Writing in an Interactive World

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The Business of Creating

So this week’s talk from Francis O’Neil was really interesting, particularly as a previous graduate who completely understand the journey from the Interactive Media module and into the big scary world of business and bringing her ideas to life. 

Sometimes I feel a bit like this about my projects:

But Francis made it less scary and even though she was talking about App development specifically, so much of the development was useful when considering my own project. 

What struck me was the huge sums she was initially quoted to build her app compared to the cost when she found a freelance developer to do it. This highlighted perfectly just how important research and finding a range of quotes is rather than going for the first one. 

This is something I have built into my own business model. Going for a smaller developer also gives you more creative control which is always appreciated when we can get it! 

I also had an interesting discussion with Brian who suggested using the game as a platform to crowdfund for the wider project. While this sparked my interest and I also thought about giving the game an episodic nature, I also thought about using the development and website as a tool for crowdfunding.

I was struggling a lot this week with the business side of things. Asking how long it’ll take to build my game felt a bit like asking how long is a piece of string. It depends on so many factors that it became a bit overwhelming and terrifying.

In part, this is because it is about so much more than a class project. This is something I really want to do and build so this was the time to plan out how I would do that in reality. 

The solution I have right now is to get chatting to some developers and gauge both in time and therefore cost where my game sits. I was hindered a bit by not having a clear enough idea of the story part of my game but in true last minute fashion, that idea has formed over the past couple days. At least enough to clarify my pitch finally. So while the business model may not be quite there come pitching time next week, by proposal it should be clearer and that weight on my shoulders might lift a bit. 

Here’s hoping!

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Capturing An Atmosphere

A wee project update this week because progress is slow and I’m in the depths of story development so it is continuously changing. 

Speaking of change...my previous decision to do more of a choice based game is morphing into an adventure horror game. I both love and hate horror games (mostly because I’m just too much of a wimp to play a lot of them) but some can be so creative and tell stories in far more captivating ways. 

What I think was missing from the setting I was building for this game was tone. Everything about the world lends itself to a dark atmosphere but I don’t think I was pushing that far enough. I want to use this and make it darker and more twisted than it maybe would have been otherwise. In The Observatory, they worship Goddesses, led by a man named The Lens who is supposed to have an ability to speak to the Goddess Veloria. However, we are in an apocalypse so nothing is quite as controlled or civilised as it seems and many of the followers have taken this faith into their own hands, twisting it in different ways. 

As the main project is not horror in itself but definitely has horror elements, having a horror game as an accompaniment could be a different take on it. 

With that being said...here are some visuals I’ve been looking into to try and capture how it might look. 

The above are from Outlast which although I’m not looking for something as big as this, the underground atmosphere and pretty gory characters is the style I’m interested in. 

Next, is Layers of Fear, a big influence for my game. The way it deteriorates using not a lot more than setting to convey the player character’s perception is really clever. This is an element I’d like to play with to represent the deteriorating state of the player in a more subtle manner. 

Finally, I have these really cool red ominous images that use one colour really effectively to create atmosphere. I found these on pinterest so unfortunately they don’t seem to have one source as they were everywhere from multiple accounts but this illustrates an idea I may introduce. By using a limited colour palette, it could capture a certain tone more effectively in a simple way. I think red is too intense but it definitely a concept I’m thinking about further. 

I don’t want the horror to be necessarily as explicit as that of Outlast or The Evil Within but more of a shift in atmosphere like Layers of Fear. Alongside an already dark and underground setting, I hope it’ll put the player in that unsettled state where decision making becomes harder. 

I’ve also decided to simplify the story element, using one player character in a more discovery role/experience that is more interactive than something like Dear Esther, but still focuses on exploration and decision making (e.g. choosing to believe one person over another) instead of specific puzzles.

Back to story I go! 

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VIDEO: Take a real good look at Dundee's new VR arcade - The Courier

Dundee is fast becoming a virtual reality haven as the city's second such offering opens at City Quay.

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Making Progress...

So a slight update on where I’m at project-wise. 

Do I have a title yet? Not really.

