Part 7 Putting into play – The hidden art of pacing 1 (3)

The Hidden Art of Pacing is a three-part trip, which takes you on a journey to trace the core to the hidden art of pacing by stripping familiar story and game structures from standard elements to discern the engaging and motivating forces that trigger the receiver´s building of experiences, feelings, and expectations.

Before shifting to interactive media, I wrote story arcs for films and television series. The technique of scriptwriting was to follow your gut, establish a conflict, take it to a climax, and end it with a twist. The receiver’s engagement was built into the dramatic story structure, which meant that focus was laid on the character’s motivations, relations, and behavior. As long as the audience stayed seated and the ratings were good, work continued as usual.

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Part 1, In search of the invisible narrative

This is the home of my work and findings as a narrative constructor that I would have liked to find myself in the late nineties when moving my skills as a writer and director within film and television to the development of digital and interactive media. At that time there was nothing called narrative design, and when I took my master’s in computer science, the narrative was recognized as not to be part of game studies and human-computer interaction (HCI). The narrative was like “It-Which-Must-Not-be-Named” until I met a Lyotard-reading captain of a robot football team who Continue reading