first person
Eliza Redux
Adrianne Wortzel explains a revisioning of the 1960s computer-based therapist simulator, which moves beyond the original's text-only interface to include graphics, robotics, and an ever-expanding vocabulary.
On Adventures in Mating
Joe Scrimshaw describes his interactive stage drama, which with the exception of the technologies it employs, operates much like the computer-based interactive fiction Facade (discussed elsewhere in this thread). Rather than using code to select the proper reaction to user input as in Facade, the audience of Adventures in Mating votes on the choices the characters make, a la a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.
Video Games Go to Washington: The Story Behind The Howard Dean for Iowa Game
Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca explain a new genre: persuasive games, and delve into the development and emerging legacy of The Howard Dean for Iowa Game, "the first official video game ever commissioned in the history of U.S. presidential elections." This new genre provides an opportunity to rethink the cultural status of games. If games are normally judged by how entertaining they are, persuasive games must be released from this criterion and assessed on how well they convey their message.
The Puppet Master Problem: Design for Real-World, Mission-Based Gaming
Jane McGonigal argues that pervasive games - which involve electronic and 'real world' missions - reverse the traditional conception of the power dynamics of gaming, which has understood gamers as free agents. In contrast, according to McGonigal, designers of pervasive games exercise power over players, though their control is ultimately compromised by players' interpretive agency.
On A Measure for Marriage
Nick Fortugno describes a live-action role-playing game with a real-world consequence - a marriage proposal.
On Itinerant
Teri Rueb describes Itinerant and quotes excerpts from the project's vocal track. The installation-style piece uses a GPS system and a headset. As the participant walks through the allotted space, the GPS cues various recordings. Rueb claims to want "to implicate the participant as a charged body in public space whose movement and presence become critical agents in structuring the meaning of the work."
On John Tynes’s Puppetland
Sean Thorne explains how he uses Puppetland to help children improve their writing. The RPG allows the students to develop characters, and to participate in the construction of stories so that they're imaginatively invested in what they write.
Political Activism: Bending the Rules
Kevin Whelan argues that there's not much difference between role-playing games and grass-roots political activism.
Prismatic Play: Games as Windows on the Real World
John Tynes argues that it took the novel two hundred years to gain cultural capital; film, forty years; rock and roll, fifteen. Given this increasing velocity and the fact that it's been three decades since Colossal Cave Adventure, interactive storytelling should have gained a much higher level of respect than it has. Tynes argues that games should eschew escapist fantasy for more timely "engagist" settings that would allow the player to reflect on contemporary life and politics.
Why Make Games That Make Stories?
Jesper Juul argues that James Wallis's focus on definitions in his intervention into the story/game debate doesn't give the experience of story - or game - its due.