Overall objectives:

1 - Interactive Visual Narrative (IVN) II is a theoretical and practical course building on the knowledge acquired during the Interactive Visual Narrative I course (delivered during the previous semester). IVN II has a more applied flavour and will coach students through the development of original creative works in the area of interactive narrative. The course is designed to help students develop their skills as creative interactive narrative designers, across a variety of new digital media forms. The emphasis in this course will be on learning through analysis of previous developed narrative experiences and through experimentation: experimentation with the writing style, voice, tone, and experience design. The materials provided for this course will reflect this experimental focus, being drawn from a broad cross-section of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journalism, and visual online forms (Twitter fiction, serials, multimedia narratives, blogs) and narrative games.

Syllabus:

1 - The class will focus on the presentation of the history and practice of interactive narrative throughout several building blocks and for each building block, there will be different in-class assignments exploring different skills. Course Building blocks:
2 - 1) Audience: A common fallacy is to assume that interactive narrative projects will have a broad appeal and that will be something that "everyone loves". In this building block, students will explore a number of different audiences and define how they differ from each other to that eventually they can design works that will meet their needs and interests.
3 - 2) Transmedia Storytelling: In recent years content creators have begun to take a different approach to storytelling. Narratives have been designed to "live" on several forms of media simultaneously. During this building block, students will get familiar with the concept of Transmedia Storytelling first from a theoretical perspective, and then with a more practical perspective through the analysis of several works.
4 - 3)  New formats of Interactive Narratives: In this block students will discover the emerging trends regarding interactive narratives in a range of topics that will range from Artificial Intelligence, Interactive Television, Immersive Environments (AR/VR/XR) and Narrative Games.
5 - 4) Harnessing Interactive Narratives for pragmatic goals: Many tasks in life are important, but not necessarily appealing. In this building block, students will study in what ways can projects benefit from an interactive storytelling approach to inform, teach or train certain skills. The main goal is to understand how digital storytelling techniques can be applied as a vehicle to teach and unpack educational content in a format that is both entertaining and interactive.
6 - 5) Project Development: Before the work of interactive entertainment is built a lot of planning must first take place. In this building block, students will tackle some of the techniques and documentation required during the development process or preproduction phase of an interactive project.

Literature/Sources:

Silva, Adriana de Sousa; Stuko, Daniel (eds) , 2009 , Digital Cityscapes , Peter Lang
Andrea Phyllis , 2012 , A creators Guide to transmedia storytelling , Mac graw Hill
Ruthanna Gordon , 2015 , Alternate Reality Games , Carnagie Mellon University ETC press
Henry Jenkins , 2006 , Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. , New York University Press
Carolyn Handlers Miller , 2004 , Digital storytelling, a creators guide to Interactive Entertainment , Focal press
Robert Pratten , Getting Started in Transmedia Storytelling: A Practical Guide for Beginners 2nd Edition , CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 2nd edition (August 19, 2015)
Kelly McErlean , 2018 , Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling: Creating Immersive Stories Across New Media Platforms , Routledge; 1st edition
John Bucher , 2017 , Storytelling for Virtual Reality : Methods and Principles for Crafting Immersive Narratives , Taylor & Francis Ltd
Evan Skolnick , 2014 , Video Game Storytelling : What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques , Random House USA Inc

Assesssment methods and criteria:

Classification Type: Quantitativa (0-20)

Evaluation Methodology:
The course will consist of lectures, discussion, practice activities, stimulation of creative and critical reflections, design work sessions, and suggestions for the enrichment of the students? work. The lectures will highlight contemporary elements and trends of Interactive Narratives and practical tools for the development of such narratives. Students will be asked to comment, do in-class interventions/presentations and analyse/critique interactive narratives. The students will also work in teams to design and produce an interactive narrative piece. They will be guided through studio-based classes and specific hands-on tutorials on demand. The final evaluation mark will be a combination of several components: Class attendance, punctuality and individual participation in class: 10%; Three Individual Assignments on theory and analysis of interactive narratives: 40%; Teamwork on the conceptual design and prototype implementation of an interactive narrative experience (50%)