{"id":310,"date":"2014-05-25T20:09:08","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T00:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.scad.edu\/ascarb21\/?p=310"},"modified":"2014-05-25T20:09:08","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T00:09:08","slug":"outline-further-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itgm-thesis.aliciascarborough.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/25\/outline-further-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Outline – Further Development"},"content":{"rendered":"

Using Social Media for Interactive Storytelling<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Intro\n
      \n
    1. Thesis statement and design context – Interactive stories are usually a solo experience; with today’s technology interactive stories can evolve to include more than one user to interact with the story. By providing a means of collaboration through social media to unlock\/solve\/choose the path of the interactive story it will allow users to gain different perspectives and share the experience with their friends, colleagues and family.<\/li>\n
    2. Problem Statement – 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\u2019s input unless the story is read in group setting but still the choices are left to the individual who is controlling the story\u2019s navigation. In other words interactive stories are their own silos.\u00a0<\/li>\n
    3. Proposed Solution – By introducing social media into the equation we are opening up the story world to a wider audience and allowing the story\u2019s end point to be varied better. 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.<\/li>\n
    4. Project Introduction – Design a website where users can interact with one another’s stories and either hinder or help their progress along the way. This site\/application will allow for registered and un-registered users to play a story path based on events and requested assistance in Tweets or Facebook posts. Utilizing social media services such as Twitter and\/or Facebook outside users can interact with their friend’s stories without needing to sign up to add to the story. Instead of posting usual pleas on social media networks the posts will give users the option to mess with their friends and to pose new challenges as they try to work through their current story line.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
    5. Historical References\n
        \n
      1. Interactive Storytelling and Games – what constitutes as an interactive story and when is it considered a game? Can it be considered both? Or is a game just a game?\n
          \n
        1. Chris Crawford\u2019s explanation of interactive storytelling – Crawford firmly believes that games are not interactive stories and interactive stories are not games.<\/li>\n
        2. Carolyn Miller\u2019s viewpoint on interactive storytelling – Miller\u2019s point of view on interactive storytelling is that interactive stories can be games but not all games can be interactive stories.<\/li>\n
        3. Social Media and the games\n
            \n
          1. Rise of social media and the social game boom – Social media games started to rise in 2008 and became an epidemic on Facebook. As Facebook continually changed their framework on how the news feed worked for a user the games became less prominent.<\/li>\n
          2. The decline of social media games – As social media clients continue to refine their feeds the users will need to actively seek out games instead of passively have them served up in their feed. This in itself has contributed to the decline of games on social media.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
          3. Predecessors of \u201cLegendary Quests\u201d\n
              \n
            1. Chris Crawford\u2019s projects \u201cErasmatron and Storytron\u201d\n
                \n
              1. Erasatron – an engine for running interactive story worlds. Users found the project to be difficult to use and thus it was considered to be a failure by Crawford himself.\n
                  \n
                1. What it is and what it does<\/li>\n
                2. Pros<\/li>\n
                3. Cons<\/li>\n
                4. Lessons Learned<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                5. Storytron – a newer version of Erasmatron with improvements however it too was found to be difficult for the user to use easily.\n
                    \n
                  1. What it is and what it does<\/li>\n
                  2. Pros<\/li>\n
                  3. Cons<\/li>\n
                  4. Lessons Learned<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                  5. Kings Quests series by Roberta Williams\n
                      \n
                    1. About Kings Quests – a point and click adventure game (earlier versions required the use of the keyboard arrow keys) created by Roberta Williams, co-founder of Sierra Entertainment. It was first released in 1984.\n
                        \n
                      1. Interweaving timeless fairytales and lore into the story and game – this was the fun and memorable part of the games was to see how the timeless tales such as Little Red Riding hood met King Graham on his adventure in Kings Quest II.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                      2. Interactive Story portion – technically it was really a non-linear narrative game however in the later versions it was somewhat consider to be an interactive story since the player could branch the story to other possible events.<\/li>\n
                      3. Game portion – figuring out the various puzzles and avoiding monsters was the challenge of the game.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                      4. Never Winter Nights by BioWare – allowed the player\/user to create their adventures using the tool provided with the game; this feature also allowed them to share their creation with their friends over the internet provided that their server was not blocked by a firewall.<\/li>\n
                      5. RPGMaker – allows for the creation of top down tile based role playing games<\/li>\n
                      6. Zynga\u2019s games – utilizes the freemium principle allowing players to play their game for free and work to gain a certain goal or the player can choose to pay real money to advance to those goals.\n
                          \n
                        1. Farmville – released in 2009 and was one of the most popular games on Facebook. It involved managing a farm such as plotting land, growing crops and raising livestock. As the character\u2019s level increased the higher items would become unlocked allowing the player to do more within the game world.<\/li>\n
                        2. Castleville – released in 2011; it is another game created by Zynga and is widely popular on Facebook. It has a medieval setting and uses fantasy based creatures and characters to tell a story as the player completes daily grind tasks.<\/li>\n
                        3. Treasure Island – Released in 2010 on Facebook. The premise of this game was to allow the players to explore the different islands to dig for treasure. The players would have to complete certain tasks to gain traction within the game or pay to advance to the next goal. This game was discontinued in 2012.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                        4. StoryBird – Collaborative story creation with authors and illustrators. Allows for authors to focus on their story while the images used within the story are created by illustrators. This allows for rapid creation of stories and is perfect for young authors to get their feet wet writing. Their stories can be shared with family, friends or anyone based on the share settings. The author can even choose to sell their book when they are finished writing it.<\/li>\n
                        5. SpyFeet – a social outdoor role playing game. It utilizes GPS on mobile devices to determine movement from the player to see if they meet the needed goal for the next part of the story. The game also uses the Spy-Gen language generation engine for the various range of character dialect within the game.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                        6. Current Trends\n
                            \n
                          1. Example of applications such as StoryBird, RPGMaker and CandyCrush Saga\n
                              \n
                            1. StoryBird – allows authors to team up with illustrators to tell a story. This application has opened the doors to young authors who want to focus on their stories and can find matching artwork later. This application is a wonderful collaboration tool and is used in some public school classes today.<\/li>\n
                            2. RPGMaker – an application where users can create their own top-down tile based game. The application provides artwork so that the user can focus on the game\/story that they are trying to build.<\/li>\n
