The proposal deadline has now passed. Thank you for your submissions! If you submitted a proposal, we will respond by May 6th to say whether it has been accepted.
Panelists and speakers will receive a complimentary membership in NarraScope 2022.
We cannot cover travel or other expenses for speakers. If you have specific needs please contact us.
Dates
- April 22, 2022: Deadline for proposals.
- May 6, 2022: Notification of acceptance or rejection.
- June 1, 2022: Deadline for your confirmation of acceptance.
- July 30 - July 31, 2022: NarraScope 2022 online.
Presentation categories
Lightning Talks
Lightning Talks are brief explorations of a topic in great detail, or the sharing of specialized information. Want to talk about one particular piece of poetry, and why it changed the entire theme of a game? How about an overview of how quest items were used to further the plot?
Lightning talks will have a 15 minute slot. Q&A duration is to the presenter's preference.
Talks
These talks should focus on everything from the very technical to comparative and informational. This is not a time to sell your game or self promote. We want to hear how you made your game, what you learned, what games you’ve studied, and what knowledge or ideas that you have that can help push the genre forward.
Individual talks will be 30 minutes, including 5-10 minutes at the end for Q&A.
Extended Talks
Same as the above, but over a much longer duration.
Extended talks will be 60 minutes, including 5-10 minutes at the end for Q&A.
Panels
Panels will consist of a group of 4-6 people discussing a central topic. This can be anything from a postmortem for a game to a group of experts in a field such as VR or Twine. If you propose a panel discussion, you must be willing to lead and moderate said discussion. We would strongly prefer that you suggest names for panelists, but this is not required. Include topics and potential questions that will be asked of panelists in your proposal.
Panel talks will be 60 minutes, including 5-10 minutes at the end for Q&A.
Tips
- We want in-depth discussions about specific fields or styles of IF, narrative writing, and game design.
- Everybody at the conference will already know what interactive fiction is and why narrative games are important. What’s the next question?
- Specifics are always better than overviews.
- Talk about a problem you solved or a problem you didn’t solve.
- Tell us something that your players and fellow authors don’t know about your workflow.
- Find the sweet spot between “so obscure that I can’t make use of it” and “so well-known that I learned it in school.” Tell us something that makes us want to run off and start a new project just to try it out.
- Reveal a wonderful secret.
A springboard of other possible topics to think about:
‧ Histories of interactive fiction, adventure games, etc. ‧ Education, using, and making narrative games ‧ Narrative games and/as electronic literature ‧ Art contexts and narrative games ‧ Narrative gaming and computing subcultures (the demoscene, etc.) ‧ Identity, trauma, and other challenging topics in narrative games ‧ Designing narrative games ‧ Commercial narrative games today ‧ Simulating words in narrative games ‧ Narrative gaming and AR/VR/XR ‧ Narrative gaming and mobile media ‧ Particular narrative game development systems/platforms ‧ Postmortems on particular games ‧ Readings/critical discussions of particular games or sets of games ‧ Modeling conversations, characters, or environments in ways which support narrative ‧ Representation and appropriation of culture ‧ Interactive narrative outside of videogames: television, museum exhibits, alternate-reality fiction, interactive theater ‧ Puzzles: do we have a grand theory after forty-one years? ‧ Tools to manage narrative complexity ‧ Domain-specific languages of IF and narrative design ‧ AI tools for narrative games ‧ What different types of players want from narrative games