
      (Room 548: video, 11:45–12:00 (US Eastern))
      Many video games let players bend rules and break laws. Many treat subversive acts as crimes that the player can commit for selfish gains; but a few present them as acts of protest or civil disobedience. I argue that this latter representation is an effective means for inviting players to explore ethical dilemmas and to empathize with the disadvantaged.
      (Slides, transcript)
    • You Should Be Larping More (If You Want To Exercise Your Interactive Narrative Muscles) – Ben Books Schwartz
      (Room 548, 12:00–12:15 (US Eastern))
      I am here to encourage narrative designers to larp more. Play larps! Write larps! Run larps! Big larps, small larps, larps in your living room, all of them. I’ll talk about specific larp skillsets: treating players as collaborators, learning to work with other artistic fields, thinking about narratives that can flex fluidly as players make choices.
      (Video)
    • Choices of the Oppressed: Writing Choice-Based Fiction Using Theatre of the Oppressed Methods to Enable Muslim Minorites and Challenge Majority Assumptions – Javeria Kausar
      (Room 548: video, 12:15–12:30 (US Eastern))
      Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) is an interactive form which enables spectators to replace a play’s oppressed protagonist and try strategies to overcome oppression. This becomes a rehearsal that inspires real-life action. Choice-based fiction can incorporate related qualities. Of course stark differences between TO and choice-based fiction exist. But I believe that taking TO as a loose framework for choice-based fiction can be a helpful starting point.
      (Video)
  • 12:30–13:30 (US Eastern)
  • 13:30–14:30 (US Eastern)
    • When Theater Is A Game – David Kuelz
      (Ballroom)
      What would Sleep No More look like if it existed alongside augmented reality mechanics like those in Pokémon Go? How could musicals like Wicked incorporate player choice and agency? We’ll discuss the advantages and pitfalls of combining live theater with game mechanics, as well as design, storytelling, and production methodologies that yielded success.
      (Video, slides)
    • The Little Engine That Could: The History of the Adventure Game Studio Engine, Games, and Community – Edmundo Ruiz Ghanem
      (Lower Lounge)
      Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is one of the most popular point-and-click adventure game engines. Originally released to the public in 1997, it has a long history of updates, community, creators, and games. The engine has democratized the creation of adventure games. But nobody outside the community knows its history. How many of these games were not merely created by individuals working solo, but by a community who helped each other along the way?
      (Video)
    • Cataloging Narrative Games to Expand the Bibliographic Universe – Colin Post
      (Room 548, 13:30–13:45 (US Eastern))
      Last year I detailed the efforts and challenges involved in collecting digitally-distributed narrative games at an academic library. Now, having acquired approximately 25 narrative games for the library collection, I have been working with librarians to promote discovery and access of these works. I’ll share some examples of the catalog records created, discuss significant decisions we made in how to describe the titles, and consider the implications for more widespread cataloging of narrative games.
      (Video, slides, followup sessions)
    • Spontaneously Inspired: How Dadaism May Energize Narrative Design – Alejandro Ruiz del Sol
      (Room 548: video, 13:45–14:00 (US Eastern))
      The art movement Dadaism challenged the relationship between audience/art. Let’s compare that challenge to the relationship between designer/player in narrative design. How can narrative design be inspired by the subversive art of Dada?
      (Video, slides)
    • “You”: Addressing the Reader-Player-Character in Twentieth-Century Texts – Pamela Weidman
      (Room 548, 14:00–14:15 (US Eastern))
      One hallmark of IF is its second-person address to “you” the player. Many IF works experiment with this and make the player reconsider their relation to the player-character and the game. Let’s compare this to the twentieth-century tradition of experimental writing: Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, Jamaica Kincaid. I propose that IF offers a particularly rich elaboration of Roland Barthes’ foundational literary theory of “playing with the text”.
      (Video, slides)
    • Representing Disability and Depicting Ableism in Video Games – Hélène Sellier
      (Room 548: video, 14:15–14:30 (US Eastern))
      Representations of disability in video games are often problematic and hurtful. Serious games in this area often adopt a medical and category-based perspective of disabilities, focusing on impairments. How can we depict disability as a social experience? How do we let the player share that experience without appropriating it? We’ll look at the narrative puzzle game Alix et Yanis: la disparition d’Albert le hamster, intended for young schoolchildren.
