Temporal convergence in shared networked narratives: the case of Blast Theory's Day of the Figurines

Abstract

Day of the Figurines, developed by Blast Theory in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Laboratory at Nottingham University, is a massively multiplayer board game for up to a thousand participants. Players can interact remotely with other participants via SMS through their mobile phones from anywhere in the world. Following an analysis of this games complex use of time, the authors introduce a framework structured around five layers of time, from authorial to perceived time, that will facilitate the management and investigation of networked narratives shared by mobile communities over prolonged periods of time.