procedural narrative | Line Hollis

Readings: Dynamic Systems

October 19, 2011 / 2 comments

Posting a day late due to some travel kerfuffles yesterday. For the record, and since I haven’t announced it before, here’s the planned schedule I have in my head: Readings on Tuesday, a Mouthwash update on Thursday (if there’s been progress), Short Reviews on Friday, and a feature every week but whenever. Next week will…

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Weekly Update: Blocks World

September 27, 2011 / 0 comments

After two weeks of nose-to-the-grindstone paper writing, I am delighted to return to writing that no one will pay me for with Players Are Planners, a new feature up at Robot Geek. This was inspired by a volley of blog posts that went down while I was away, starting with Michael Abbot’s Games Aren’t Clocks and followed…

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Weekly Update: Non-Linear Trend

September 19, 2011 / 0 comments

Haha, I was totally kidding last week when I said I’d get a real post together for today. Fortunately there are people out there who are writing things. Go read things they write! I’ma go die. In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column. This is a week late, but someone just pointed me…

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A screenshot from Storyteller, showing two panels of a fairy-tale-like comics story in 8-bit style.

Pieces of Story

July 19, 2011 / 0 comments

Telling good stories in games is hard. Interactivity screws up a lot of the things we associate with good storytelling, such as pacing, control of the audience’s knowledge, and and suspense. This fact, though generally agreed upon, provokes a variety of reactions. Some argue we’d be better off not telling stories with games altogether; others,…

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