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a everyone um how's it going

so okay basically could talk about

narrative and try and provide us a

summary or a kind of insight into

narrative in games obviously narrative

is a pretty huge topic so I'm not going

to be able to go over the whole history

of narrative and narrative theory and

everything so I'm going to look at a

specific article that I find really

inspiring which is called game designers

narrative architecture by Henry Jenkins

and I'm going to apply that to

blood-borne some we use blood-borne as

an example of what he's talking about

because blood-borne is just a really

great game and I think it tells its

story in a really interesting way

everyone hear me okay by the way yeah

cool okay so um it's a great opening

slide and that the image is courtesy of

solo who's a has it his tumblr page

there

okay sunshine that dr. tom blow calm and

I used that which is good so a little

bit about me and my research I'm

currently writing a PhD in titled

ludonarrative convergence a study of

narrative development in recent video

games across reception production and

player contexts so we're playing out

here that academics and game designers

share a love for the colon so that's

something that we all have in common

I'm interested in production studies and

building bridges between academic

humanities Department and the industry

so part of my PhD is about interviewing

game designers about their kind of

practices of kind of you know

implementing narrative in their games

I'm interested in raising the profile of

video games as a valuable object of

study within humanities which is why me

and Tom organized this day of talks and

I'm interested in exploring how

narrative and

ludecke gameplay elements of games can

work together to create meaningful and

original narrative experiences so in

kind of video games there's generally

seen a conflict between a story and

gameplay and so this is summed up quite

nicely by this quotes by Greg Costigan I

hope I've pronounced his name correctly

I probably haven't so there's a direct

and immediate conflict between the

demands of a story and the demands of a

game diverging from a story's path is

likely to make for a less satisfying

story restricting a player's freedom of

action is likely to make for a less

satisfying game so these things are

often seen as in tension and in terms in

the academic field of game studies which

isn't exactly like game design that you

might be familiar with game studies kind

of a discourse that kind of is has been

trying to establish itself for a long

time within the humanities departments

and they've largely or have

traditionally split into two camps this

is one of the big debates in game

studies is lewd ology versus narratology

so a typical neurologists position is

that computer games and not narratives

rather than narrative tends to be

isolated from or even work against the

computer gamers of the game that's

Jesper Juul who's like a leading narrow

lead ologist and a typical narrow

colleges position is about Janet Marie

and she talks about which comes first

the story or the game for me it's always

the story that comes first because

storytelling is a core human activity

one that we take into every medium of

expression from the aural formulaic to

the digital multimedia so lewd ologists

are very much about moving on and

looking at games specifically for their

unique interactions and don't want to

know about narrative in their most

extreme state and narratology

are a bit more interested in narrative

and disc reiated a bit of tension so

things got a little heated so in an

article game studies org which is one of

the leading journals on gay

studies mark o/s : and said in his

article the gaming situation he wants to

annihilate for good the discussion of

games as stories narratives or cinema in

this scenario stories are just

uninteresting ornaments or gift

wrappings to games and laying any

emphasis on studying these kinds of

marketing tools is just a waste of time

and energy so for him narrative is just

a marketing tool which is a sick burn

for the narratology

out there and demonstrates I think that

academics can also enter into flame wars

so enter Henry Jenkins is like a hero of

mine and so he wrote this essay game

designers narrative architecture and one

of the reasons I love this so much is

it's a kind of a fairly early attempt to

kind of build a bridge between these two

positions so he says in this short piece

I hope to offer a middle ground position

between the lewd ologist and meratol

adjusts one that respects the

particularity of this emerging medium

examining game's lesser stories than a

spaces right with narrative possibility

so I'm going to explore this essay in

relation to blood-borne so he encourages

us to think about games in less

reductive ways okay a game story telling

in this reductive ways and this is some

of the problems he has with the lewd

ologists view of narrative so I think

they have too limited a conception of

narrative based on classical linear

storytelling rather than more

experimental forms he thinks they have

too limited a conception of narration

focusing on the work of the author

rather than the process of narrative

comprehension so the experience of

actually reading the thing and he asked

whether games and their entirety of

stories rather than and they sorry they

asked whether games in their entirety

are stories rather than whether

narrative enters a game a more localized

level which he argues and finally they

assume that stories are self-contained

rather than serving some specific

functions within a new transmedia

storytelling environment just something

I'll touch on again in a minute

so there isn't as much a big divide

between video games

literary tradition as you might think

