Table of Contents

Introduction PART I: Background 1. Myths and Equations 2. The Story Remains the Same PART II: Creating Characters 3. Respecting Characters 4. Character Roles 5. Character Traits 6. Character Encounters PART III: Telling a Story 7. Once Upon a Time 8. Respecting Story 9. Bringing the Story to Life 10. Charting New Territory 11. Story Chiropractics 12. Editing 13. The Roots of New Storytelling 14. Modular Storytelling PART IV: Games People Play 15. Game Types 16. Game Genres 17. Console Games 18. Bringing Virtual Worlds to Life 19. Enabling a Story in Virtual Worlds PART V: Reflections 20. The Responsible Writer PART VI: Appendices Appendix A: Opinionated Bibliography Appendix B: Developer Primer on Building Writing Teams Index

About the Author

Lee Sheldon is Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has written and designed more than two dozen commercial and applied video games and MMOs. His most recent book from Course Technology PTR is The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game. Lee began his academic career at Indiana University, where he instituted the practice of designing classes as multiplayer games, and wrote and designed the alternate reality games in the Skeleton Chase series. Most recently, Lee was lead writer/designer on three games based on Agatha Christie novels, lead writer on Star Trek: Infinite Space, and lead writer on Zynga's Facebook game Indiana Jones Adventure World and an upcoming Kinect game for Harmonix. He is head of the team that is building the Emergent Reality Lab at Rensselaer, a mixed reality space for research and education; lead writer and design consultant on a game teaching math; and lead writer/designer of games teaching Chinese and business ethics. Before his career in video games, Lee wrote and produced over 200 popular television shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Charlie's Angels.