Following their game plan (or walkthrough) for First Person, Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin have brought their anthology Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media to the electronic book review (ebr) to bring the threads of discussion to life. Section One, Computational Fictions, has arrived at ebr and the subsequent sections will soon follow.
Together with Third Person, these two anthologies will form a trilogy of works from scholars, artists, and industry professionals on interactive narrative and drama forms. According to ebr,
The material in these volumes and on ebr represents a new level of dialogue between creators and critics about emerging forms of fictional and playable experience.
The ebr publication of the texts will not only open the book to readers across the Internet, but will also offer a site for continued conversation as readers respond to the texts through ripostes.
The essays previously published in the ebr “First Person” thread evoked (and provoked) responses from such central figures as N. Katherine Hayles, Henry Jenkins, and Stephanie Strickland.
The publication continues ebr‘s long-standing relationship with MIT press, and that press’ continued work toward public online discussion of its texts, as seen in the recent and ongoing vetting of Wardrip-Fruin’s Expressive Processing.
The Table of Contents of the Second Person release follows. Read more “Second Person” on the electronic book review