Jenkins suggests there's a link between

spatial stories of videogames and older

forms of stories having like the hero's

Odyssey quest myths and travel writing

the notion of the monomyth was put

forward by Joseph Campbell in his book

the hero with a thousand faces which is

really famous had a huge influence on

things like Star Wars and has a huge

influence on game does game designers

and game critics Mary Lou Ryan's book

narrative as virtual reality makes the

case for games as building on notions of

immersion and interactivity that always

been a concern of literature so those

are the two big things that are always

talked about in relation to games and

she says no they've been there all along

they're just more intensified or

slightly different in games and James

Newman uses em4 stirs notion of flat and

round characters to explore how

characters and video games are typically

defined by their functions and abilities

so it's kind of like a wealth of

thinking about games using kind of more

literary theories and literary theories

can be very systematic and we all know

how game designers love systems so

there's a bit of commonality there so

Jenkins wants us to think about games of

spatial stories so he says game

designers don't simply tell stories they

design worlds and sculpt spaces so

considering what ways the structuring of

game space facilitates different kinds

of narrative experiences so the work the

designer does anticipates different

narrative experiences for the player

he's enough he also says though that

games are a bit different to traditional

stories and there's a tendency to

dismiss games as as not an expressive

medium because they're perceived to have

overly simplistic storytelling but as

Jenkins suggests spatial stories are not

badly constructed stories rather they're

stories that respond to alternative

aesthetic principles privileging spatial

exploration / plot development spatial

stories are held together by broadly

defined goals and conflicts and pushed

forward by the characters movement

across the map

so let's move on to blood-borne what is

it just briefly you probably all know

what it is Japanese action role-playing

game released in 2015 on PlayStation 4

developed by from software and published

by Bandai Namco is the spiritual

successor to the soul series which

includes Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1 2

and almost 3 is coming out soon and

we're looking forward to that

the lead designer is hitter taka

Miyazaki and he's very much considered

the creative force behind the game and

has I guess the privileged position of

being like an author within the

commercial games industry on YouTube

there's dozens dozens and dozens of

videos exploring the law of blood-borne

which is something that I'm going to

touch on a bit in this talk and I think

in quite interesting ways so his a few

of the youtubers who are engaged and

that kind of stuff to introduce the game

and this kind of thinking about I'm

going to use a video by Fatih Vidya

which is a disss or extract looking at

some of the lore of the game think on

human history imagine if in any era a

church was founded that had access to a

substance that could cure any illness

imagine if this church gave it freely to

a city how powerful that city would

become and how powerful the church would

become within it this is exactly what

happened in the Arnim people came far

and wide to be treated with the

miraculous blood of the gods and the

people of yharnam put their faith in the

healing church in fact what happened in

yharnam is eerily similar to what

happened in the tombs deep below where

the blood was originally found and as

you know many chalice dungeons

especially those of lauren are now

overrun by horrific beasts the lower

laron chalice states there are trace

remains of medical procedures in parts

of ailing Leron whether these were

attempts to control the scourge of the

beast or the cause of the outbreak is

unknown

the ailing LaRon chalice states the

tragedy that struck this ailing land of

LaRon is said to have its root in the

scourge of the beasts some have made the

dreaded extrapolation that yharnam may

be next Yanam was next through overuse

of the healing blood the city would

eventually succumb to the scourge of the

beast until then though Lawrence and the

healing church managed to grow in power

with the miraculous healing properties

of their special yet infected blood okay

so I think I think what that video

demonstrates is um blood-borne doesn't

go to any trouble to make its meaning

clear though that meaning is always

tantalizing which has resulted in

hundreds of deeply analytical RT

articles and videos on YouTube so this

video is a good example of the kind of

close textual analysis and use of

sources that we might expect in academia

which leads me to speculate that the

majority of the scholarly activity

around such games occurs in the fan

space Henry Jenkins has also been a key

figure writing about fan studies and if

you want to find out more about that and

what he believes the value of fan

discourses are to academia you can read

his book textual poachers or mat hills

book fan cultures very interesting so

Jenkins talks about four modes of

spatial storytelling and they will begin

with ease I've called them the for ease

of spatial storytelling so they evoke

enact in bed and have emergent

narratives and we're going to go through

each of those in relation to blood-borne

so it's sold with the evocative

narrative so Jenkins says such works do

not so much tell self-contained stories

as draw upon or pre-existing narrative

narrative competencies games can be

based on licenses they can rely on

genre conventions they can recreate

events they can evoke other works

through a process called intersexuality

it's basically just having one text have