                            3. Candy Crush Saga – an addictive match three game, that is available on many platforms, that tells a story as the user finishes sections filled with various levels and challenges.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                            4. Social request overload (making users turn a blind eye to requests)<\/li>\n
                            5. Contrasting school of thoughts (if any) – Chris Crawford vs Carolyn Miller<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                            6. Project Description\n
                                \n
                              1. Overview of \u201cLegendary Quests\u201d – Allow for users to collaborate through social media to create interesting story quests with an online application that will host the stories.<\/li>\n
                              2. Target Audience – The typical users of \u201cLegendary Quests\u201d would be those who like comics, role-playing games, stories and SciFi. Target age range would be mid-teens to mid-thirties.\n
                                  \n
                                1. Personas<\/li>\n
                                2. Needs<\/li>\n
                                3. Scenarios<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                4. Design Goals\n
                                    \n
                                  1. Increase outside influence on a group\u2019s choice within an interactive story by allowing the group to post these choices to their various social networks.<\/li>\n
                                  2. Do not require people who click the links to install the application. Allow them to peruse the site without interrupting their flow; if they choose to join they can choose to just follow a groups adventure or join in on the fun.<\/li>\n
                                  3. Stories\n
                                      \n
                                    1. The story line is boring if kept linear. Adding the ability to alter the story line adds excitement and possibly intrigue from the end user.<\/li>\n
                                    2. Continuous story lines would be beneficial thus allowing the user to explore the story world with follow up adventures and work on memory retention.<\/li>\n
                                    3. New or mixed in characters would add variety to timeless tales and add that tiny bit of alteration to the storyline.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                    4. Solution\n
                                        \n
                                      1. Description of visual project \u201cLegendary Quests\u201d and how it will function<\/li>\n
                                      2. Why \u201cLegendary Quests\u201d offers a unique solution for social collaboration in context of story creation and social games.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                      3. Relevant process (extra information such as survey questions & poll might be more appropriate as an added addendum)\n
                                          \n
                                        1. Various polls on Facebook and Twitter asking their input about current social games and what they would like to see different that would perhaps peak their interests.<\/li>\n
                                        2. Methodology of Solution\n
                                            \n
                                          1. Method\n
                                              \n
                                            1. Programming Environment – Linux Based servers – LAMP-stack<\/li>\n
                                            2. Programming Language – PHP, Python, MySQL, HTML, CSS3, JavaScript\/jQuery, SOAP<\/li>\n
                                            3. Tools – Twitter and Facebook APIs<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                            4. Design Process\n
                                                \n
                                              1. Stories – story templates and possible events<\/li>\n
                                              2. Sketches – logos, characters, items story node templates<\/li>\n
                                              3. Target Audience research\n
                                                  \n
                                                1. Personas<\/li>\n
                                                2. Surveys to figure out their needs<\/li>\n
                                                3. Scenario development<\/li>\n
                                                4. Observation based on set scenarios<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                5. Navigational flow diagram<\/li>\n
                                                6. Wireframes<\/li>\n
                                                7. Low-Fidelity Prototype (proto.io)\n
                                                    \n
                                                  1. Discovery of user paths<\/li>\n
                                                  2. Build initial layout<\/li>\n
                                                  3. User Testing<\/li>\n
                                                  4. Results<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                  5. Mid-Fidelity Prototype (proto.io)\n
                                                      \n
                                                    1. Refinement of user paths and prototype based on findings from the previous prototype<\/li>\n
                                                    2. User Testing<\/li>\n
                                                    3. Results<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                    4. High-Fidelity Prototype\n
                                                        \n
                                                      1. Refinement of user paths and prototype based on findings from the previous prototype<\/li>\n
                                                      2. Test Social API connections<\/li>\n
                                                      3. User Testing<\/li>\n
                                                      4. Application Stress Test<\/li>\n
                                                      5. Results<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                      6. Final Prototype\n
                                                          \n
                                                        1. Refinements of user paths and prototype based on findings from the previous prototype<\/li>\n
                                                        2. Refine Social API connections<\/li>\n
                                                        3. Application Stress Test<\/li>\n
                                                        4. User Testing<\/li>\n
                                                        5. Results<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                        6. Validation of solution (or lessons learned from solution)\n
                                                            \n
                                                          1. Story creation benefits – easy to use with little no hassle<\/li>\n
                                                          2. Social media benefits – allows for easy sharing of events that happen in their stories and encourages a conversation between users on social media<\/li>\n
                                                          3. Lessons learned<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                          4. Reception of \u201cLegendary Quests\u201d\n
                                                              \n
                                                            1. Feedback<\/li>\n
                                                            2. Area of improvement (if any)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                            3. Conclusion\n
                                                                \n
                                                              1. Attribution of best practices<\/li>\n
                                                              2. Reiteration of whether thesis goals have been satisfied<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                                                                Using Social Media for Interactive Storytelling Intro Thesis statement and design context – Interactive stories are usually a solo experience; with today’s technology interactive stories can evolve to include more than one user to interact with the story. By providing…<\/p>\n

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