All posts tagged ‘storytelling’

About a year after it came out, Mass Effect blew my mind.  When I picked it up, I didn’t know much about the game.  Just that the reviews were good.  It seemed to involve running around doing some science-fiction oriented shooting.  I’d heard there were some RPG elements.  And the second-hand copy I saw at Gamestop was cheap. 

I still remember buying it.  The store, the situation.  That’s how much that game came to mean to me. 

Because I had no idea.  I thought I was just buying a game.  Run, gun, la dee da.  Except that wasn’t what I’d bought.  I’d bought a story.  A brilliant, beautiful, epic story that took me, and involved me, and made me care.  I have cared for the characters in Mass Effect as I have never cared for characters in any other work of fiction.  Not a book.  Not a movie.  Not any other game.  My relationships with those characters meant something to me. 

There is a moment in that first Mass Effect game when you must choose which of two characters must live or die.  There is no good solution to the moment.  You have to pick which life to save.  It was a harrowing moment for me.  Two people who I cared for and one had to die.  I made my decision, and after a while I learned to live with it.  Continue Reading “After Mass Effect: Redefining Videogame Storytelling” »

Angel Punk is the new transmedia entertainment property from Relium Media. 

Technology is changing the way we receive and experience entertainment.  Over the course of three or four posts, I want to talk about several interesting trends in storytelling.  Today’s post looks at three new storytelling worlds, each of which span a variety of media platforms, and examines why the entertainment industry will be producing more of them for the foreseeable future. 

The germination time for an idea in the corporate entertainment industry seems to be about two to three years.  That is about the time it takes to make an idea into a movie, a game, or a book, for that matter.  A few years ago, the word “transmedia” became a hot topic among entertainment circles.  We are already seeing the results with much more on the way in the next couple of years. 

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.  Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. 

USC Professor Henry Jenkins.  Photo: Wikimedia CC

Jenkins argues that transmedia separates itself from traditional media franchises when the story is told using several different genres of media.  But there is the rub.  Corporate entertainment firms clearly see the benefit of providing a “unified and coordinated entertainment experience.”  These transmedia projects allow them to create multiple avenues for audiences to experience their products — the success of both Marvel and DC as movie studios have proved the profit behind the model — but they seem to continuously miss Jenkins’ point about dispersing the storytelling across the genres.  Since 2007, when Jenkins posted his definition of transmedia online, he seems to have been fighting a rearguard action trying to fend off those that see transmedia as simply another means to attract attention, rather than a new vibrant way to tell stories. 

Jenkins himself recognizes that efforts across genres are mostly related to world-building and back story, rather than integrated into a single narrative. 

Most often, transmedia stories are based not on individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories.  This process of world-building encourages an encyclopedic impulse in both readers and writers.  We are drawn to master what can be known about a world which always expands beyond our grasp.  This is a very different pleasure than we associate with the closure found in most classically constructed narratives, where we expect to leave the theater knowing everything that is required to make sense of a particular story. 

Transmedia world-building has become big business in the entertainment industry.  Recently, I have been exposed to three different media properties which are expertly exploiting transmedia principles to create larger more complex story worlds than they could if they limited themselves to only one type of media. 

Dungeons & Dragons: Rise of the Underdark

At PAX this year, Wizards of the Coast eagerly discussed with fellow GeekDad Dave Banks and myself their Rise of the Underdark campaign going on across the various genres of the D&D media properties.  The story of the attempt of the Drow Queen to return with her dark elves and rule the surface both influences the modules produced for their classic table top game and stands behind the adventures of their MMORPG .  WotC sees these storylines as a means to help unify the D&D experience, no matter what media is used to play.  They plan to introduce a new storyline on an annual basis, giving players a new set of worlds and characters to explore each year. 

SyFy: Defiance

To me, SyFy original programming has not been worth watching since it veered away from science fiction into paranormal.  Being a huge science fiction fan, I have to say that I miss shows like Stargate: SG1 and Battlestar Galactica.  After a long drought, SyFy is finally returning to SciFi, and I am intrigued by both the premise of their new show and the initial look of its visuals.  It also appears to have the storytelling chops to be something better than average. 

Defiance takes place nine years after Earth has been terraformed to be an ideal place for an alien civilization.  The remaining humans are beginning to put the pieces back together, and, if the trailer is any indication, to fight back.  What makes this project interesting from a transmedia perspective is that they will be releasing an MMO at the same time.  What better way to create a loyal community of fans than to put them all together in on online environment where they can converse and play in the world they love. 

