Nic Velissaris

Alumni

Nic Velissaris is a PhD whose work looks at the intersection and overlap between narratives and gameplay. Traditionally audience members have engaged in two types of experiences: Passive and Participatory Experiences.

Passive experiences are a receiving experience; we sit, we watch and then react. Most (but not all) passive experiences tell narratives that tend to be linear with a definite start and end. Participatory experiences in contrast are experiences that we as audience members help to create. We have control, we shape the story, and we form the experience.

Participatory experiences can be considered interactive stories and are not necessarily linear and don’t always have a definite ‘ending’. In fact they can be considered go on indefinitely. What happens when we combine these two experiences into a new form? This form, called a Transitory experience will incorporate narrative and gameplay into a framework that allows for new experiences to be created across multiple mediums, with or without technological assistance e.g. video game hardware.