As a university professor who actively teaches courses with titles like "Interactive Story" and "Storytelling for New Media" or "Game Studies" it is perhaps natural that I receive a lot of questions about these relatively "young" transmedia topics. (One of those questions is "When are you going to go get a real job?" but I think dad has mostly stopped asking it because mom made him.) More commonly though I get questions from students looking for 'answers in their field' for everything from 'personal betterment' to a 'class assignment' from another professor teaching networking, to a thinly disguised example of the latter pretending to be the former. Below are a few of the most common questions I have received throughout the years and my mostly 'un-retouched' replies, courtesy of archived emails and a very precise gmail search. Enjoy!
1. How can the 'interactive nature of games' be used to benefit narratives?
Gameplay is the most important aspect of games. It is defined as the place where the mechanics of the game (anything the player does) meet the story being told (ie the developer's story) and the result is the player's story at whatever level of immersion and/or emergence allowed by the game's fundamental design and structure. Conversely, In a movie adaptation, the most important aspect should be a balance between the story originally told and the interpretation of that story to the screen. Peter Jackson said that decisions are made (ie it is edited) at three points for movies: 1) At the time of writing 2) at the time of filming 3) at the final edit. This is why we sometimes see "special editions" or "director's cuts" and perhaps why George Lucas can't stop picking the scab off of Star Wars long enough to let it heal. Much of my current research is focused on exactly this question and has led me to transmedia “crossovers,” especially with movies and TV, because so often people do not realize that movies are short stories - not visual novels. When we try to cram too much into 90 minutes we too often fail - whereas really good adaptations tend to be much longer films including many of the classics and more recent entries like the LotR Special Edition, and serial TV with one continuous story arc and smaller story arcs within a given episode (e.g., LOST, Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time) are really much more like novels - or perhaps more appropriately graphic novels. Why are the H. Potter, LotR and Star Wars games lame and stinky except for those entries with either original content like SW:TOR or Lego people? This is a translation issue. Why can the kid in Walking Dead (spoiler alert!) shoot the best friend in the second comic but not in the series until the second season and THEN only after he’s turned? Well aside from being 'better TV', it's the same reason that the audience for Mass Effect 3 has had such a strong reaction to the ending of the series: Agency! Read on and I’ll explain.
2. What are some storytelling pitfalls that game developers commonly encounter? (& How can these be overcome?)
There is no one "best" media for telling stories, but there certainly are media that one should NOT use to tell particular stories! Watch PICNIC 'O9: Once Upon These Times - New Stories for New Audiences with Matt Locke and Jeremy Ettinghausen and you will see that publishers have been experimenting with new ways to tell all sorts of stories for a while now in really cool ways - but not everything is right for a story anymore than barbecue sauce is right for all foods. (I've had it on breakfast cereal - not a good fit.) I suppose the same holds true for any media - there are things that are a good fit for it and things that aren't based on the characteristics and the purpose of the media type. I'd say that a NOVEL is best adapted into a mini-series. By doing this the story arcs can be preserved and the integrity of the work's many aspects retained. Note again though that a Short Story can often be done as a movie with no major ill-effects. I do not say "Video Game" suits it well for a few reasons.
1) The translation of a title piece into a game is often disastrous and ridiculous and often results in non- or extra-canonical content being included in the work.
2) The translation of a non-interactive piece into an interactive piece is often even more disastrous as we find ourselves needing to invent content - ie something for the player to DO when there was no need for it in the story originally.
That said, the most important rule of thumb is what I used to tell my Computer Game Design students: If it's not interactive write a book or make a movie out of it. DON'T try to make a video game!
1) The translation of a title piece into a game is often disastrous and ridiculous and often results in non- or extra-canonical content being included in the work.
2) The translation of a non-interactive piece into an interactive piece is often even more disastrous as we find ourselves needing to invent content - ie something for the player to DO when there was no need for it in the story originally.
That said, the most important rule of thumb is what I used to tell my Computer Game Design students: If it's not interactive write a book or make a movie out of it. DON'T try to make a video game!
3. When teaching courses on interactive storytelling, what are some of the core principles you focus on?
Much of my storytelling ramblings find their way to the COURSE BLOGS but I will happily summarize here for you. I like to consolidate theories into visual representations and my students know me as much for my ramblings as for my ability to organize them in various forms such as presentations which usually end up embedded in the post for that particular week. I had a NON-LINEAR STORYTELLING Prezi I created for Mechanics of Story that actually went viral a few years back. Regardless, aside from the stuff mentioned above already like GAMEPLAY and TRANSLATION - AGENCY is my number one go-to buzz-word. This is why. Books do one thing REALLY well: they engage the imagination. if Video games use agency for the purpose of immersion, then it must be considered an ACTIVE AGENCY. Non-game (ludic/interactive) forms such as books then by exclusion must be a form of PASSIVE AGENCY. If I say "picture yourself as a tree" and then let you describe your tree - you will do much better at "being" a tree than if I show you a picture and say "Imagine you are this tree." This is agency (a strong video game design principle) and is why a stage play in which a chair is said to be a beautiful oak is arguably more believable than a cheesy paper-mâché tree. Why? Its a difficult question that I will give you a very professory round-about answer for. It's the same reason why some people saw Harry Potter the first time and went - "Wait! That's not what Hogwarts is supposed to look like." If however you mean that War and Peace is more descriptive than a Twitter Novel then I would say it has more details, yes - but is more better? Charles Dickens was said to have been paid by the word when he wrote for the papers. Consequently he's considered a master of description. In effect, when his "chapters" were re-collected, bound, and resold the the same audience the novel was "invented" - the exact same words - still too wordy, yet somehow more than it was before and more than the sum of it's parts. We could make the same argument for a TV show. I like "Firefly." This statement implies I've seen all the episodes and the movie - but is that really required? I also like "Dr Who" - and while some would argue that the series was rebooted a while back others would say it is all one contiguous show - and I certainly have not seen all of those. In fact many are not even available anymore and much of the 8th doctor was radio drama only. Ironically, studies have shown that most people pick a book based on the cover art (what is that old saying about judging a book by its cover? Hmmm...) The point is this: Willing suspension of disbelief combines with the "fourth wall" when we engage in fiction (or any story really) and we have a better chance at succeeding as a storyteller when the audience understands what we are attempting to communicate. For those highly literate logophiliacs (look it up) reading is preferred in almost every case. I have a friend who is still incensed that Hermione's S.P.E.W. didn't make an appearance in the Potter movies - but the truth is we would have been in that theater all day if so! Those kind of details are best suited for a book, and while a picture may be worth 1000 words, our imagination is worth an infinite number of words (and pictures) including all the ones there are no words for. A picture captures it and locks it in. So for those who read about Hogwarts Castle and imagined something less grand than the one in the movie - to many of them the movie was better. That's OK too. If that kind of audience interaction isn’t interactive - then I don’t know what is!
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