Relium Media: Angel Punk

One of the most interesting adventures in the world-building style of transmedia is Angel Punk by Relium Media, a small start-up company out of Portland, Oregon.  Relium has taken the world-building aspect of transmedia and turned it into a business plan.  Their first story world, Angel Punk, will include different but related storylines in comic book, movie, and novel forms.  It is a fascinating idea to see if you can build an entertainment company from the ground up using transmedia principles as its foundation. 

Here is a look at their first production short from the set of their film. ( Trivia quiz: can anyone from the Pacific Northwest tell me where they are shooting?  I know.  It’s one of my favorite places.) 

It makes sense that the efforts among entertainment companies interested in transmedia have been focusing on world-building and extension.  From a profit point of view, these are the low-hanging fruit.  Telling interesting stories in a variety of media allows your company to take one story world and present it to a much larger fan base than you could with a single storytelling medium.  The impetus for much of these changes in corporate storytelling comes down to simple marketing.  The larger the fan base, and the more entry points for the fan base, the easier it is to achieve profitability and takeoff speed for an entertainment property.  If they are not careful, creativity can take a back seat to these concerns, and the value of transmedia ideas is lost or executed in an amateurish way.  But when executed well, they can create some of the most entertaining experiences on the market. 

But these huge projects are not the only ideas about how technology can change storytelling.  In my next post, I will talk about how transmedia concepts can influence a single story, rather than a story world. 

The Springboard powered Kickstarter campaign forStory Realms concludes this week.  While the final numbers aren’t in yet, the project looks to be a complete success, having raised over $50,000 dollars with several days to go.  The folks at Springboard have a whole slew of stretch goals ahead of them.  I am eager to see what they do if they surpass them all. 

As the Kickstarter finishes up, I wanted to take a moment and delve into the nuts and bolts of the game play, something we have yet to cover on GeekDad.  The basics will be familiar to anyone who has played a role playing game.  The Storyteller describes a scene or presents an obstacle to the players, who respond by telling the Storyteller what they hope to accomplish.  Then based on their desired tasks, the Storyteller asks the players to make a series of dice rolls to determine if they succeeded or failed in their attempts to accomplish their goals. 

The Storyteller’s board has lots of tips and reminders to set up a good tale. 

One of the things Story Realms does exceedingly well is take that basic mechanic and bring it down to a level that even young children can understand it and use it to tell a story.  To start, the dice are strictly six-sided, and success or failure of a roll is quite straightforward, a simple matter of counting up the number of successes vs. the number of failed dice.  In some situations, the number of successes needed is determined by the Storyteller based on the difficulty of the task chosen.  However, in most directly plot-related tasks, such as stopping an enemy, Story Realms offers a large amount of guidance to the Storyteller about just what constitutes a success.  Continue Reading “A Closer Look at Story Realms Game Play” »

The power of touchscreens and tablets in the learning and development of our children is in the way it offers even young children the ability to create and produce their own work and stories in digital environments.  For all the multiple choice question school worksheet simulation apps out there it is pleasing to see the real innovators exploring what a digital device can really achieve.  No single app should be expected to do it all, and this app certainly doesn’t claim that.  But Storypanda is a well executed learning and story-telling environment that deserves our attention. 

Storypanda is a kids interactive and media company that builds products and tools to help kids become content creators not just content consumers.  Storypanda Books allows kids and their parents to read, create and share interactive stories on the iPad.  If you are familiar with Toontastic, it offers a similar type of story-telling experience but in a more traditional book form, over the cartoon form. 

What I love about Storypanda is the efforts it has gone to in making an interface and content that suits younger children.  There are some choices, but not so many that it is overwhelming.  They give equal space for male and female characters that are not stereotyped.  It is attention to detail like this, at the intersection where design and content meet that represents quality digital design for children.  And, as parents, this quality design leads to fun and quality learning experiences and moments for our children. 

The Storypanda team sells the sharing of stories created by children with others as a great way of connecting children and parents.  But what is more exciting is the fact parents and children can sit together and collaborate on creating a story that helps reflect the child’s life and own interests.  This offering is deeper interactivity than many other similar tools.  You are not just inserting a child’s name into the text: you have control over the gender and age of characters, as well as renaming them.  Mum can become Dad.  Occupations can change.  The text itself can be reworded.  It offers a framework of a story (which is useful for younger children who find a blank canvass daunting) and children and parents can go from there. 

We need more apps that offer this type of co-viewing/co-collaborative experience between parents and children.  The Joan Ganz Cooney Center has begun a fascinating research project into just this phenomena.  It will allow us to begin to talk about screens not just as babysitting devices, but as tools that allow us to create and engage with our kids in new and interesting ways. 

So thanks, Storypanda, for being one of the companies to lead the charge.  May others follow. 

Storypanda is free to download and offers different titles through well managed in-app purchasing that is available and easily used by parents, rather than children. 