      (Video, transcript)
  • 14:30–15:00 (US Eastern)
  • 15:00–16:00 (US Eastern)
  • 16:00–16:30 (US Eastern)
  • 16:30–17:30 (US Eastern)
    • 6 “Cons” of Worldbuilding: a Practical Approach to Structured Creation – Gerben Grave
      (Ballroom)
      In 2021, I did a GDC talk called “Connected Worlds: Building Dynamic Storyworlds Using Network Theory” which showed how networks can be used to build coherent and consistent worlds. Following this line of thinking further, I ended up with an approach that combines literary theory, network theory, and sociology, wrapped in the mnemonic device of the Six Cons: Concept, Constraints, Content, Connections, Conflict and Consequences.
      (Video)
    • Designing Narrative Strategy for 4 to 4,000 Players – Nick Bush
      (Lower Lounge)
      King of the Castle is a multiplayer narrative game where a Twitch streamer plays a Monarch ruling over a semi-democratic medieval kingdom. The game requires at least four players: one Monarch and one Noble from each region. But there is no real upper limit to players. In our private beta, we’ve had roughly 3,500 people playing a single game on Twitch. How do these two vastly different scenarios play out? How do you design for such a gulf in player experience?
      (Video)
    • “Don’t Try to Explain It” - Why Some Things Should Not Make Sense – Bjarke Alexander Larsen
      (Room 548)
      Why does punching a tree give you planks? How do the champions in a League of Legends match keep being able to fight each other? We often accept things like these in games with a refrain of “Don’t think about it too hard,” which conflicts with our desire to explain the logic of our narratives in virtual worlds. We want the world to make sense. But should we?
      (Video, slides)

Sunday (June 11)

  • 9:00–10:00 (US Eastern)
  • 10:00–11:00 (US Eastern)
    • Thematic Puzzle Design: Learning from Erstwhile, Sub Rosa, and Metamorphoses – Aster Fialla
      (Ballroom)
      How do designers make puzzles that reinforce the themes of their games? In Erstwhile (2018), we accidentally designed a game where the singular puzzle of piecing together memories reinforced the theme of being haunted by the past. But why did it work? How can we analyze puzzle designs which support thematic messages like this? Join me in breaking down puzzles and extracting thematically significant meanings from every piece within.
      (Video, slides)
    • How the West Was Many: Crafting a Culturally Diverse Western Adventure with Rosewater – Jess Haskins
      (Lower Lounge)
      At Narrascope and AdventureX, I’ve spoken about the importance of creating with cultural awareness, and why small teams and solo indies shouldn’t be afraid of going “out of bounds” to write outside their own personal backgrounds. In this talk I will discuss how our team of two put this theory into practice in making our forthcoming point-and-click adventure. Rosewater is set in an alternate-history world inspired by the American Old West, but aiming to thoughtfully depict a diverse range of people and experiences often left out of traditional Westerns. I’ll talk about what approaches worked, what didn’t, the gap between theory and practice — and how we can do better next time.
      (Video)
    • Designing a Narrative-Driven Video Game to Build Resilience in Children who Stutter – Erik X. Raj
      (Room 548)
      Speech-language pathologists who provide therapy to children who stutter can benefit from using narrative-driven video games in therapy. Those video games often put players in active positions where they are able to read through meaningful dialogue that ultimately helps the video game’s character to move forward toward new levels. The positive experiences of not giving up and eventually moving forward within a video game are usable as therapeutic talking points. We’ll discuss the rationale for designing a narrative-driven game, Jump Rogi, to build resilience in children who stutter.
      (Video, play Jump Rogi)
  • 11:00–11:30 (US Eastern)
  • 11:30–12:30 (US Eastern)
    • Take That! The Multicultural Origins of the Ace Attorney Series – Clara Fernandez-Vara
      (Ballroom)
      The Ace Attorney game series recently turned 20 years old, after eleven games that put the player in the shoes of different lawyers across time and in different countries. Their success and longevity is built on top of rich cultural references that can be traced back to adventure games from the 1980s, as well as the Western whodunit, Japanese detective novels (honkaku), and Perry Mason. We’ll explore how texts from different media enter in dialogue with narrative design, challenging players to solve their mysteries within specific traditions of detective fiction.
      (Video, slides)
    • How to End the World: A Post-Mortem of RuneScape 3’s 2022 Season Finale – Diana Flindt
      (Lower Lounge)
      The live MMO-RPG Runescape 3 attempted to pull off an epic high-fantasy story throughout its 2021-22 season of content, the Elder God Wars. The universe eaters were awake and coming to kill us all — and only our players can stop them. I’ll share what went wrong, what went right, and lessons learned from building an end-of-the-world story in a live game. What are the unique narrative challenges of trying to create a satisfying ending in an ongoing live game?
