Third person: authoring and exploring vast narratives

Abstract

The ever-expanding capacities of computing offer new narrative possibilities for virtual worlds. Yet vast narrativesfeaturing an ongoing and intricately developed storyline, many characters, and multiple settingsdid not originate with, and are not limited to, Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Marvel's Spiderman, and the complex stories of such television shows as Dr. Who, The Sopranos, and Lost all present vast fictional worlds. Third Person explores strategies of vast narrative across a variety of media, including video games, television, literature, comic books, tabletop games, and digital art. The contributorsmedia and television scholars, novelists, comic creators, game designers, and othersinvestigate such issues as continuity, canonicity, interactivity, fan fiction, technological innovation, and cross-media phenomena. Chapters examine a range of topics, including storytelling in a multiplayer environment; narrative techniques for a 3,000,000-page novel; continuity (or the impossibility of it) in Doctor Who; managing multiple intertwined narratives in superhero comics; the spatial experience of the Final Fantasy role-playing games; World of Warcraft adventure texts created by designers and fans; and the serial storytelling of The Wire. Taken together, the multidisciplinary conversations in Third Person, along with Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin's earlier collections First Person and Second Person, offer essential insights into how fictions are constructed and maintained in very different forms of media at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Contributors: Rafael Alvarez, Richard A. Bartle, Michael Bonesteel, Stanford Carpenter, Monte Cook, Paul Cornell, Anne Cranny-Francis, Sam Ford, Chaim Gingold, A. Scott Glancy, Richard Grossman, Pat Harrigan, Matt Hills, Kenneth Hite, William H. Huber, Adriene Jenik, Henry Jenkins, David Kalat, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Norman M. Klein, Tanya Krzywinska, David Lavery, Robin D. Laws, Sarah Lewison, Henry Lowood, William E. McDonald, Matthew P. Miller, Jason Mittell, Stuart Moulthrop, Kate Orman, Sean O'Sullivan, Lance Parkin, Robert M. Price, Ren Reynolds, Trina Robbins, Ken Rolston, Dave Sim, Greg Stafford, Tamiko Thiel, John Tulloch, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Walter Jon Williams