Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (Mit Press)

Narrative strategies for vast fictional worlds across a variety of media from World of Warcraft to The Wire. 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 Manns Joseph and His Brothers J. R. R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings Marvels 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-Fruins 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.