The English and Art departments are hosting a speaker named Raph Koster from October 9-11 as one of the Faculty Senate Distinguished Speaker series speakers. Raph is a distinguished video game designer and theorist, and he has written a popular book on gaming called A Theory of Fun. 

Raph will be speaking on October 10 at 7 pm in Chan Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public.

Digital Bards: interactive media and the evolution of storytelling

Print media was itself a revolution of earlier oral storytelling practices, and today we see digital media and videogames in particular challenging traditional notions of what storytelling even is. New paradigms have been developed over the last few decades of game development many of which have not filtered back into academia, and new interactive structures are causing debate within games themselves as well. In this talk we will discuss how games have approached storytelling in a variety of frameworks ranging from linear narratives to telling massively multiplayer stories for tens of thousands of interactive participants, and we'll look to the future that is rapidly forming on a tablet or phone near you. Writing will never be the same -- again.