Here’s the shortlist though: 

- Overseers

- Absolved: Surviving Subland

- Seeing The Truth 

- The Broken Path

All very different, I know. Feel free to put in a vote. It’ll definitely be more clear as the story comes together so I’m not worried about it. 

I’ve been battling with concept for a couple weeks now. I roughly knew world and form the scope was growing and growing and becoming a bit out of control. Having had a play around with the program Twine (thank you so much Cara Ellison, your lecture was so fun and fascinating), helped me experiment better with structure.

Along with the influence of Angry River which I talked about in my last post, I have the following concept...

In a dystopian Edinburgh, humanity has been forced underground to hide from monstrous bio-mechanical machines that stalk the streets above. These monsters are the result of prosthesis gone wrong, taking over those they inhabit and turning them into mindless machines. Down below, in Subland, people are split into three main segments, Underburgh, Buckie and The Observatory. The Observatory contains a religious sect called Neo-Occulists who prophecise the descent of the Goddess Veloria who will come and save them from humanity’s technological nightmare, rewarding them for being true believers. However, they predict her evil twin Eldamara will attempt to deceive and destroy them first.  I’ve done some hefty world building and lore writing this week which will help add substance to this world and influence the player’s decisions and determine what information they find.

Play as either a survivor in Subland, arriving at The Observatory for the first time looking for sanctuary, or a resident of this segment when a stranger appears. 

Will you support their beliefs as the survivor?

Will you trust the stranger and allow him into your community? 

Could their connection be the key to discovering more about the Gods?

While this is quite a decision based game, it won’t have a huge amount of branches (partly due to time restriction) so instead I want to focus on the discovery elements and give the player plenty to find and discover about the world along their journey. I think this will add more to the characters and weight to the choices they make. 

In terms of platform, I have an extended post on that from last week but to recap, it hasn’t changed. I still think PC/Mac either through Steam or a browser is the best fit as the game will stem directly from a website based on the wider story world. This keeps the interactivity to the same platform which makes for a more seamless transition. 

So, my to do list: 

- Develop the two player characters

- This will help determine the story for each of them 

- Which in turn identifies how many non-player characters I’ll need 

- Then I can develop those 

- At this stage I will should have enough information for my pitch (adding the business elements to this as well) 

-  I’ll be ready to write it into Twine

It’s a lot...I’ll need plenty coffee. 

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Interactive Film: The Angry River

So with the massive hype over Netflix’s Bandersnatch, interactivity seems to be seeping into everything; adverts, films, tv. The past few week’s classes have definitely showed that interactivity is everywhere, it’s not just resigned to video games but even a game with friends is interactive. 

That being said, film is something that previously has only been interactive so far as between those watching rather than any interaction happening between the film itself and its audience. This is something we are seeing now in a different way with the introduction of using technology on your phone to interact with a film you are watching (because let’s be real, we all seem to struggle to put our phones down for as long as 2 hours now). But to engage audiences on a further level, we have interactive films. 

We know how Bandersnatch works: it’s a choose your own story type deal where the viewer can select a decision using a controller or remote, therefore deciding on a particular narrative journey (and a lot of dead ends). 

However, writer/director of The Angry River (2017), Armen Perian believes this technology pulls us too much out of the immersive experience when we have to physically make a decision. To create a seamless journey, The Angry River uses eye tracking technology through your webcam to make your decisions. The film chooses everything from colour palette to story perspective based on where you are inclined to look. The film lasts anywhere between 8 to 20 minutes based on whose perspective you are seeing the story through. 

Instead of your usual choose your own adventure story that gives you multiple plots, this film gives you the same plot told multiple different ways, decided by your unconscious decisions. I found this idea of multiple perspectives fascinating and a really original way of approaching interactive storytelling. This leaves you questioning the validity of each character’s version of events, further immersing you into the story. 

Unfortunately I watched this through twice, both with the same perspective and little ability to manipulate my own decisions because it is less about choice and more of a natural subconscious choosing. This could be potentially alienating and frustrating as I really want to see more of the story but was I interested enough to try it a third time? I’m not so sure. 

