Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Computer Games Technology Volume 2010, Article ID 897217, 23 pages doi:10.1155/2010/897217 Research Article Time and Space in Digital Game Storytelling Huaxin Wei, Jim Bizzocchi, and Tom Calvert School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, 250-13450 102 Avenue, Surrey, BC, Canada V3T 0A3 Correspondence should be addressed to Huaxin Wei,
[email protected] Received 1 May 2010; Accepted 7 November 2010 Academic Editor: Abdennour El Rhalibi Copyright © 2010 Huaxin Wei et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The design and representation of time and space are important in any narrative form. Not surprisingly there is an extensive literature on specific considerations of space or time in game design. However, there is less attention to more systematic analyses that examine both of these key factors—including their dynamic interrelationship within game storytelling. This paper adapts critical frameworks of narrative space and narrative time drawn from other media and demonstrates their application in the understanding of game narratives. In order to do this we incorporate fundamental concepts from the field of game studies to build a game-specific framework for analyzing the design of narrative time and narrative space. The paper applies this framework against a case analysis in order to demonstrate its operation and utility. This process grounds the understanding of game narrative space and narrative time in broader traditions of narrative discourse and analysis.