Stephen E. Dinehart on: What is a Narrative Designer? | The Narrative Design Explorer™

Narrative Designer is a role in contemporary video game development first seen in 2006 when the video game publisher THQ began hiring for the position I wrote based on talks with THQ Canada.  While the strict definition may vary from team to team, and production to production, the core of this role is to champion story, craft compelling narrative elements, and define the systems through which they will be delivered to the player.  Interactive Narrative Design is a new craft waiting to be further defined and explored.

While writers to some extent have been engaging in narrative design for linear storytelling arguably since Aristotle, it is wholly new to the field of interactive entertainment.  Since working with the team at THQ to create the “Narrative Designer” position in 2006, the industry has seemed to watch the development of this new role with a skeptical eye.  Many writers have falsely taken on the self-appointed title of ‘Narrative Designer’ and as a result there has been a watering down of the term and a general sense that the role is for nothing more than an relabeled game writer. This assumption is false. Narrative Designers are a new breed of hybrid talent for interactive entertainment industry, specifically the AAA-games sector.

Read Stephen's full post here:

http://narrativedesign.org/2011/09/what-is-a-narrative-designer-3/

Reading Ian Bogost - Gamification is Bullshit (Excerpt)

Gamification is easy. It offers simple, repeatable approaches in which benefit, honor, and aesthetics are less important than facility. For the consultants and the startups, that means selling the same bullshit in book, workshop, platform, or API form over and over again, at limited incremental cost. It ticks a box. Social media strategy? Check. Games strategy? Check.

The title of this symposium shorthands these points for me: the slogan "For the Win," accompanied by a turgid budgetary arrow and a tumescent rocket, suggesting the inevitable priapism this powerful pill will bring about—a Viagra for engagement dysfunction, engorgement guaranteed for up to one fiscal quarter.

This rhetorical power derives from the "-ification" rather than from the "game". -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it's usually bullshit. Just add points.

read the full post here:

http://www.bogost.com/blog/gamification_is_bullshit.shtml

Woot! Upcoming at SXSW: The Rise of Co-Created Storyworld Communities #sxswtransmedia

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Scott Walker Pres Brain Candy LLC

Scott Walker likes playing with stories and exploring new models for collaborating with audiences. He primarily achieves this as President of Brain Candy, LLC, where he crafts participatory experiences that bridge audiences and creatives.

To better explore the relationship between participatory entertainment and transmedia storytelling, Scott co-founded Transmedia Los Angeles and launched Shared Story Worlds, a site devoted to collaborative entertainment properties with participatory elements.

Scott has been invited to speak at a variety of events/organizations, including Digital Book World, Disney’s Imagineering R&D, DIY Days L.A., and CTIA Enterprise and Applications. He is on his second year as a member of the Advisory Council for the StoryWorld Conference.

Fan Trailer For JOHN CARTER Gets Director's Approval; Promotes The Film Better Than Official Version

Grazie to Scott Walker for the heads-up on this one:

Excerpt from the comicbookmovie.com post:

"First of all, let me just say something. If you didn't know already, I'm huge fan of the Barsoom novels and its creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. These stories basically changed modern science fiction and there is no two ways around it. Without them, we wouldn't have Star Wars, the character of Superman, the highest grossing film ever called Avatar, and many, many other films, books and characters. Burroughs also created another widely known character, Tarzan, and did you actually know that John Carter was created before Tarzan? Burroughs' writing influenced some of the biggest authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury. When it comes to John Carter, this a character created a 100 years ago, and there has been A LOT of attempts to bring the first novel, A Princess of Mars to the big screen. No one managed to do that. Until now. It's no secret that Disney's marketing for John Carter has been weird and random ever since the second trailer. The first teaser trailer released in July last year was brilliant. I thought we are in for a big and smart promotion of this century-old story, but instead we got the exact opposite. While the second trailer was pretty good, people who are not familiar with the character just thought it was "another" Attack of the Clones or Avatar, which is ironic considering those films exist just because of the story John Carter is based on. Still, studio should have introduce this film as a story that inspired all that I mentioned above, but not a single sign of that in the trailers or TV spots. That was a first big mistake. As a fan who knows what's going on in the spots, I loved almost every one. But, there are many people out there who have no idea what's going on in the footage. The second big mistake was not mentioning Andrew Stanton's name or his previous films, which are of course, two Academy Award-winning Pixar films called WALL•E and Finding Nemo.

