Storytelling in the Digital Age

How can games literacy be implemented practically in a school/community setting, using limited technological resources? MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program (CMS) and Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) collaborate each January to organize a weeklong workshop at MIT that aims at exploring this question, which we think could be adapted as a model by other schools and communities. The workshop focuses on the theoretical, historical, cultural, social, and aesthetic elements of interactive narrative and game structures. It is composed of morning lectures that explore linear and non-linear storytelling across media, audio-visual elements, game theory, and techniques to increase the depth of interactive console games, and afternoon sessions, where participants collaborate in teams to design interactive story scenarios to be presented and judged competitively.

Here, we present to you a virtual snapshot of some key elements of the above workshop. These will serve as pointers towards a broad action plan for implementing a similar kind of endeavor in your school or community. You will find below a selection of course notes and PowerPoint presentations of some of the workshop speakers, and videos of the participants as they move from formulating their game concepts to the day of the concept presentations, making their pitches and selecting the eventual winning group. We also provide you with a list of books and other material dealing with video game creation and video game literacy. We hope that the collection of material on this site can prove to you that you don't need cutting edge technology or high-end concepts to develop a games literacy approach for your environment – all you need is imagination, creativity and a spirit of fun and playfulness.