This approach also explores structure in an interesting way. Scenes are revealed or not revealed depending on the story you choose. Although my experience was quite limited so my story didn't feel very whole, this also leaves you wanting to know more and watch another time. 

I learnt a lot from this experience I can apply to my own project. In particular, the approach of different characters rather than plots is one I may steer towards when creating my story. Creating that doubt in the viewer as to which character’s story is the true one, creating multiple unreliable narrators definitely gives the viewer a more immersive experience. 

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New Reality Company worked across games development and video effects to bring about a virtual reality immersive experience.

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How to Take Advantage of Interactive Marketing Right Now

Brands effectively using interactive-content marketing enjoy a steadily growing customer base.

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You can now listen to an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure audiobook with Alexa

Audible’s narrators bring a new depth to interactive storytelling.

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Former Telltale employees form new studio focused on adventure games

AdHoc Studio looks to advance the work of Telltale Games.

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How will we play your game?

Since last week’s platforms class, I’ve been exploring and thinking about what platform my project will be best suited for and how I can make the most of the mechanics it brings. 

As I mentioned before, I previously had an idea of what I wanted to use and why. Although I spent a lot of time questioning and analysing this decision alongside the discussion from class, I am happy to say I haven't changed my mind. 

So let’s get into it...

My interactive story (is it too much of a stretch to call it a game?) will be designed for PC and more specifically, Steam (or maybe a browser). This means it could reach a wider audience and is more accessible as you don’t need a specific console to play it. It is part of a wider transmedia project so in this sense it will be easier for people who may have visited the website to then stay on the same platform and open the game to play it rather than losing part of the audience because they don’t have the console or can’t be bothered. 

The long term goal would be on the Subland website there is a map of Subland and when you click on The Observatory area it’ll take you either to the browser game or the Steam game. If you keep your website open it’ll update your findings which will alter info on your account and things you see on the site.

This is quite audience focused and my reasoning on a mechanics level is again about accessibility. Steam is known more for smaller games and people would more readily try out a game on there than they would on the playstation where it is known more for huge AAA games. 

The suggestion in class was that we are moving towards a world where anyone will be able to play any game on any platform they choose. While I don’t disagree, this doesn’t mean that it’s not important to consider your audience of a particular platform. I do however think that the different mechanics platforms can bring is an interesting element. I want my players have a degree of free roaming in the world, allowing access to certain areas depending on what decisions or storyline they are following. Exploring is a big part of the purpose of my game, as is uniting different audiences by bringing readers to the gaming world and vice versa. This means the mechanics should be simple and fairly unrestrictive as it is about discovery and story. 

For this reason, I think PCs allow the easiest and biggest range of motion using the keyboard or mouse to move and click on things of interest. If you are more comfortable with a console controller, you could also plug one in to a computer anyway. 

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Twitter: Professional or Personal?

I had an interesting (and a bit cringey) nostalgia trip through my Twitter account. I joined in 2009, only three years after it was founded. A decade is a long time for a social media platform to remain popular and Twitter is more popular now than it ever was, yet its barely recognisable from the place I knew as an angsty teen. 

You can learn a lot about society from the evolution of its social media though and how its use changes. Initially a small space I used it for chatting to friends and sharing pictures, limited to the nice brief 140 characters. The internet didn’t feel like a huge space on Twitter and nothing intruded on the space you built for yourself. 

Now, like everything else on the internet, we can’t get away from things we don't want to see. Advertising mostly. From everyone though. It’s used as a professional tool, connecting to the community you might be interested in becoming involved in or merging your personal and professional life. Where is the boundary? I don’t think there is one anymore. Which comes back to my concerns I mentioned at the beginning of this journey with the The Seven Deadly Digital Sins. Society has become so reliant on social media that we can no longer distinguish between our lives and others. 

Its not all bad though. One of my favourite parts of Twitter is the way it is used to tell stories and share art. Not in an obnoxious marketing way but a thought provoking, quick way to read a story. It makes readers out of all of us. The limit of (now) 280 characters is a huge restriction to create a story in but it can produce some of the most interesting and intriguing concepts.