All that was a result of the problem Disney had late last year with the president of worldwide marketing, and it seems everything went downhill after that. So, is it still possible for the film to be a box office success? Yes, it is. Disney already showed the film to the press, and allowed them to share their thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, which is definitely a good thing. Power of social media is growing, and many who saw the film said that it's really good, and positive word-of-mouth is already getting bigger. But, what about the trailers? Well, there is still another trailer we will get soon (Trailer #3), but before that, our friends over at The John Carter Files have created this fan trailer with the footage available, and it gets so many things right than any other official trailer. Director Andrew Stanton already approved this trailer a couple of days ago by saying, "Great fan trailer! They get it!" and after that almost every movie site posted it. With that, the trailer just passed over 100,000 views, and almost every single comment has been positive and supportive. Check it out:

read the full post here:

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/Wolvie09/news/?a=55337&t=Fan_Trailer_F...

The i-docs’ “evolution”, in just 10 points | from Sandra Gaudenzi & Arnau Gifreu via i-docs

The i-docs’ “evolution”, in just 10 points

While preparing for the forthcoming i-Docs conference, and thinking about what a great year 2011 has been for factual narratives, we started a discussion between Arnau Gifreu and myself to see if we agreed on the i-docs trends that are emerging just in front of our eyes.

Arnau proposed to come up with 10 points that could illustrate the trends and novelties that the years 2011-12 are bringing forward. I thought it was a brilliant idea. As i-docs are getting more established as a genre we are witnessing the emergence of more production companies,  more tools and more dedicated conferences around the world. So…where is this leading us?

Here are the 10 points we came up with. Please do reply to this post and add your own ideas to it. Or maybe… do even better: come to i-Docs 2012 (it’s happening in just a month time, on the 22nd and 23rd of March, in Bristol!) and… engage in a lively discussion with all of us!

 

 1. Tools and HTLM 5 as the next revolution for i-docs

New authoring tools have emerged in the last year. Those can use HTML 5 language with javascript frameworks (such popcorn.js), and other frameworks (as Zeega, Klynt  and 3WDOC) will allow the incorporation and handling of different types of multimedia elements within linear audiovisual documentary. Now… those tools are not made for i-docs only, of course, but they greatly open up the possibilities for i-docs producers.

Figure 1. New authoring multimedia tools

This is particularly true for the tools that make use of HTML5 because effectively they allow live data to be linked to a specific video frame. So… why making such a fuss about HTML5? Well… effectively it turns video into a hyperlink. You can now link every frame of your movie to live data that is somewhere else in the web. This could be a news feed, a weather report, a community of people that blog about your precise topic… or anything else you can think of!

Both the very well-known projects One Millionth Tower and 18 Days in Egypt have used Popcorn this year… and we are ready to bet that there will be many more next year! By the way, Jigar Metha (18 days in Egypt) and Kat Cizek (Highrise/One Millionth Tower) will both speak at i-Docs 2012!

Figure 2. 18 days in Egypt Website

 Figure 3. One Millionth Tower project

 

read the full very useful post here:

http://i-docs.org/2012/02/26/the-i-docs-evolution-in-just-10-points/

Transmedia Toronto Meetup: Talk featuring Scott Walker of Brain Candy - Feb 27, 7:30 - See you there!

Hey Transmedia peoples:

It's been too many moons since our last meetup, so let's get active again. Our first scheduled meetup of the year will be Monday, Feb. 27 at Raindance Canada (at the Centre of Social Innovation Annex) same room as last time.

Our guest speaker will be Scott Walker of Brain Candy. Scott is also a founding organizer of Transmedia LA, the granddaddy of all the Transmedia meetup groups around the world. Scott design experiences that encourage audience participation and explore collaborative world building techniques. This talk/Q&A on Shared Storyworlds will be of special use to filmmakers, new media and digital media producers who are planning to apply for funding that must include an interactive digital component. You can check out more about Scott on his blog at http://metascott.com/. And hopefully after Scott's talk we can have further great discussions.

As previously mentioned at our last talk, we are asking for a 5$ donation/cover charge to contribute to the speaker fee, as we really want to honour the professionals who speak at our events as professionals. That is 5$ at the door in cash.

 

The @Disneyland Marketing Method: cleanliness, distorted perspectives.. Disney's other rules...

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Nice points made through this article - here's my have:

"Optical Illusion

After spending weeks of my life at Disneyland, I’ve come to understand certain “tricks” they play with your mind. Aggregated by talking to employees, family members who have worked at the park and research online.

One optical illusion they’ve designed for the customer’s benefit is the following:

Main Street is the road you walk on when first entering the park.

It’s designed to look longer when you enter and shorter when you leave. How do they do it? They slant the height of the buildings to grow shorter when you’re looking towards the castle (entering) and taller in the reverse direction.

This gives your mind an optical illusion of distorted distance.

And why do they do this?

Disneyland wants the park to look larger, grand and monstrous when you first enter the park. Early in the morning, you’re energized and ready to walk anyways. When you leave the park, late at night, you’re usually tired; and enjoy seeing the exit feeling like it’s closer..."

read the full post here

http://smartboydesigns.com/2012/02/20/disneyland/