Note: The author received beta-access to Storypanda for the purposes of review. 

Kids Vision: a collection of children’s ideas for the future of technologyis a fascinating new publication from Latitude. 

Latitude has been engaged in a wide range of projects that have engaged children in telling stories and imaging what their future world will be like.  The core learning from talking to children about their expectations of the internet, their stories about robots and their approach to dealing with environmental issues is that children view technology very differently than adults.  Children experience technology in an emotional way; they don’t see it as separate from themselves, but as a part of what it is to be human.  The approach Latitude takes is very respectful of the capacity that children have and does not talk down to them, but is genuinely interested in how the people who will be making the future decisions about our world think about it now. 

Over the past few years, Latitude has taken a unique stance when it comes to children and technology: young people shouldn’t be merely passive recipients of media and technology, as they’re often thought to be — rather, they should be active participants in imagining and creating the future of the Web.  Why?  Because “digital natives” have a more intuitive relationship with new technologies than many adults have, and because they have different expectations about technology.  They instinctively expect it to respond to them in very human-like ways — to motivate and empower them, often serving as a sort of companion, rather than merely a tool for solving specific problems.  While many adults think about technology as separate from humanness, kids tend to think of it as fundamentally human. 

Sometimes, I get a little giddy when I think about all that the internet revolution has done to create opportunities for breaking down creative barriers.  It isn’t as if before the blog, storytelling was completely separated from the visual arts: paintings tell stories, and so do stained glass windows in churches.  But the evolution of storytelling begun by the printing press, which was continued by the combination of rapid photography and the projector, has accelerated in the age of the internet.  The Internet allows creators to take their product directly to the public like never before.  Kickstarter stands at the center of the whirlwind.  The use of technology to expand and change storytelling has led to an unstoppable, multifaceted explosion of creativity. 

This rapid evolution has helped develop a group of creators fascinated with stories that play in the margins between different types of media.  One excellent example is the fine story by Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  That wonderful (graphic) novel plays stupendously on the boundary between a text and a picture book, and its content is all about the wonder and magic of the early film industry.  It is simply a fabulous work. 

But there are other, more ambitious efforts underway to kick open the boundaries between the physical world and the digital world in storytelling.  One of those efforts just went up on Kickstarter last night.  Whenabouts combines elements of film, gaming, reading, and good old fashioned detective work to create a storytelling adventure for tweens. 

Sometime just before Christmas, packages will arrive in the mail addressed to tweens.  Inside the packaging will be a wooden crate.  The box will contain a diary with clues and the introduction to the online adventures of two teenagers who have made the mistake of borrowing their father’s time machine and are now trying to get home.  Over the course of the next six months, boxes containing clues will arrive once every two weeks leading to more online content from indie point and click adventure games to short films, twisting a serialized adventure together with the nostalgia of waiting for the post. 

Whenabouts is the brainchild of Steve Hardy, whose original concept had been a kind of mail order gift company.  The idea was to send recipients a great little wooden box which would lead to high-quality personalized online content from the giver, along with a gift card, or a charitable donation.  That company never achieved sustained flight but left Hardy with an infrastructure in place and a whole lot of information and experience which he brings to the table when creating Whenabouts. 

Hardy had always thought his mail order concept could be adopted to storytelling, and after his original concept failed, he has been working with Jason Whiting, a Toronto based comedian and writer, to create an adventure for tweens.  I asked Hardy what he is looking forward to the most if his Kickstarter campaign succeeds.  Hardy said that he was really excited to work with all the different creative talents from indie game designers to movie makers and actors. “ The joy for me is to pull all those threads together and make something from all the creative work.” 

The Whenabouts Kickstarter campaign runs through September 17th — however, there are some really great early bird specials, including the main package at well over half off the listed price, so don’t wait.  While you’re at it, check out some of the other great projects we have on our GeekDad curated Kickstarter page. 

I was entering junior high when I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons.  The first edition had been out a couple years.  Growing up just 20 miles south of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, I’m surprised it took that long to discover the game.  Years later, I am still waiting to reach one of my parenting milestones as a Geekdad: completing a D&D campaign with my kids. 

Last Christmas, I bought them the Fourth Edition Starter Kit.  Attempts to play didn’t take.  I found myself longing for an onboarding version of the game that would leverage their interest without the burden of the many nuanced rules.  A couple weeks ago, I got a fresh opportunity when the boys found my container of painted miniatures, a byproduct of my childhood exposure to D&D. With renewed hope, I created a scaled-down version of the game. 

