The case for the narrative brain

  • Authors:

  • Ken Newman

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Portsmouth

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the second Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Narrative is important for interactive systems because humans have narrative brains. In this paper, reviewing the case for the narrative brain from various fields of psychology and narrative theory, three themes emerge. The first theme is that there is a species-wide predisposition for and capability for narrative. The second is that since, at an individual level, humans don't all develop the same level of narrative inclination or ability, individual narrative tendencies will be significant in causing the individual responses to an interactive system to vary considerably. The third theme is that there is a case for a set of species-wide archetypal narrative scripts embedded in the human psyche. Each of these narrative themes is presented and explored in terms of it's relevance to understanding users' experience of narrative in interactive systems. The paper goes on to describe a methodology for evaluating a user's experience of narrative by first evaluating the user's narrative tendencies.