Gamasutra Podcast: 'A Practical Guide to the Hero's Journey'

Gamasutra is proud to present the latest Gamasutra Podcast, part of our weekly podcasts, which include both the Tom Kim-presented Gamasutra Podcast show, alongside the best lectures, tutorials, and roundtables from this and previous years' Game Developers Conferences. Today's edition of the Gamasutra Podcast comes from the archives of the 2005 Game Developers Conference, with Infocom, Legend Entertainment, and Atari veteran Bob Bates explaining the classic 'hero's journey' as it relates to the construction of a story, and offers advice on how to tap into that timeless archetype for use in games today. From the original GDC 2005 synopsis: "We’ve heard for years about Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces and how the Hero’s Journey underlies most epic stories. But when it comes to putting Campbell’s observations to practical use, they become maddeningly elusive. Are there 12 parts of the Journey, or 8, or some number in-between? Must the hero encounter all of Campbell’s archetypal characters, or is it okay if he skips a few? When these questions are met with a shrug and the answer, “It depends,” Campbell’s observations are in danger of being used only as an analytical device after a story has been written, rather than being used by the game designer during the construction of his or her story. This talk shows you how to put the Hero’s Journey to work while you are building your story. It will explain the function of the various parts of the Journey, and the uses to which the archetypal characters can be put. Attendees will come away with a better understanding of story construction and some practical advice for creating a mythic substructure to their games. Attendees learn how to convert Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey from a collection of analytical observations to a set of tools they can use in the construction of their stories." You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast, A Practical Guide to the Hero's Journey (.MP3, 56 minutes, 13.6 MB). In addition, you can subscribe to the Gamasutra podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.