Anna Anthropy: Crafting Interactive Fiction with Bitsy | 4-week Game Design Workshop
Crafting Interactive Fiction with Bitsy
with Anna Anthropy
What if a work of fiction were more like a space – something our readers could wander, struggle against, push on the boundaries of? Digital games offer the opportunity to incorporate interactivity, spatiality and friction into our craft. In this class, we’ll use Adam Le Doux’s Bitsy – a free game design environment available in your browser – to create interactive narratives. If you love storytelling and want to try using new tools to tell new kinds of stories, this class will explore how.
Class Format
Our 150-minute workshops will consist of guided tutorials, artistic discussions and creative exercises. (There will also be a 10-15 minute break in each class.) Over the course of four meetings, participants will write, develop and revise a work of original interactive fiction. At the end of the class, outstanding projects will have the opportunity to be featured in an exhibition at Accent Sisters in New York.
Week 1 – Mechanics and Metaphor
This week, we’ll talk about how games work, and explore their language of storytelling. We’ll also introduce our primary tool for this class: The Bitsy editor.
Week 2 – The Digital Toolset
We’ll expand our approach to interactive fiction by bringing in other aspects of digital game design and exploring them using Bitsy.
Week 3 – Revision and Expansion
How can we push the boundaries of Bitsy to transform our creations? After exploring new techniques, we’ll break into groups to give each other feedback on projects-in-progress.
Week 4 – Facing the World
Finally, we will prepare our interactive fiction for the world by bringing in external assets and learning how to release our projects publicly as playable web games.
Instructor Bio
Anna Anthropy is a game designer, educator and cyborg. Her work, both digital and tabletop, explores themes of queerness, kink and disability. Her most well-known digital games include dys4ia and Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars; some of her recent tabletop work includes Coldbloods, The Fool's Journey, and the award-winning Forgotten Palaces. Anna is the author of several books on games and game design, including A Game Design Vocabulary, Rise of the Video Game Zinesters, ZZT, and the Make Your Own Video Games! series from No Starch press. She has shown work in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. She lives in Chicago with a little black cat named Encyclopedia Frown.
Teaching experience: Anna taught game design at DePaul College of Computing and Digital Media, the highest-ranked game development program in the midwest, for nine years. Additionally, she has run game design workshops in places like Toronto, Chicago, the Bay Area and Detroit.
Beginner’s Guide to Interactive Fiction (Recommended)
Amabel Holland – Cardboard Ghosts
Aaron Reed – 50 Years of Text Games
merritt k – Video Games for Humans
Melissa Ford – Writing Interactive Fiction with Twine
Anna Anthropy & Naomi Clark – A Game Design Vocabulary
When & Where
Every Saturday or Sunday from 9.27 10.4 10.11 10.18
Beijing Time 9:00-11:30 Sunday Morning
New York Time 21:00-23:30 Saturday Night
Online: Zoom
Language: English
Class Size: 10-30
用 Bitsy 创作互动小说
导师：Anna Anthropy
课程简介
如果一部小说像一座空间，而不是单线叙事——让读者可以在其中游走、碰撞、推开边界，会是什么样的体验？数字游戏为创作者提供了将互动性、空间感与摩擦感融入叙事的可能性。在这门课中，我们将使用 Adam Le Doux 开发的 Bitsy —— 一个可以直接在浏览器中运行的免费游戏设计工具 —— 来创作互动叙事作品。如果你热爱讲故事，并想尝试用全新的工具去探索不一样的故事表达，这门课将带你运用游戏引擎制作带有自己风格的独特故事。
课程形式
每节课 150 分钟，包括引导式教程、艺术性讨论与创意练习（中间有 10–15 分钟休息时间）。在四周的课程中，学员将创作、打磨并完成一部原创互动小说。优秀的课程结业作品将有机会在纽约的“重音姐妹重音空间”展出。
课程大纲
第一周：机制与隐喻
第二周：数字工具箱
第三周：修改与拓展
第四周：发布游戏
导师简介
Anna Anthropy 是一位游戏设计师、教育者及“赛博格”创作者。她的作品涵盖数字游戏与桌面游戏，主题常常探索酷儿（Queer）、性癖（Kink）与残障等议题。她最知名的数字游戏包括 《dys4ia》 与 《Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars》；近期的桌面游戏作品则有 《Coldbloods》、《The Fool’s Journey》，以及曾获奖项的 《Forgotten Palaces》。
Anna 还著有多本关于游戏与游戏设计的书籍，包括 《A Game Design Vocabulary》、《Rise of the Video Game Zinesters》、《ZZT》，以及由 No Starch Press 出版的 Make Your Own Video Games! 系列。
她的作品曾在伦敦维多利亚与艾伯特博物馆（Victoria & Albert Museum）、芝加哥当代艺术博物馆（Museum of Contemporary Art）、纽约动态影像博物馆（Museum of the Moving Image）展出。她现居芝加哥，与一只名叫 Encyclopedia Frown 的小黑猫生活在一起。
教学经历：Anna 曾在美国中西部排名最高的游戏开发项目——德保罗大学计算与数字媒体学院（DePaul College of Computing and Digital Media）教授游戏设计长达九年。此外，她还曾在多伦多、芝加哥、湾区和底特律等地开设游戏设计工作坊。
互动小说入门阅读指南（推荐）
Amabel Holland —— Cardboard Ghosts（《纸板幽灵》）
Aaron Reed —— 50 Years of Text Games（《文字游戏五十年》）
merritt k —— Video Games for Humans（《给人类玩的电子游戏》）
Melissa Ford —— Writing Interactive Fiction with Twine（《用 Twine 创作互动小说》）
Anna Anthropy & Naomi Clark —— A Game Design Vocabulary（《游戏设计词汇》）
课程时间
每周末一次，每次 2.5 小时
🦜 北京时间
9月28日 10月5日 10月12日 10月19日
周日早 9:00 – 11:30
🦉 纽约时间
9月27日 10月4日 10月11日 10月18日
周六晚 21:00 – 23:30
课程地点：Zoom
课程语言：英文