With  Laura Packer

Storytelling

• Inherent to all humans
• Conveys culture and history
• Allows people to talk about tought stuff safely
• Persuasive
• Transfers knowledge more effectively than charts and slides
• Builds community
• Fosters new way of thinking
• We all tell stories
• Basic ingredients of narrative media:
• Emotional hooks
• plot
• cultural element
• characters
• delivery system
• structure
• All narrative is interactive
• Elements:
• The creator
• Audience
• Story
• relationship between performed story and audience can inform relationship between games and their audience.
• The audience needs to have their own relationship and experience with their story.
• Creator to Story is a close relationship.
• In some cases the audience can have an impact on the story, sometimes they can have an impact on the character.
• The relationship between the story and the audience is vital
• “All the work of story happens in your audience’s head … you need to give them white space.”
• You need to give them the space to interpret the story, to have their own ideas about the story.
• We’re listening to an example story now about meeting the devil on a public bus. The idea is for the story to exemplify the idea of creating white space.
• Think about the characters of a story, can you see them? Even if they weren’t described in detail? Think about the setting? Our minds are automatically filling in the details of the story, even if there is no way to get those details from the story.
• The media
• The media impacts the relationships and degree of interaction possible. It changes the degrees of intimacy between the author, story and audience.
• Books
• Creator – Story – Audience
• As the creator spends time working on the story, it impacts who they are. Two way relationship.
• There is no real relationship between author and reader (generally speaking).
• The reader has a one way relationship with the story, they merely absorb.
• The experience of a book eventually fades
• Nor is it communal.
• Some, but not a huge amount, of white space in a book.
• It is up to what details the author decides to include. Additional detail draws people into the story. But that decision to create detail is up to the author.
• TV / Film
• Creator has two way relationship with story.
• Audience has mostly one way relationship with the story.
• But not much white space to imagine within.
• There is a slim relationship between the audience and the creator, as there exists a great deal of criticism.
• It exists in multidimensional time in that you can watch whenever, and pauses.
• Very little room for white space.
• Can be a communal experience.
• Theater
• Close relationship between author and story.
• Two way relationship between audience and story, as the actors can react to the audience’s reactions.
• Greater two way relationship between author and audience.
• A single experience in time.
• Non-repeatable.
• Audience is influenced by others around them – communal.
• Not a lot of white space.
• Storytelling
• Close two way relationship between author and story
• Close two way relationship between story and audience.
• Giving story to audience and the audience’s reaction immediately influences the author.
• Close two way relationship between the author and the audience.
• Exists beyond time:
• ‘when you are told a well crafted story it triggers the experiential elements of your brain’ The act of telling a story therefore ‘has a much longer latency’
• Very communal.
• Lots of white space.
• Gaming.
• Creators have close two way relationship with story.
• Audience has a much greater two way relationship with the audience.
• Also a two way relationship between audience and the author
• Because authors are also gamers and want to connect with other authors.
• Gaming community is a very active place.
• Expected that there is a dialogue between audience and author.
• Exists in multidimensional time.
• Highly shared experience.
• Even single player often has a person watching and telling you things you should do.
• In gaming there is an ownership of the storyline.
• Though it engages all senses, there is not a lot of space to imagine what is going on in the game, a lot of it is shown.
• It’s all about how the media interacts with the audiance.
• It’s about how to make gaming more like storytelling, making a deeper connection, changing the audience experience, making it more timeless and memorable.
• Gamers start young and the experience is shared from the beginning and creates a community. Interact with people all over the world. “Dive into the world in a truly astonishing way.”
• We want to move closer to the primal experience of oral storytelling that we yearn for.
• Increase sensory suggestions but also give them enough white space to experience it.
• Details about why the terrain matters.
• Conventions and cosplay help engage gamers with the story and the creators.

Q&A

• The experience of playing a game.
• Emergent Gameplay
• Disconnect in time between the feedback and the creation process.
• Story gets generated around everything.