Scholarship
Papers.
Peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings, and manuscripts in preparation. Every entry below has a stable link and a ready-to-copy citation. The full archive lives on Academia.edu. For the books and papers that cite this work back, see In the Literature.
The Spaghetti Strategy: Expertise Amplification vs. Democratization in Gen AI #
Examines a tension in generative AI adoption: the same tools that let novices produce competent work can also amplify the output of existing experts, widening rather than closing the gap between them. Argues that the democratization narrative common in industry discourse understates this second effect.
Fantasy-Reality Tension Maps: Diagnosing Immersion in Mixed-Reality Racing Attractions #
Proposes a diagnostic framework for measuring where mixed-reality attractions lose or sustain a guest's sense of immersion, developed from design work on Mario Kart: Bowser's Challenge. Presented as a white paper and research poster at the joint IAAPA/TEA Academic Symposium.
Transmedial Play: Cognitive and Cross-Platform Narrative #
The foundational statement of transmedial play: a production methodology that positions the viewer-user-player as the primary author of narrative experience across multiple media platforms. The most-cited work in the catalog, with a sustained citation span from 2008 to 2026.
Cited in: Ndalianis (2012) · Gambarato (2013) · Pietschmann et al. (2014) · all citing works →
What is a Narrative Designer? #
Defines the then-young role for a professional audience: the narrative designer as the person responsible for the integration of story and gameplay within interactive systems, distinct from both game writer and game designer.
Transmedia Storytelling Defined #
A working definition of transmedia storytelling for practitioners, written as the field's vocabulary was still settling: story worlds distributed across platforms, with the viewer-user-player as the connecting intelligence. Cited in library science, pervasive-games research, and transmedia design scholarship.
Cited in: Parker & McDonald (IFLA 2014) · Dufort (2024) · all citing works →
Dramatic Play: Interactive Narrative Design as the Foundation of Gesamtkunstwerk #
Formalizes the 2,300-year lineage from Aristotle to AAA game development: interactive drama that uses interaction, rather than description, to tell a story. The theoretical foundation of the narrative design field.
Journey of Jin & Transmedial Play #
The MFA thesis: one of the first episodic mobile RPGs, written partly in Tsalagi, and the research context in which the Narrative Designer role was first articulated. Completed in the Interactive Media Division under Marsha Kinder.
The Architecture of Erasure #
Examines how the systematic erasure of Indigenous presence operates through architectural and narrative frameworks, and how transmedia worldbuilding can work against that erasure rather than repeat it.
Funding Indigenous Cultural Preservation Through Transmedia IP: The Aztalan Model #
A case study of the ongoing partnership between GiantLands and Friends of Aztalan State Park, documenting a revenue model where transmedia product sales directly fund the preservation of a Mississippian-era archaeological site.
Professionalizing Game Narrative: The Emergence and Impact of Narrative Design #
A twenty-year retrospective on the professionalization of the narrative design role, tracing its spread from a single job description at Relic Entertainment in 2006 to standard industry adoption, read through the lens of labor studies.
Real Things: The Bumblebee and the Beast #
On designed objects and unmediated reality — what a physical thing does inside a narrative system that a rendered thing cannot.