I also find it an interesting tool for Transmedia. There are so many fictional characters with Twitter accounts that bring real creativity to the platform and as Twitter is so easy to use and manage separate accounts on, it can be a fun way to reach audiences and create a new world with multiple characters. 

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My Gaming World

After looking at what kind of games I am interested in and why in my last post it was easy to see what kind of game I should be designing. 

A little bit about the world I am creating this project within....

Subland has been built underneath Edinburgh in 2038 by survivors. Above, the city is overrun by monstrous machines and bio-mechanical people who have lost their minds. The only thing these monsters care about is metal and power - they’ll do anything to get it and return it to The Creator who resides at The Core, deep within Subland. 

Subland consists of three main ‘segments’ that are the biggest and most advanced pockets of civilisation, with a handful of other ‘clusters’ throughout which are smaller camps of people. These are all interlinked by mazes of tunnels built as needed for people to travel around.

In the crumbling of humanity, a new religion formed: Neo-Oculism. Residing below the Royal Observatory, Neo-Oculists are divided into three tiers: seers (general believers), Zeniths (committed followers and helpers) and Eyeless (devoted priestlike sect). They are led by the teachings and prophecies of The Lens. In short, they are watching and studying, waiting for the descension of the God they believe will save them from this technology ruined world and take them to a ‘pure land’. They do not believe in the merging of metal upon flesh as has ‘corrupted’ humanity so all are free of the prosthetics that have become commonplace on people in 2038. 

In this sect of the survivors I want to place the player, giving them three avenues to explore. They will discover what has happened to the world and more importantly, how their role and their decisions will affect the outcome. 

This is part of a larger transmedia project, the novel of which I am working on for major project. This novel follows another aspect of Subland, only scratching the surface of the potential of the Neo-Oculists’ involvement. By integrating a game, it can unlock this part of the world without crossing the other story or interfering with it. It just adds meaning if you chose to experience both which is my understanding of the best use of transmedia (I have been using A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling by Andrea Philips for a deeper understanding and it has been fab, I highly recommend it to anyone doing anything transmedia!)

With all this in mind, I am focusing on platform now. At this point I have chosen PC and more specifically, Steam. I’ll go into the reasons for this in my next post and after this week’s class on platforms that may change my mind or help my reasoning, let’s see! 

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Storytelling and Gaming

As a lead up to the latest development of the big project, I wanted to look a bit more about, not necessarily the games I love (because I would be ranting for a while), or the games that shaped my childhood (last week’s lecture got me feeling nostalgic), but about the types of games that shaped my interest in the industry as a writer not a gamer. 

I want to talk about Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. The only game ever that has made me shed a tear. The game that made me think, yes this is what I want to do. And made me believe I could. 

Developed by The Chinese Room (who developed Dear Esther which we looked at in class). Poor Dear Esther was criticised for being a ‘walking simulator’ but there is a clear evolution between that and Rapture. It took the beauty of landscape and the power of a story and implemented game mechanics. This took away the more passive player of Dear Esther and made it interactive, introduced discover and jeopardy with a compelling story. Rapture is a first person adventure game where you play a character who has woken up in a village in 1984. Your objective is simple - find out why and how everyone has disappeared. 

The graphics are stunning, the soundtrack is amazing. It is a game for non gamers and gamers alike. It is this area - the in between I think is the most important space for a writer and where I think the games industry is only opening up further. We can see mechanics like this in other games I also love like Heavy Rain, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and Until Dawn. 

As a horror fan, Until Dawn got me beyond excited (and terrified). This is also a game that is influencing my project. Developed by Supermassive Games, it takes ‘the butterfly effect’ and uses it as a game mechanic wherein every choice you make as you play various teenagers trapped in a cabin in the mountain really could mean life or death for them. Decisions big and small effect your outcome and who survives in ways you can’t predict (wishing doesn’t get you anywhere - googling would though). This is also reliant on story, with little gameplay beyond movement, discovery and decision making.

These games put story front and centre without boring the gamer or confusing the watcher. 

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Find The Red Button...

