In Jorge Luis Borges’s 1941 short story, The Garden of Forking Paths, a character named Ts’ Ui Pen seeks to build a labyrinth in which all men will lose their way. Borges reveals that labyrinth to be a sprawling book in which all moments in time are followed by every possible subsequent moment. Multiple futures and timelines exist as one in this garden of forking paths. Fast forward to today, where we find that Ts’ Ui Pen’s seemingly incomprehensible vision has come to fruition via video games and interactive fiction. Both often eschew linearity and instead offer users the opportunity to drive the story and shape their own narrative experience. In this course, we will first explore the trajectory of interactive fiction, from its early overtures in works by Borges and Italo Calvino, forward through Agusto Boal’s Forum Theatre, early computer text adventures, Choose Your Own Adventure books, non-linear film, and into the various digital interactive fictions of today, such as hypertext literature, adventure games, and visual novels. From there, students will embark on their own adventure through interactive creative writing. The journey will begin with students taking apart and diagraming existing interactive works, and using digital tools to craft and share their own short interactive scenes and dialogs. We will confront the challenges and limitations of writing interactive story and establish some key critical theories governing non-linearity. The course will culminate in students designing and writing a complete short work of interactive fiction in a medium of their choice.
In recent years, video games have exploded as both a cultural force and a pioneering creative medium. Many critics and creative professionals believe that gaming offers both its practitioners and its audience the next evolution in storytelling. But how–and why–did digital games evolve from mechanic-focused experiences such as Pong and Tetris into more narrative-rich undertakings along the lines of Mass Effect, The Witcher, and The Last of Us? In this course, we will explore the vibrant and complex intersection between narrative expression and interactivity, examining the myriad ways dramatic storytelling techniques can be applied to a series of design mechanics to bring context to the player’s action, and, inversely, the ways that mechanics and design can be employed to express a theme or to convey a story. The course is intended to appeal to all gaming backgrounds–neophytes with a casual interest in games, enthusiasts who’ve spent many years passionately gaming and discussing games, and everyone in between. The first half of the course will establish a creative grammar and a base of common reference points from which students will develop their creative projects. The second half of the course will focus on the creative project. Students will be challenged to “gamify” a popular work of media (of their choosing with professor approval) into an interactive project–video game, interactive fiction, board game, interactive theatre, or any combination thereof. Incorporating the fundamentals established in the first half of the course, students will develop this game concept through multiple rounds of iteration and feedback, eventually breaking down the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics of the proposed project via a highly detailed game concept document—the blueprint of an interactive experience. In the end, students should come away with a command of basic game vernacular, inspired to view Game Theory and Design as expressive narrative tools available to them in their own creative toolbox, regardless of discipline or medium.
A site for IMA NY Students to find equivalent courses outside of IMA NY
For most students joining IMA in Fall 2022 and beyond, there is a new program structure that affects the categorization of courses on this site:
Any class in any IMA major elective category (ie "Art & Design") refers to the IMA program structure previous to those entering in Fall 2022. If you are in the class of 2026 (most entering Fall 2022 or later), any course in an IMA elective category are generic IMA electives in the new structure.