The idea for the project is taking the interactive story and utilize Facebook and Twitter to continue the story. However the twist is that the user needs to work with others to unlock certain story nuggets to continue down certain paths.
The above touches on two things for the motivations of reading and re-reading an interactive story which are:
- Finding out more
- Seeing things from different perspectives
No offense to Chris Crawford but I would have to say that some interactive stories can be games too. Like the spoken language I would have to say that interactive stories have evolved to the point of involving game like qualities to make it interesting and challenging for the audience to WANT to finish the story. Heck, there is a movement out there now that involves implementing the gamification system into the workplace so that it makes employees want to do better and invest more into their work. Games are not bad but for the point of interactive stories the game will not be center stage but as a collaborative part in telling the story. In a way the above project would be an augmented reality game for it goes beyond the site to involve social media thus giving the 4th dimension feel to it.
Okay… we kind of have a solution… but what is this solution for? What problem are we solving for interactive stories?
As Professor Fu has said that I could focus on this as “designing for cooperative multi-user tasks.”
Using the formula for thesis statement I first need to identify the problem… so what is the problem? Well what is my solution? Providing a means of collaboration through social media to unlock/solve/choose the path of the interactive story will allow users to gain different perspectives or additional knowledge to the story in progress while still trying out what-if scenarios. The user will not need to be tied to their desktop but will be allowed to interact with the story via their mobile devices as long as they have access to social media.
Okay let’s take a stab at this… the problem that I see with interactive stories are that they require the person to interact with one site or application. The interactive stories are left to the individual to decide the fate of the story with no one else’s input unless the story is read in group setting but still the choices are left to the individual who is controlling the story’s navigation. In other words interactive stories are their own silos. By introducing social media into the equation we are opening up the story world to a wider audience and allowing the story’s end point to be varied better. Though the thought of interactive movies that relied on the audience’s choices does come to mind now that I have explained the conventions. I’ll continue to work on the question of what is the problem and then work on the correct phrase of the solution.
However in the meantime here is some interesting links that I found that relate to interactive storytelling and collaboration (not necessary used together)
https://games.soe.ucsc.edu/project/wide-ruled – so many interactive story systems out there but this one seemed to make it simpler for everyone
https://games.soe.ucsc.edu/project/spyfeet – this game is pretty cool for it waits for the player to walk a certain amount before the next iteration of the story is unlocked/told.
http://badgeville.com/wiki/Game_Design#Unlockables
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0730307646.htmlhttp://gamedesk.org/project/gamedesk-curriculum-playbooks/ – final game “Caesar Cipher ARG” seemed pretty interesting
http://www.openideo.com/challenge/youth-employment/concepting/sim-startup – this project was pretty cool and is kind of like what I’m looking into doing but with story nuggets instead of skill building.
Finally http://www.interactivestory.net/ I can’t ignore this link and I do plan on investigating it soon.