Imaginary relationships

A while back I gave a talk at the Groucho Club in London's Soho about creating emotional bonds in games and interactive stories. If that rings a bell, it's because I've posted it on this blog before. And yet the generations stream away and still gamebooks struggle to haul themselves out of the '80s mire of orc-infested dungeons where treasure chests come with riddles on the lid.

"You come to three doors and -- " Who cares? Interacting with a story can deliver so much more than that. So here I am again talking about the relationships that you might forge with fictional characters. The slides are a little out of sync; you'll see I start talking about Walt but his image doesn't come up on screen for a few seconds.But if you can get past that and the patchy audio (try here for the full text) hopefully it'll spark off some interesting comments for us to debate below.

Some takeaway points to get started on:

"I don't care about crystal meth distribution in Albuquerque, or even that much about crime dramas. But I am fascinated by the problem of Walter White. Character - that's what is compelling about a great story. And when we put character and interactivity together we have the ingredients of relationship."

"What kind of relationships can we put in these stories? All kinds. One example: you're not James Bond, you're his controller at MI6. You're in touch with Bond all the time, giving him orders, but a man who's licensed to kill doesn't play well with others. So you have an adversarial relationship. And conflict, of course, is the motor of drama."

"Those two land masses [stories and games] are connected now. There's going to be some evolving together, some exchange of creative DNA, some blurring of boundaries."

What do you think? What makes you connect with a story and want to come back for more? Don't say doors with riddles on them.

Why interact with stories?

I already posted up a brief summary of my talk at Off the Page last month. If you want to see the whole thing, it's now up on YouTube (above) along with the slides.

One caveat: some of the early slides in the video don't sync too well with the audio, so if you wonder why I'm talking about Breaking Bad all of a sudden, just hang on a few seconds and all will become crystal clear. (Do you see what I did there? 'Cause Jesse and Walt cook... Oh, never mind.)

For those who don't have seven minutes to spare to look at YouTube (among whom I'd probably have to include myself) you can read my summary of the argument here. And I probably ought to reiterate the context of the talk, as several people have wondered about my references to "publishers". That means book publishers, these talks being about how publishing is being transformed by technology. The clue is in the name: Off the Page.

Twenty-twenty talking

I gave a rapid-fire presentation at the Groucho Club last week. It was one of those PechaKucha things, or Sancho Panzas as my mum would call them. You put up twenty slides and try to say something sensible about them in twenty seconds. Each, that is. A whole twenty seconds per slide.

Well, I don't know if anyone there could follow what I was talking about. I enjoyed the other presentations, though, notably by Phil Stuart of Preloaded (who ran through a bunch of really intriguing and original games that showed the medium is starting to flex its creative muscles) and Dean Johnson of Brandwidth (who showed what his company are doing with Mark Staufer's evolution of the novel, The Numinous Place).

The evening was organized by Four Colman Getty as part of their new Off The Page series of events. The idea is to look at how publishing and technology intersect, and the specific focus of this first one was gaming. You see, it all makes perfect sense.

My thesis was how I'd like to see interactive storytelling evolve. Yep, in 400 seconds or less. For those who weren't there - or even who were, and couldn't follow the machine-gun exposition, I've written up the gist of the argument for the Huffington Post and you can read it right here. Though really I need a few hours to do it justice.

Comments welcome, here or on the HuffPo site. Photos for Off The Page here and copyright Roger Blagg.