The mobile internet expands the immersive potential of storytelling by\r\nintroducing electronic games powered by portable, location-aware interfaces. Mobile\r\ngaming has become the latest iteration in a decades-long evolution of electronic games that\r\nseek to empower the player not just as an avatar in a gameworld but also as a co-author of\r\nthat gameworld, alongside the gameââ?¬â?¢s original designers. Location-aware interfaces allow\r\nplayers to implicate places in the physical world as part of their gameworld (and vice versa)\r\nfor the first time. In addition to empowering the player as a co-author in the process of\r\nconstructing a compelling gameworld, then, mobile games eschew linear narrative\r\nstructures in favor of a cooperative storytelling process that is reliant in part on the playerââ?¬â?¢s\r\nexperience of place. While such an author-player ââ?¬Å?worldmakingââ?¬Â approach to storytelling\r\nis not new, mobile games evolve the process beyond what has yet been possible within the\r\ntechnical and physical constraints of the traditional video gaming format. Location-aware\r\ninterfaces allow mobile games to extend the worldmaking process beyond the screen and\r\ninto the physical world, co-opting the playerââ?¬â?¢s sensory experiences of real-world places as\r\npotential storytelling tools. In our essay, we theorize the unique storytelling potential of\r\nmobile games while describing our experience attempting to harness that potential through\r\nthe design and implementation of our hybrid-reality game University of Death.
Loading....