a relationship to the other support for

it he talks about this occurring in

process that he's written extensively

about called transmen

storytelling so increasingly we inhabit

a world of transmedia storytelling one

that depends less on each individual

work being self-sufficient than on each

work contributing to a larger narrative

economy so for example the Star Wars

game may not simply retell the story of

Star Wars but it doesn't have to do in

order to enrich or expand or experience

the Star Wars saga so this is this is a

British daughter of the cosmos

so I actually recommend this slide to be

more of a surprise I should have read a

little bit more but basically so in

blood-borne you're a hunter on the night

of the hunt and you find yourself

cleansing the ruined streets of yharnam

of werewolves and other creatures so

this setting and its antagonists are

common tropes of gothic horror

eventually though you start facing

enemies that bear similarities with the

creatures in love cross Lovecraft's

Cthulhu Mythos hold on like a breeches

daughter of the cosmos everyone acts

surprised because I should have done

that just now sorry

so it's got tentacles and it's got an

unpronounceable name and that's not just

because it's in the Japanese slide so it

must be a reference to Lovecraft I'm

guessing so although it avoid though the

gamer avoids referencing Lovecraft

directly many have noticed at the close

comparison between her twisted creatures

and locations in the game and

Lovecraftian stories such as the dream

quest of unknown Kadath so whilst

blood-borne begins by evoking the gothic

horror it makes a transition into the

specific world of HP Lovecraft's notion

of cosmic horror and the only clue to

this early on is this incomprehensible

start on your stat sheet that's like Oh

strength against skin what does that

mean no idea so that the game does drop

little hints early on so cosmic horror

is based on Lovecraft's existential

worldview in which humanity is powerless

in the face of an indifferent universe

devoid of God and incomprehensibly

infinite so there's a little quote there

from him the basis of all true cosmic

horror is violation of

of nature and the profoundest violations

are always at least concrete and

describable like that there's another

good quote from Lovecraft which really

sums up this position I won't read Oh

have a little read if you feel like it

he's not a happy chap

so it's interesting here though that he

talks about one of his big themes is

people wanting knowledge and like

scientists trying to gain knowledge and

going mad for kind of discovering things

that they can't understand with their

puny human brains and essentially that's

the plot of blood-borne because the

founding of the healing Church of

yharnam is a result of academics playing

around with forces beyond their

comprehension they go to the chalice

demons they find the blood of the great

ones they start using it everything goes

to hell basically so um to talk about

briefly about a little mechanic in the

game which is the insight mechanic where

basically your knowledge of the world is

trapped in the form of insight which is

rewarded each time you first encounter

or beat a boss and and so there's this

sense that the more horrific things you

see in the game the more insight you

have in the world and in true love

crafty and fashion this allows you to

start seeing things that you couldn't

see before

so this chat up here amygdala or Amy as

I like to call her is these guys have

been hanging around on the buildings in

blood-borne all the time and you know

that they've been there even though you

can't see them because if you're unlucky

enough to go by one of them it will pick

you up and kill you and you won't know

why so I think it's interesting that as

a system in the game that tracks your

knowledge and changes the game based on

that knowledge actually makes the game

harder in some areas as well it changes

enemy attacks and things and amigdala is

also a part of the brain which is

associated with knowledge and emotional

reactions to things so I think there's a

a direct like thematic link there I know

what that was we carry on so moving on

so the evocative narrative of

blood-borne is

it's Lovecraftian kind of homage I guess

so moving on to the idea of an enacted

narrative Jenkins noticed that games

enable players to perform or witness

narrative events so narrative enters the

game on two levels in terms of broadly

defined goals or conflicts and on the

level of localized incidents in terms of

broadly defined goals

the player often has a quest that drives

them forward although in blood-borne you

eventually discover that you've been

manipulated by a great one all along

sorry spoilers that's another thing

academics like to do is give away the

ending of things so the organization of

the plot becomes a matter of designing

the geography of imaginary worlds so

that obstacles thought and affordances

facilitate the protagonist forward

movement towards resolution in

blood-borne the architecture conspires

to channel players towards encounters

that have been specifically designed to

challenge them a good example is the

sequence in old yharnam where the player

traverses in a series of ruined

buildings whilst under fire from a

hunter by the name of juror if you

approach him from a different direction

he's not hostile and actually speaks to

you about why he is protecting the

beasts in the area so this idea that

Jake Jenkins talks about that games have

an accordion like structures there's

certain plot points that are fixed

whereas other moments can be contracted

and expanded and moved around so in

terms of enacting narratives that

there's a lot about the kind of

geographical layer of space so in

blood-borne the layout of space allows

for the inclusion of shortcuts that