My sons were interested in the idea of playing D&D, not learning it. ( photo: kmakice)

4E is not loved, but for a new generation learning from scratch, many of the standard complaints (e.g., lack of backward compatibility) can be ignored.  However, D&D lost my kids just trying to get started.  The storytelling method for generating an initial character was not written well enough to keep my older son engaged (he’s done a couple laps through Harry Potter, Fablehaven, and Percy Jackson series, so his expectations are high) and was too much reading for my younger son.  By the time I had separated the cardboard chits, the two of them had moved on. 

DnDish is an attempt to gut the game to a bare minimum while still giving the kids exposure to the basic mechanics and culture of D&D. My goal was to get everything down to a single page, but I settled for three once I added worksheets for the characters and dungeon master.  When we ran our pilot session with a couple of friends, the kids not only understood and enjoyed the evening, they left asking for more.  We’ve now scheduled a weekly game that may have as many as 8 players participating. 

Emphasizing Storytelling

There are two indisputable facts about D&D. First, there are a lot of rules.  Second, this is a game with a strong collaborative narrative.  The changes I made de-emphasized the former in favor of the latter. 

Everyone Starts With Nothing
Player characters start out with good health, some clothes, and nothing more.  You don’t have money.  There are no initial spells you know or weapons you’ve mastered out of the box.  Want to learn the incantation to put someone to sleep?  Better go find someone to teach you, probably while washing some dishes. ( My boys robbed a bank, of course, but negotiated a plan to sneak back in to return the “borrowed” gold after they get some more.)  Built-in poverty creates an immediate need to start doing something within the story as part of crafting the character.  Continue Reading “Simplifying D&D (You know, for kids?)” » 

Club Caveman is an interactive kids game that puts movie-quality animation into the iPad (source: Caffeine-Free)

As evident by the number of posts on GeekDad featuring such projects, Kickstarter is a great source for interesting and cutting-edge innovation in areas of gaming and technology.  One recent campaign is trying to elevate kids’ engagement with narrative by expanding the range of user interaction and quality of game animation. 

Club Caveman features a British-sounding narrator guiding the participant into a forest in search of a simple-minded caveman, Club.  The caveman reacts to the player through touch, voice and motion language and evolves as the story progresses.  The iPad application-in-progress was inspired by instructional Disney shorts where Goofy demonstrates a topic (like how to play baseball). 

On the surface, Club Caveman is reminiscent of Talking Tom Cat, a popular download by parents for their kids and hit in the Entertainment genre of the App Store.  Instead of call-and-response mimicry and overt buttons to trigger actions, however, Club has to deal with speech recognition and the orientation of the iPad.  Most importantly, the animation takes one giant leap forward. 

I first saw the Kickstarter trailer for The Banner Saga the same day I was introduced to a forthcoming, innovative story telling game for kids.  In the middle of my introduction to Story Realms by Escapade Games, I had a bit of an epiphany.  As I listened to Julian Leiberan-Titus of Escapade weave a tale through the guise of a game, I quite suddenly saw the connection between modern gaming and the prehistoric story-tellers spinning tales of love and bravery around a campfire even before they could be written down.  The results of that epiphany will be something I will be writing more about in the coming weeks, including interviews with the people over at Escapade and possibly others.  For now I will just say, my ears were still ringing a couple of hours later when GeekDad Jonathan Liu sent me the following video from Kickstarter:

Needless to say I was instantly intrigued.  Apparently I wasn’t alone!  The Kickstarter campaign funded at 723%, creating an opportunity for the three storytellers at Stoic to expand and improve their project in unexpected ways.  This week I finally got an opportunity to sit down with Alex Thomas, Creative Director for The Banner Saga and discuss their outrageously successful Kickstarter campaign, the corporate game industry, Eyvind Earle, and storytelling in video games. 

The author of this article is Dr. Kelly DeVries, a fantastic history professor I was lucky enough to have when I attended Loyola University (then College) in Maryland during my undergraduate years.  He’s a medievalist, among many things, and has recently published this great piece over at Foreign Affairs on the historical aspects of Game of Thrones. ( On a somewhat personal note, I love that almost ten years after graduation I can keep up with Dr. DeVries through Facebook and simultaneously discover that we have a mutual affection for Martin’s work.) 

For the history geeks among us, this is a must read.  DeVries gives a great overview on what is and what isn’t historical, and why keeping to the history books can actually be a good thing.  From the article:

Just how realistic is A Song of Ice and Fire? 

The short answer is “not very.”  Before hordes of angry fans launch their trebuchets in my direction, however, let me hasten to add that this is a good thing, not a bad one.  As a historian of the period, I can assure you that the real Middle Ages were very boring — and if Martin’s epic were truly historically accurate, it would be very boring too.  I’m glad Martin takes all the liberties he does, because I prefer my literature exciting.  Medieval people did also, which is why their own most popular literary creations were nearly as fantastic as Martin’s.