Videogames

30 Saturday Nov 2013

Tags

#StoryMOOC, Games, Jacobite Risings, Monopoly, The Future of Storytelling, Video game

No, not Lana Del Rey.

Sooner said than done…

Last week, our creative task for The Future of Storytelling, was to discuss the storytelling in our favourite videogame.

And guess what? I don’t have a favourite videogame.

Actually, I have played very few videogames in my life, and none of them with anything like a real narrative structure. Which is rather odd, come to think of it, because I am the one who needs a story in everything she does. Why, I never could play a game of Monopoly without adding a story to it. In my College years, I used to attach stories to every game of pinochle: sometimes it was the Vandean Wars, sometimes the Jacobite Risings, sometimes the Anglo-Boer Wars, but mostly the Revolt in the Desert*. You’ll laugh, but even while playing solitaire on my laptop – a dreadful procrastinating strategy – I tell myself stories to go with it.

My cup of tea…

So, I guess that for me the trouble comes with the mechanics of videogames themselves? My eye-hand coordination isn’t too terrible, usually – but, for some reason, when it comes to moving around with a mouse, a keyboard or a joystick, I suddenly grow ten thumbs and a lot of cottonwool in my brain. It’s not that I never tried, I’m just unbelievably bad at it.

I remember playing I don’t know what fantasy videogame with friends, when I was fifteen or so. My elf was a walking danger, because I would mix up my keys and start shooting arrows with wild abandon at the wrongest moment… After I killed all my team-mates for the fifth time, we went out for icecream, and never played again… Not that I minded too much: when I’m too busy minding my keys to enjoy the story, I bore very, very easily.

And so, I stuck to paper-and-pencil RPG, and the occasional very easy single-player game in which I could click and point, and tell myself stories as I went – because yes: the short and the long of it seems to be that games are all very well, but woe to the game that comes between me and my story.

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* I’m told that, as a result, in my College jokers went under the name of vickers for years…

10 of The Best Uses of Music or Songs in Videogame Trailers, Part One (tokyoblazer.wordpress.com)
Videogames that are as Good as Literature- Top 10 (qburtsblog.wordpress.com)
Charlie Brooker on How Videogames Changed The World (edge-online.com)

Inspiration

23 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by la Clarina in Books, History

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#StoryMOOC, Arnolfini Portrait, christopher marlowe, Conrad, Daughter of Time, Jan Van Eyck, joseph conrad, Josephine Tey, Lord Jim, Rodney Bolt

And so it happened that the creative task for week 4 of StoryMOOC was to put together a small video, with a list of one to three books, movies, paintings or whatever that we find especially inspiring – storytelling-wise.

The hardest part, frankly, was choosing just three of them – but the choice was an interesting exercise in itself.

I spent nearly five days wondering: which three pieces of inspiration would I most care to share? Which three books, movies or whatever do I want to recommend to other storytellers?

The first one, actually, was very much a given: Joseph Conrad‘s Lord Jim is the book of my life, and the standard of literary quality I aspire to, and an endless source of wonder. It was also an eye-opener the first time I came across it, with its intenseness, psychological depth, poignancy, complexity… It also made me fall in love with English, when I was eighteen – and thus very likely changed the course of my life. All else apart, as a non-native speaker, I rather hero-worship Conrad, who learned English in his twenties, and learned it well enough to become one of its great storytellers…

My second choice was less obvious, but I wanted something to do with my love of history and history’s fictional treatment. I dithered between Josephine Tey‘s The Daughter of Time and Rodney Bolt’s History Play… Bolt won the day in the end: his not-quite-novel plays with a growing distance between facts and their telling, documents and their interpretation. It plays with readers’ expectations and trust. There’s a lot of food for thought in this book – especially about the iridescence of history, a pet theme of mine. Besides, I am thankful to Rodney Bolt for sparking up my interest in Christopher Marlowe.

The last item in the list was, as usual, the hardest to pick. So many inspiring pieces, and just one slot left… In the end I settled on a detail from Jan Van Eyck‘s Arnolfini Portrait, the one you can now see at the Portrait Gallery in London. There is a round mirror on the wall, behind the merchant and his green-clad bride. The mirror shows the Arnolfinis from behind, and the window lighting the scene, and the door where the painter is working at his easel – and another small figure: the viewer. I’ve always loved it: the mirror shows the story, the storyteller at work, and the viewer/reader/listener – all together. I find it a perfect symbol for meta-literature and meta-theatre, both of which I love dearly.

So in the end these were the relevant inspiration I wanted to share – all of them well steeped in the past, aren’t they? Perhaps, it strikes me, a rather strange choice for The Future of Storytelling. Then again, I’ve always been more of a keeper than an innovator… after all, the nature of my inspiration comes as no great surprise.

A Masterpiece in the spotlight: The Arnolfini Marriage (Jan Van Eyck) (peteomer.wordpress.com)

Emma, Kit and I

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by la Clarina in History, Stories, Theatre

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#StoryMOOC, christopher marlowe, Questia Online Library, Richard Horne

I told you about the MOOC on the future of storytelling, didn’t I?

Last week’s creative challenge was to make up a character, and give him or her an online life. So Emma was born, and she has a blog, where she babbles about her obsession for Christopher Marlowe…

Amongst other things, she’s posted about Jospehine Preston Peabody’s play – the one I mentioned here. So I thought I’d make use of her post to explain things a little.

I first came across this play on Questia, of all places, and I love it: it is a quaint affair in blank verse, with perhaps the most likeable fictional Kit I ever found. JPP is unashamedly in love with her hero – and yet, she doesn’t make him too annoyingly perfect. All right, it could be argued that he is a rather idealized Marlowe, but bear in mind the play was written long before most of what are now key Marlowe documents were dug out. So Aunt Josephine writes a fiery, moody, aspiring young man, a victim of his own rashness and far-flung notions, as much as of jealousy, meanness and intrigue – and leaves out most of what is unpleasant and/or controversial.

But, for once, never mind historical accuracy: her Kit is likeable, and as he very much dominates the scene, this is more than enough for me.

I’ll say it again: I love this play. It is the sort of thing you’d stage with old-fashioned costumes, painted scenery, honey-thick
lighting… There is a game I like to play when I surf the Net, singling out bits of scenery, props and stuff I’d use for my imaginary production – and who knows, maybe some day I’ll make myself a JPP toy-theatre.

Besides, last night, while looking up a picture for Emma’s post I found two Marlowe-themed plays I’d never heard about. Nineteenth Centrury stuff, in resounding blank verse, from what I gather: Richard Horne‘s The Death of Marlowe, and James Dryden Hosken’s Christopher Marlowe.

So, isn’t it wonderful? Emma is three days old, has a few friends, writes posts I can use as inspiration, and finds long-forgotten plays I’ll like to read… I am so glad I made her up!