allow players to return quickly to

previous areas there's an excellent

video on Eurogamer actually about the

doors in blood-borne and how frightening

it is when you can open a door because

the game wants you to progress and kill

you um and doors that you can't open

like are likely to be shortcuts that you

need to find the other entrance war and

this map I think shows how everything

links up in a really into

stay away and this map is a bit more of

a artistic impression of those linkages

references at the bottom if you want to

see who made them and this is more of a

kind of flow chart of your progression

through the game I think it's

interesting to point out at this point

that there isn't actually a map that

exists in the game so all of these

wonderful things have been created by

the fan base which i think is great and

Henry Jenkins has written elsewhere that

defining quality of place relationship

to a game is the mastery of space and I

think this is a good example of that

and here's another map which is a little

bit more more simple but at the same

time complicated because it's kind of

charting your narrative progression

through the game in a spatial way so I

think it's interesting that you can

think about the narrative as a series of

triggers in a spatial sense and you

could almost map this onto this so that

a narrative and space work together

that's a good example of that but blood

Jenkins always also talks about micro

narratives so these are narrative that

enters the game on the on like a kind of

local level on a kind of more specific

level and is more self-contained so he

uses the example of attractions in

pioneering Soviet filmmaker Sergei

Eisenstein's films and particularly his

film Battleship Potemkin so Eisenstein

used the word attractions broadly to

describe any element within a world work

that produces a profound emotional

impact and theorized that the themes of

the work could be communicated across

and through these discrete elements so

here's a few shots from battleship

potemkin here's the steps the OD this is

the Odessa steps sequence so this is

like the Tsar's army shooting upon the

peasantry which supposed to be sparked

or for the communist revolution it's a

kind of propaganda film but it's

interesting because it's the very early

days of film this was the guy who

created film editing

basically and within this one big

contested space like Henry Jenkins talks

about this as a contested space just

like in the video game you have all of

these little stories happening

the soldiers marching forward and firing

a pram rolling down the stairs after the

mother is killed someone who's calling

for peace getting shot there's a few

other little narratives and he talks

about these as micro narratives

something that's a useful way to think

about them so we have micro narrative as

cutscene so Henry Jenkins talks about

how these can often be cutscenes and

games these micro narratives but they

don't have to be and I think is

interesting that there's only one

significant cutscene in blood-borne and

it's when you touch Lawrence's skull and

they then see a flashback to William and

Lawrence having their falling out which

led to the creation of the healing

church as a really significant moment

and it's narratively motivated as well

so it's not I don't think a

hard-and-fast cutscene it's basically

like you're seeing what the character

sees at that point because his knowledge

is is coming from the skull and is

seeing a historical event play out and

and it's got an important bit of

information in it as well right it's got

a password that you need to progress

through the game so it's incredibly

Lingus of progression

there's also micro narrative as soy

quest I think so there's lots of side

quests in blood-borne their focus on

different interesting little side

characters and you have to trigger them

in very specific ways being at the right

place to open to the right people at the

right time

Eileen the crow is a good example I

think she very so

she tracks down hunters who have been

corrupted and have become blood-drunk

and you must speak to her at specific

moments and locations to continue her

quest including two occasions where you

have to help her kill their quarry in

very difficult fights furthermore it's

possible for her to become blood drunk

herself causing the player to fight her

in a

particularly tragic ending to her story

so this incredibly nuanced little story

more than any other in the game asks you

to question the morality of the hunt and

sprinkles a much needed touch of

humanity into the world but it's well

hidden and might play out very

differently from play as a player I

think it's a good example of what

Jenkins refers to as a micro narrative

because it's self-contained independent

from the larger plot and occurs on a

very personal level it's also indicative

of the incredible variability that can

be built into videogame stories and how

their outcomes and meanings can change

based on player choices actions and

other hidden triggers which makes them a

fascinating but difficult object of

study for academics moving on to

embedded narratives so in literary

studies the russian formalists made a

distinction between two different

aspects of narrative story and plot this

is a classic distinction so plot is the

way the work is presented on the page in

literature the way you read it where a

story is the actual chronological

sequence and reading is an act of

chronologically reassembling what you're

reading so the classic example was the

detective novel where you have two

stories somewhat Aeneas Lee the story of

the crime which is unknown at the start

and the story of the investigator which

you as a reader are mirror mirroring his

efforts are kind of like reassembling

the chronological sequence of the story

