CCLCS Seminar Series: Chris Worth

Wednesday May 13, 2009

Future Narrative: Interactivity, Computer Games and the Authorship of Fantasy

The success and proliferation of computer games has stimulated considerable interest among narratologists because some games appear to offer player-centred direction of stories, significant narrative interactivity and multiple alternative resolutions. Fantasy RPG games in particular promise opportunities for the construction of personalised narratives by players individually and in relation to other players. How ‘readerly’ are these? What happens to the sense of an ending? Does the interactivity mediated by computer games constitute a paradigm shift in modes of narration comparable, say, to that mediated by the development of film technologies? And will the widely distributed enablement of certain kinds of facile fantasy narrative creation alter our understanding of the significance of represented fantasy?

Chris Worth is Director of the Centre. His publications include Postmodern Conditions (1990), Discourse and Difference (1990) and Literature and Opposition (1994).