Interactive Storytelling for Video Games (Unfinished)

Author: Josiah Lebowitz, Chris Klug. Pages: 332 Size: 3.15 MB Format: PDF Publisher: Focal Press - M.U.A.
Published: Sep 10, 2012
eISBN-13: 9780240817187
eISBN-10: 0240817184
Print ISBNs: PB: 9780240817170, 0240817176
BIC Classification: UG
Dewey Decimal Classification: 794.8
https://www.dawsonera.com/abstract/9780240817187

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Looking at interactive storytelling for video games to see if any upcoming technologies mentioned could help develop concept art in a beneficial way.

Notes and Quotes:

"Either way, taking that basic idea and expanding into a full-length tale that’s suitable for games is a very important task and one that, if done incorrectly, can easily turn even the best ideas into dull, uninteresting stories. To help you prepare for this process, we’ll start out by examining which types of stories are best suited for games and why, then move on to study a classic story structure that is used as the basis for a wide variety of stories, especially in the game industry. We’ll also take a look at some of the common themes and cliches ´ present in game stories and discuss when they should and shouldn’t be used."pg40

"The tools mentioned so far augment the "show, don't tell" nature of drama and must be used carefully as they affect the pace at which the story is consumed." pg42

Paraphrase this.
"... says the show don't tell nature of media must be used carefully as it affects the pace at which a story is consumed"

"For many players, the interactivity also helps them form a close bond with the characters much more easily than in print and film".  pg43

"One common mistake young writers make when they design characters is to make them general instead of specific. They fear that if the character us too specific, it will feel to the audience as if this is someone so unique that they couldn't possibly relate to them... Nothing could be further from the truth" pg111

"fully traditional stories are noninteractive. The "player" isn't a player at all, but rather a viewer who can only watch as scenes unfold." pg 125

"Although the viewer of a fully traditional story may have the ability to flip to the back of a book or skip through chapters on a DVD, thereby experiencing the story out of order, this can’t be considered truly interactive. First and foremost, doing so does not actually change the story, but merely the order in which the viewer sees it. Second, as discu ssed in Chapter 6, when a person turns page s or fast-fo rwards through movies, that person is not actually interacting with the story’s world or characters but instead with the medium containing the story (the book or DVD). Nothing the viewer does can change the story itself. Fully traditional storytelling has a rich history and is the style used to tell the world’s most-loved and well-known stories. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and the Star Wars movies, for example, are both fully traditional stories, as are ancient tales such as the Iliad, Romeo and Juliet, and the legend of Hercules. Story- tellers have spent thousands of years creating and refining the techniques used in fully traditional storytelling, creating a very mature and perfected style that is suitable for telling stories of any length and genre. The strength and beauty of fully traditional stories is that the writer is always in full control of the experience. Because of this, the author can shape the scenes in order to convey exactly the events and emotions he or she wants at exactly the right time. Ensuring proper pacing and keeping characters consistent and believable is far easier in fully traditional storytelling than in any of the other styles we’ll discuss. The only problem is that in their pure form, fully traditional stories can’t be used in video games." pg 127

"As such, the concept of fully traditional storytelling and that of video games are innately opposed. There have been some attempts at creating games that use fully traditional stories, but without interaction, is a video game really a video game? In the end, it would probably be more proper to call these “games” movies or digital novels. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have good stories in and of themselves, with their own unique advantages – they just aren’t true games. " pg 127

"Interactive Traditional Stories Interactive traditional stories combine the tightly controlled narratives of fully traditional stories with a degree of interactivity. They’re the most common type of video game story, due to a combination of familiarity, structure, and creation pro- cess (fo r more detail s, see the rest of this chapter and Chapter 13). They’re also extremely popular among players, as shown by the research data in Chapter 14. In an interactive traditional story, the main plot itself can’t be changed, or at the very least can’t be changed in any significant way. As with fully traditional stories, it will be the same no matter how many times the player experiences it. However, outside important story scenes, the player is given a degree of freedom to interact" pg 130