| 
| |
| I've been thinking a lot lately about storytelling and its place in adventure games... Storytelling for Children... and Technologically Savvy Adult Children Many of the different sources I've been reading lately on game design constantly refer to a pitiable condition know as Frustrated Author Syndrome (FAS), which I find quite worrisome. Essentially, FAS is the condition of a game designer having a really great idea for a screenplay or novel and forcing it into a video game format. While I am first and foremost an author and a problem-solver secondmost, I feel like VG succumbed to this kind of "forcing you through the story to get to the clever bit the author wrote next" problem. Too bad, really, but I wasn't competent enough at the time to accomplish or properly conceive of my next gamble. My future design concept is based on the way adults tell children stories at bedtime. Although the framework for the story (The Three Bears, Cinderalla, Ala al-Din and the Magic Lamp, etc.) already exists, children often want to know details about certain things. We all know that children will incessantly ask questions. This is one of their greatest gifts, but the most difficult to deal with ("Why is the sky blue?", "Why do dogs have wet noses?", "What makes rainbows?", et cetera ad infinitum). However, within the context of bed time stories, the child's questions will lead the adult to the "proper" course of events and conclusion that the child desires (if it is an especially capable adult) without the child even realising it. A similar effect is produced in the game version of Blade Runner. The game knows which of the three women the player prefers by the amount of time the player spends with that character. This effect is invisible to the user, hidden away in the code. If we could harness the player's own inquisitive nature to direct us towards a likely next step in our story matrix, then it could begin to seem as if the player truly did have an effect on the game world. Even if the change, overall, was scripted... if the invisible psychological interface was subtle enough, it would seem to the player that they caused the changes as they developed. | |
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
|
| ||
|
| ||
|
| ||
|
| ||
|
| ||
