GDC 2013 Talk

The Script

I just completed cleaning up the script for the GDC2013 speak and it can be gotten from here:
http://unbirthgame.com/GDC2013_PresenceSelfAndStoryTelling_Script.pdf

Additional Resources

The following blog posts are probably also of interest:

Story: What is it truly about?

This goes into much more depth on how to view a story. I feel this is really essential in order to come to terms with interactive storytelling.

The issue of Repetition

Repetition is a difficulty when presence is a purpose. Here is a list of pitfalls and how to resolve them.

Obtaining videogame's correct voice

This articles explores the "agreeable action outcome" design some far more.

Highlevel story telling design

Targets and Storytelling

Both of these discover the construction of a story space.

Puzzles, what are they very good for?

Puzzles and causal histories

These articles use the "interaction for presence"-axiom to view puzzles in a new way.

These should hopefully help clear out a couple of things from the talk.

I also have a far more academic, and significantly a lot more detailed, version of the speak. It can be identified here:

http://unbirthgame.com/TheSelfPresenceStorytelling.pdf

This versions does not discuss story-spaces, but supplies a lot a lot more rules for how to create interactions that assistance presence. It has also sources for most of the claims a I make and some more advanced discussions.

Addendum

Finally, I wanted to give the query, "Why does Minecraft and Dark Souls, despite becoming gamey, have such a sturdy sense of presence?", a much better answer. So here that comes:

The reason why this can be correct is because the fiction of these games correlate 1:1 with their mechanics. Let's take Dark Souls as the example. Just about any action that you make is directly, or very closely, related to the combat. It is a game about killing monsters and it takes place in globe exactly where you are tasked to do just that. The game does not recommend that the monsters have feelings, every day routines, or some thing like that. Their only purposes in life is to kill you and other people like you. There is absolutely nothing in the game's internal systems that can take away from this fiction, it can even deal with AI acting up and comparable. It is a robust fiction. The same line of pondering can be employed for Minecraft.

I feel that the above is what has led several men and women astray. Proper now the games that can supply a sturdy narrative that emerge straight from play, are games that extremely gamey and containing tight core gameplay loops. It is easy to think that believe of this as the way forward, that to evolve storytelling we need to merely find other core loops a belief that frequently leads to seeing tech as our ultimate savior.

My talk (and paper) on presence and storytelling is a description of why this is not a way forward. Core loops only operate so far. We must start considering in distinct directions in order to take our stories into new territories.