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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: Game Narrative Summit: The Dramaturgy of Video Games: Theatre, Story and Empathy
Speaker(s): Abby Sherlock
Company Name(s): University of Southern California
Track / Format: Game Narrative Summit

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Overview: Today there are immersive theatre companies, LARPing communities, escape rooms, and more genres that play with the adjacent worlds of theatre and game design. But what about these two worlds that are so different brings them together: one tracing back to multiple millennium bygone religious rituals, and one that technically emerged in the 20th century in a MIT Lab? Forged together by their common enterprise of enlisting active empathy within their audience or player, video games and theatre serve as the two most powerful devices for bringing up visceral emotion in those who encounter it. One by the conduit of performance and another by the use of modern technology, the end goal can be the same. This talk will cover the practice of dramaturgy for video games, player empathy within design, and what we as game creators can borrow from the oldest art form around.

Game Developers Conference 2022

Abby Sherlock

University of Southern California

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Game Narrative Summit

Game Narrative