Doris Rusch "Finding the Witch’s Way – A Story About Embodied Writing and Mattering" & Rune Klevjer " Teaching and learning videogame narrative"

Doris C. Rusch, professor in game design at Uppsala University, and Professor II at CDN:

Finding the Witch’s Way – A Story About Embodied Writing and Mattering

This talk is about the emergence of The Witch’s Way. There are a couple of things that are noteworthy about how this work came into being, first as an application of a theoretical framework for transformative game design to practice; then as an embodied dialogue between being claimed by a space (Gotland) and telling its mysteries back to itself; as an interactive narrative piece written in Twine, and then being reworked as a traditional linear text. Informed by its theoretical framework, The Witch’s Way originated as a question of “how can we make games that ignite transformative processes related to big, existential questions – death, identity, isolation and – ultimately – purpose and meaning”. It embraced a mythical way of engaging with the world, particularly the lived experience and mystery of a specific place: Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic. This holistic, embodied approach shaped the way the story revealed itself, image by image, sensation by sensation. As of right now, two out of four chapters have been written: Spring and Summer. While these chapters were written years apart, they had to happen within the corresponding season they were set in. Writing was as much (if not more) informed by sensing and feeling – an open focus way of attending to place and environment – as it was by mythical imagination and an effort to put it into language. Working in Twine – producing the pieces of a more complex energy web that could be accessed in different ways – aligned well with the way I felt myself through the story, somatically, in forest walks and gardening sessions. Only later, when it all had been allowed to organically find its position in the narrative web, could I retrace my steps and find the thread of a coherent story, this time not only telling nature back to itself, but telling my own story back to me. 

The topic of The Witch’s Way, as well as its creation process, tells a bigger story of our entanglement with the natural world that we are a part of; a way of being that grants access to our intuition and aliveness; and that serves as a roadmap through uncertainty and the turbulences of troubled times. 

Embodied writing matters – stories matter – we matter for the co-creation of transformative, thriving futures. 

Rune Klevjer, associate professor in media studies at University of Bergen, with students:

Teaching and learning videogame narrative

In this presentation Rune Klevjer will outline the main contents and activities on the master course “Videogame narrative” (15 credits), and students will present their group work assignment on the game Until Dawn. The course was taught this semester on the Media and Interaction Design and Media and Communication programmes at the Department of information science and media studies.