Multiplayer Games as a Template for Multiplayer Narratives: A Case Study With Dark Souls

Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) is an increasingly popular eld, with a number of novel systems emerging in the last few years. However, these systems have typically focused on narratives involving only a single person. In contrast, multiplayer video games are a common and popular form of entertainment. In this paper we ask whether the way in which these works might inspire a new generation of multi-player narratives. In particular we look at the multiplayer video game "Dark Souls" and consider the goals and inter-player interactions present within the game. We then reimagine what these might look like as multiplayer narratives, and demonstrate how they might be realised with a sculptural hypertext approach. We conclude that even within a single game there are a number of rich possibilities demonstrated, from asynchronous indirect examples where the players enrich each others worlds and exchange information, to synchronous direct examples where players have direct in uence over the choices of other players, and thus the outcomes of their stories.