I dived into the world of Exoriare, interested in the combination of a text based game hidden inside a comic. While I love tech and as I’ve mentioned before, the possibilities it opens are endless, that doesn’t necessary mean we have to digitise everything. For me, graphic novels and comics are one of those things. I’m definitely partial to a good old paper book over its kindle counterpart anyway but the art and the way we consume a comic is beyond that. Having it to hold is part of the experience of reading graphic fiction.

However, I understand the purpose was to hide a game within the image of the comic which was pretty cool and a fun way to have a reader interact more with the images they are looking at. I would have loved to see more of this, not necessarily all games but even interactive images that realised more meaning or snippets of other stories within the panels of this one.

I also found it a bit frustrating. When I’m playing a game, I go into game mode no matter what I’m playing, my competitive side comes out and I want to win. The game, while immersing me into the world further than the comic did, also was a bit too singular in the choices I had to make, leaving me little freedom to explore. I didn’t want to push the button but it seemed like I couldn't get round the option (this might just be me being impatient!), forcing a consequence I didn't want which took a bit of my meaning away.

This was the most useful takeaway I found from the Exoriare experience. It reminded me that there are plenty others who would expect the same, an ending, an outcome, a sense of finality. So even though I may be creating a story with many mediums and elements and a game that feeds to and from the other stories, each part needs to have that sense of finality and a satisfying outcome where the user feels as if they have had the freedom to explore if that is the sense of the game and they know where they stand at the end. Striking that balance between a meaningful outcome that still invites the user to explore beyond will be the challenge!

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Let’s talk Transmedia...

From discussions in this weeks class around Art of the Heist and Why So Serious, to the intricacies of creating narratives across multiple platforms while reading Andrea Phillip’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling (highly recommend), it seems I’ve unlocked my project!

The level of interaction and meaning that can be created for readers and audiences in a transmedia story is both exciting and a bit scary for a new writer. But it also has so much flexibility to create as much or as little and add as you go that I think that’s worth reminding my ambitious brain sometimes and realising it is possible for someone with a budget of 0. 

Isn’t frustrating when the film, book, or game you were so invested in ends? You go through that heartbreak and temporary hole in your life where that world and those characters used to be. This is why I want my story to be transmedia. I want there to always be more to be involved in, more to know about characters, more to do in the world, more to explore. I would agree with Phillips when she expresses society’s shift towards transmedia as our form of consuming stories in the future. It's all about our ‘too much gene’ I mentioned in my last post. We always want to discover more and I want to create it. 

That being said, within the world of my major project I want to start adding new elements that won’t appear in the main story and different ways to discover these stories. So for my project in Interactive Media, I want to explore how a video game can tell a new story. I have created a dystopian world where bio-mechanical monsters rule, forcing humanity into and underground land. It’s so visual and I would love to bring that world to a game. Will it be ARG or VR? First let’s decide what story I want to tell....

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The Beginning...

It makes sense to me to start with a bit about my current technology/internet standpoint and then where I want to go and what I want to explore. Then I can (hopefully) avoid too many rants and tangents along the journey.

I’m in two minds when it comes to technology. In one sense, the opportunities it brings and the differences it can make to so many people’s lives is amazing. Particularly for my generation and those younger, the prevalence of technology and its capabilities now, provides an escapism that is available to everyone in infinite forms. It’s this escapism that I’m excited about because it gives writer’s so many avenues for storytelling where anything we can imagine can be shared with other people. 

Talking of sharing though, this is where everything gets a bit much. Watching the Seven Deadly Digital Sins summed up the problem: social media. It has infected us all with the ‘too much’ gene where nothing is ever enough and we always want more, share more, take more while no one is really engaging with anyone or anything else on more than a surface level. It’s an all consuming world which I guess for a storyteller can be simultaneously horrifying and exciting. 

Since getting a taste of the games industry and a glimpse of the future for writers in media - an industry that will only grow further, I have developed an interest in different ways technology can tell stories. Learning more about each area of interactive media and the industry will (hopefully) guide me towards my identity as a writer and help me decide where I want to go beyond the course. And we can have fun because if it’s not fun, what’s the point?

Let’s play!