so according to Jenkins the does game

designer creates two different

narratives one relatively unstructured

and controlled by the player as they

explore the game space and unlock its

secrets the other pre structured but

embedded within the meson son awaiting

discovery the game world becomes a kind

of information space and memory palace I

really like this idea of games as a

memory palace it's like one of my

favorite quotes so I think though

there's a challenge of reconstructing

the story from plot in a game on two

levels which is a little bit different

to literature so firstly the game

resists your efforts to read it or

throwing challenges at you that you must

overcome in your quest for meaning as

jenkins says embedded narrative Canon

often does occur within contested spaces

secondly the story elements once

discovered must be mentally reassembled

to create a narrative pattern which is

close to the process of reading as the

process in literary studies and

philosophy called hermeneutics shouldn't

go into okay so that's an active

narrative so moving on to the final

category sorry not the final category

know that this finds some still the same

thing yeah yeah embedded narrative sorry

I've lost myself anyway so embedded

narratives in blood-borne so Jenkins

talks about embedded narratives don't

require branching story structures but

rather depend on scrambling the pieces

of linear story and allowing us to

reconstruct the plot through the acts of

detection speculation exploration and

decryption so in blood-borne a lot of

the plot is written into item

descriptions dialogue of hidden NPCs and

into the very architecture of the game

world itself here's an example the

yharnam stone which you gain from

defeating the two marion queen after a

very long

she's an optional boss in a very long

run of the chalice dungeons which

incredibly difficult to be and for ages

people were trying to figure out what

this did and it turned out it didn't do

anything it was just there to deliver

its little payload of narrative and be

really enigmatic basically it's if you

read the description it's the Queen lies

dead but her horrific consciousness is

only asleep and stirs in unsettling

motions and the item looks a bit like

it's got fetus kind of thing in it which

is a bit weird so I like to think of

this quality of video game storytelling

as dispersed narrative where the

narrative is just scattered around all

over the place and you have to kind of

go around and pick it up and put it back

together which I really like in games so

the final category is emergent narrative

so emergent narratives are not pretty

structured or pre-programmed taking

shape through the game

play yet they are not as unstructured

chaotic and frustrating as life itself

so they're kind of unpredictable within

limits so there are those stories that

occur through the partially

unpredictable interaction of players and

systems basically so the more systems a

game has the more opportunities there

are for emergent storytelling yet these

systems are designed to create certain

types of gameplay just as architecture

anticipates certain uses and

interactions so these are known as

affordances and Jenkins uses the example

of urban design so urban designers exert

even less control than game designers

over how people use the space as they

create or what kind of scenes they

staged there yet some kinds of expand

themselves more readily to narratively

memorable or emotionally meaningful

experiences than others so you can talk

about emergent narrative and blood-borne

I think one of the most interesting

elements is the online functionality of

the game which is like the Dark Souls

games before it quite interesting quite

a symmetric quite different to any other

game so in blood-borne players can leave

messages for one another which are

relayed into other players games by

interdimensional messengers these cute

little guys which I love and you can

give them top hats so that makes me

happy and players can also activate

blood spots that mark where other

players fell in battle to play a

silhouette of that players last moments

potentially offering an insight into

what lays ahead it's an example of that

there and you can most importantly ring

a little bell to summon other players

into your game to help you out or to

invade other players games and and not

leave them basically so there's that

element of kind of emergence there were

players interacting together and being

able to help each other out create their

own stories within the limits of the

game I think it's interesting that

whereas most games would put all of this

online function entities where it's like

choose to go online it's all there

within the narrative context of the game

you're ringing a bell

because blood-borne operates on a

parallel you

verse mechanic whether the sound of the

Bell creates a tumbler that kind of

links to the other players worlds and

cools them forth and it's all really

interesting here's a another picture so

many good pictures from blood-borne so

another aspect of the emerging behavior

relation to blood-borne is the fact that

this system has actually elevated itself

from out of the game and now and play is

kind of like trade information on wiki's

and using YouTube videos to try and

interpret the lore of the game to give

one another advice and I think that the

game creates a really positive

collaborative environment and and that's

a product of the way it's designed and

it's worth noting as well that such

emergent narrative elements based on

online interaction are completely

dependent on active servers and multiple

players experiencing the game

simultaneously so this type of narrative

interaction is perhaps the most unique

to video games and the most ephemeral

because it's based on things outside of