      (Video)
    • On Goncharov (1973): Fact and (Interactive) Fiction – Autumn Chen
      (Room 548, 11:30–11:45 (US Eastern))
      Goncharov is a collective storytelling phenomenon which escaped the confines of Tumblr and made its way into the mainstream. My part in this was hosting and participating in the Goncharov Game Jam. I’ll describe the trends and themes of these games and how they relate more broadly to fandom.
      (Video, slides)
    • Volunteer Opportunities at IFTF – Andrew Plotkin, Judith Pintar
      (Room 548, 11:45–12:15 (US Eastern))
      IFTF is a volunteer-run organization. We’ll give a quick overview of what we could use help with.
    • Narrative-Based Games for Sexual Health – KB
      (Room 548: video, 12:15–12:30 (US Eastern))
      A post-mortem of my game (val)iant: or, val’s guide to having a broken vag. It’s a game about vaginismus, relationships, and how we as a society learn about sex. We’ll discuss ways that we bring education into narrative. What can narrative games teach players? How do they accomplish this? What are the unexpected outcomes?
      (Video, slides, play (val)iant)
  • 12:30–13:30 (US Eastern)
  • 13:30–14:30 (US Eastern)
    • Going Union: How A Basement Indie Hired AAA Talent (And How You Can, Too!) – Francisco González
      (Ballroom)
      Plenty of narrative games feature voice acting. Smaller and indie teams tend to cast non-union actors. While this is a perfectly acceptable approach, the quality and professionalism that union actors offer is undeniable. In this talk, I want to dispel the assumption that working with union actors is prohibitively expensive, as well as clear up some common misconceptions.
      (Video)
    • SweepWeave: A Synthesis of Storylets and Simulated Characters – Sasha Fenn
      (Lower Lounge)
      SweepWeave is an experimental, free, and open source toolkit for creating works of interactive fiction. It focuses on character interaction as the central game mechanic. Games employ these simulated characters and relationships to assemble pieces of handcrafted content into a coherent narrative shaped, in part, by player choice. While games made in SweepWeave use a hypertext interface, the SweepWeave storyworld editor itself uses an “inverse parser,” (inspired by Chris Crawford’s work) in an attempt to avoid coding hassles and to help authors spend more of their time writing, scripting, and sculpting compelling characters and narratives.
      (Video, slides (download), play Common Moonlight, play The Wildlands, play Quinn and Ben)
    • According to Cain: From Concept to Completion – Jim Nelson
      (Room 548)
      Does a video game based on the Book of Genesis have a place in the 21st century? I’ll discuss the formative ideas that led to developing the parser game According to Cain, which placed 6th in the IF Comp and 1st place in its Miss Congeniality award. I’ll discuss the problems of writing a “religious” mystery game from a secular perspective, using graphics and music in a parser-based game, the restrictions I placed on myself, and the restrictions I found myself faced with.
      (Video, slides)
  • 14:30–15:00 (US Eastern)
  • 15:00–16:00 (US Eastern)
    • Narrative Design in the Age of Twitch – Stacey Mason
      (Ballroom)
      Traditional wisdom is that competitive multiplayer games are more inherently “streamable” than narrative games. Indeed many aspects of narrative games seem to be at odds with streaming experiences. Will the audience be able to duck into a storyline partway through? Will a streamed storyline spoil the core of the game or cut into sales? Yet many narrative games do very well on Twitch. How do their narrative structures aid or hinder this?
      (Video)
    • Horror Games: Lore VS Gameplay – Cam
      (Lower Lounge)
      Some horror games become popular due to their lore, even when their gameplay is almost non-existent. What about these games pulls people in so much? Is it a well crafted story, built to drawn in players? Or is it the lack of story that allows players to go full detective mode?
      (Video)
    • My Game Is A Joke, And I Demand To Be Taken Seriously – Martin Hanses
      (Room 548: video)
      What is the artistic merit of a game that only tries to amuse you? What are the politics of comedy as a narrative genre in games, and how does it differ from other media? This talk covers perspectives on messaging, emotional weight, and personal biases in comical narratives, as well as how to avoid turning both yourself and the game you’re making into a punchline.
      (Video)
  • 16:00–16:30 (US Eastern)
  • 16:30–17:30 (US Eastern)

Special Post-Conference Sessions

  • July 12, July 18, 2023 (online)
    • Let’s Talk About Collecting Narrative Games in Libraries – Colin Post
      Please join us for an open forum on the issues and challenges of collecting narrative games in libraries!
      (A followup to Colin Post's talk at the conference. We will host two virtual sessions on different days; you may join either. See here for information on participating.)