Sunday, March 23, 2008

turn this all around behind us


These are just some thoughts I scribbled in a notebook a few months ago. I was thinking about how one would define an interactive story and the various elements of such a narrative.

Fate is the natural flow of events, the way the future from if the player moves forward on the simple/easiest path through the story.
Facts are creator authored elements of the story.
Static facts are the past, before the player began interacting with the world.
Once a player begins a game they become the creator, adding Dynamic Facts to the truth of the story. The facts are dynamic not because they themselves change, but because they are defined by the dynamic actions of the player.
Static Facts are absolute and will be true in any players game world.
Dynamic Facts are the results of personal player choice.
The combination of these will define the narrative of a players experience.

Dream of the Day:

A game about learning language. Initially the player can't understand anything the characters are saying. Over time the player can understand more and more of what they are saying, while also understanding more of the story. This parallel developement culminates in some revelation. Here the narrative is not dynamic but the learning process forms the interaction.

*Update* Also it seems there was a piece by Kieron Gillen about words in gaming over at Rock Paper Shotgun a long time ago that I missed. OK now I have had about enough of the computer for today.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like the definitions.

If you ever make a language game, you have to make me on that teaches Wookie.