the game itself which i think is

something to bear in mind if you're

going to pull Gooding this talk later

which is about the preservation of such

games so why is all this important

I hope this talk offered an insight into

how narrative and gameplay can work

together and demonstrate how interesting

it is to think of game designers as a

narrative architects rather the

traditional storytellers I think

thinking of video games storytelling in

spatial terms using these four different

models presented by Henry Jenkins could

lead to more creative narratives so

jenkins says such a mixture of in

accident and embedded narrative elements

can allow for balance between the

flexibility of interactivity and the

coherence of pre authored narrative so

thus bringing together narratology and

lewd ology and there's an academic

that's pretty much here there's some

work cited there's a little bit about me

there's time for questions if anyone

wants to ask skinny you'll have to shout

them out and I'll have to repeat them

any questions well then there are plenty

of videos online for you to look at

yeah

yeah yeah okay just to reiterate for the

video in case that wasn't picked up how

how specific can you go with micro

narratives is a little kind of tableau

in a corner of a room a micro narrative

and is any action a player takes through

space in a sequence a micro narrative it

could be like Jenkins gives the example

of like playing a football game and

giving a getting a touchdown as being a

micro narrative because it's something

that you can lift out of context and you

know have it as a self-contained little

thing and I think totally those little

bits of environmental storytelling where

you get a little tableau almost or still

like you said a still-life can totally

be like a micro narrative so I don't

think there's any hard and fast rule to

it I just think it's a really

interesting way to frame those kind of

things but yeah I mean the problem with

these kind of taxonomy is right is they

create divisions between things whereas

actually I think there's quite a lot of

overlap between these four categories

obviously I can't go into that because

20 minutes is enough to just think of a

taste of always talking about rather

than actually you know explore how

they're interconnected as well any other

questions

yeah

big influence

okay cool so the question is like about

kind of Lovecraft being used more and

more and what other kind of originators

of kind of genres and and tropes can be

used or are being used I think it's

interesting that blood that kind of love

craft is such a popular thing for the

bass games on and things you can't

actually throw a rock I don't know why

you'd be throwing rock we can't throw a

rock these days without hitting the

board game with a Lovecraftian theme

right and the main reason for that is it

cool but the secondary and

closely-related reason to that is it's

um isn't it's out of copyright so anyone

can just use it and so I think like the

more it's then used like the more people

become familiar with it and the more it

gets used but I think the interesting

thing with blood-borne is it doesn't

explicitly use it it's all very subtle

is like Miyazaki's use of kind of

western fantasy tropes in Dark Souls

they're there but they're kind of

filtered through his kind of unique

sensibilities and his kind of cultural

influences and he uses I can't remember

the terminology now but his specifically

said that he uses a lot of Japanese

philosophical concepts about

impermanence which is really interesting

it's really interesting to read

interviews with him because he clearly

you know is very intelligent man and

clip who knows what he's doing and I

think in terms of other kind of

originators of important myth AUSA's I

guess Sherlock Holmes like you know I

think Arthur Conan Doyle his his work

gets used a lot and is being used more

and more in videogames I think is

another interesting talk to be had about

because I mentioned a little bit there

about kind of detective fiction and

videogames because obviously detective

fiction is a really good example of how

story and plot works but it's a little

bit harder to do in videogames and when

videogames normally do detective stories

because they could be so procedural it

can easily get out of hand

be difficult they normally kind of

systemize that so you had something like

murdered soul suspect where you weren't

really solving a mystery were just

collecting little bits of things and

putting them together and it's I'm yet

to see like a detective game done really

well I think that gives that the player

the freedom to try and work it out

itself but that's the other one I could

think of is at the top of my head is

Sherlock Holmes and do you have any in

mind yeah another one

I'll give you which is a little bit more

highbrow but I think does creep into

things is George annuity of all gays who

is an Argentinean a proto sci-fi writer

he came up with some amazing incredible

mind-blowing ideas that play that you

know you read one of his stories and it

will change the way that you look at the

world forever his brilliant and I find

I'm finding that his ideas are creeping

into games and popular culture a little

bit more now

try I can't think of an example for the

top of my head but could you think of

one cool I know you like tall guys as

well oh yeah he's that oh yeah joseph

conrad's yeah

spec up to the line yes spec up the line

is an adaptation of the heart of

darkness by Joseph Conrad yeah yeah yeah

videogames are becoming a little bit

more literary and a little bit more you

know encouraged to kind of like newest

literary sources and and play around

with them good anyone else probably try

and wrap up time as its yes okay we

should probably wrap up but I hope you

enjoyed that and it wasn't it was okay

you