Corvus’ “Interactive Storyscape”

Interesting post by Corvus Elrod, describing his approach to story/game creation: Interactive Storyscape.

I refer to the Drachurae Cycle as an Interactive Storyscape, as not only is it a narration built for interaction, but of interaction. Rather than craft linear plot lines and usher players through them, I create, characters, environments, and situations, which I invite players to explore, effect the outcomes of, and add their own ideas to the mix. This atmosphere of co-creation is at the heart of my storytelling and the digital incarnation of my work will incorporate it as much as conceivably possible.

Now, this seems on the face of it to be a description of a virtual world/MMOPG and the like — where players make the world come alive in many ways. But what Corvus is burrowing deeply into is the peculiar experience of writing for interaction. In such circumstances, one needs to create a world with characters and events that people want to be a part of, persistently; but also, one needs to consider what sort of events and characters and environment encourages co-creation. It is one thing for someone to like the space and the skin they’re in, it is another for them to want to (and feel they can) build upon it. How does this change a story? Well, I don’t have a quick list for you right now. For now, consider the following questions:

  • What sort of stories would you like to watch?
  • What sort of stories would you like to be in?
  • What sort of stories would you like to co-create?
  • What sort of stories would you like to create?

Can you say yes to all of them for the same story?

LOTR & Polymorphism

In a video interview on GameSpot (posted 14/11/05), a developer of The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II PC game said that “the first Lord of the Rings PC game to incorporate the book rights from Tolkien Enterprises as well as the NewLine cinema rights that EA has traditionally held.” The single-player campaign centers on the War of the North, which was not explored in the films. The developer says the wars were much larger and heavily invovled the elves and dwarfs. The events take place concurrently with the events in the films. Now, this is another wonderful example of how a storyworld is distributed over the media channels, over arts types and is not just an adaptation. Now, it is a kind of adaptation of the scenes in the book. It is not a faithful adaptation to try and redeliver Tolkien’s content. It is a use of the storyworld, events and characters to extend the ways in which audiences can experience Tolkien’s world and Peter Jackson’s rendition in the films. Although the events are covered in the books (though not all, it is a game and so the player will be creating events within the storyworld) they are not in the films. This means, for the un-book-initiated, it is a new part of the LOTR world. I also like that the events run concurrently to the events in the film. So, the parallel plots running in the book are now spread across mediums and arts types, not just abstractly in the reader’s mind. There is now a discourse (how the story is told) and device (how the story is experienced) difference. This is the polymorphic narrative paradigm. I cannot wait to get all these works into a visualisation software to show how the narrative universe works over the media channels, over time, across authors, etc.

Writing Predictions for the Next Decade

After grumbling in the previous post about how writers make predictions about technology and not writing, I have to put my words where my thoughts are. So, here goes some predictions about I think writing will change over the next 10 years. I say writing, not just digital writing because I’m into all forms of writing (cross-media, get it?).

Primary Satellite Texts!
Authors will start creating their own satellite texts around their works. At present, most writers add to their original storyworld is another book or film to make a sequel or trilogy (if they’re lucky). These usually require the same characters being developed. Secondary characters and sub-plots are explored and ravaged by the fans. I predict that we’ll see the original authors getting into producing short and full-length stories that explore and do anarchic things to their secondary characters and sub-plots, using their own name and through an alias. They will also explore other arts types and mediums.

Extreme Cross-Media Stories
More and more stories will be told in the transfiction style. By transfiction I refer to stories that are distributed over more than one text, one medium. Each text, each story on each device or each website is not autonomous, unlike Henry Jenkins’ transmedia storytelling. In transfiction (a term to counter Jenkins’, though they should be the other way around!), the story is dependent on all the pieces on each medium, device or site to be read/experienced for it to be understood. Basically, no single segment will be sufficient. These will vary between being experienced simultaneously and sequentially. Examples we see now are parallel narratives with TV shows that you can participate with by answering a quiz on the Web, mobiles, etc (especially here in Oz). But, we’ll see stories, not just games being experienced this way. In consequence too, we’ll see more technologies for having ‘hyperlinks’ between media. Using blue-tooth, wireless, infra-red or something.

Playful Devices for Adults (not sex toys!!)
I predict that more toys, more non-serious gadgets will also be used for storytelling. We’ve seen, with the development of ARGs and just natural human experimentation, the use of ‘real-world’ devices for storytelling (mobile phones, email, PDAs, etc). I predict we’ll see more fun toys, gadgets, one-off items and multi-use items that allow us to play with the storyworlds. I’ll look forward to spending more time in the adult sections of bookstores rather than being in the toy shop all the time! This will lead to more pervasive entertainment, but also extreme branded entertainment. In the end, I think rather than having products that advertisers embed ito entertainment to reach the audiences, we’ll see entertainment/creation devices being THE product to produce.

Stories embedded in Nature
At the same time as these playful gadgets I believe technologies will develop so that we can have more immersive storytelling in the real world. Characters, for instance, will be magically manifest with specially created fog projections (the technology is already out by the way); messages will appear in rock pools with specially created A-Life seaworms. Since the best stories are usually ones that use the medium in some way, I believe that these technologies will see more stories being written about Nature, magic and other magic-realism type genres.

Personalisation and the Shared Experience Crisis
More and more forms of entertainment will be created so that they are personalised to each audience member. By personalisation I refer to the abstract qualities for audience segments (think for instance about animated features and how there are jokes for kids and adults); and also to the technical personalisation for the individual abilities of the user. This will result in a crisis of reviewing and critiquing as there will be no shared experience of a work. What will happen then?

Return to Classic Storytelling
As a natural balancing reaction to the pervasiveness of collaborative authorship and epistolary fiction, there will be a return to the traditional form of fantasy storytelling with the single, narrated author and the stylised storytelling of the classics. We’ll even see the return of the old elaborate typography.

AI & Human Narrator Teams
Artificial Intelligence software will be utilised more for storytelling, including the simulation of AI. In the end, the best works will be those in which the author has a close relationship with the software program and the resulting work therefore is seen as a collaboration, a merging of the best two entertainers. So, we’ll see the Spielberg and C3PO colloboration and so on…:)

Portals to Quality Entertainment
We’ve seen companies become conglomerates. We’ve seen how many of these conglomerates are struggling. I think the move toward an entertainment company having many media outlets for a storyworld is the right instinct. But I think we’ll see more companies relying on storyworlds rather than mutliple products. So, for instance, we’ll have a conglomerate that is the guardian of the storyworld like King Kong. Since cross-media works exist over time, for many audiences, in many arts types, the production will be ongoing. There will also be related sub-worlds being developed and managed by the one company (see prediction one). For example, films about the world of giant creatures on the island etc. So, companies will manage worlds, not products, and they will find a way to link them all.