SAM, or Storytelling Across Media, is an event presented by San Diego Comic-Con that took place this past weekend as a free event discussing story in film, video games, music, animation, comics, and oddly enough – museums.
The day started off with a spotlight on Jim Lee as he drew and discussed how he views his role in story as an artist and how things have shifted in the medium over the years. Comedically discussing the building blocks of story while drawing different brinks he likes to use in drawing a building.
Game storytelling
A panel of 5 writers in video games present their challenges and experiences writing for the medium. The panel lead with one Horizon Zero Dawn writer, Anne Toole, who likes the non-linear storytelling of video games which has reframed writing for her to focus on experience instead of the story. She likes to leave hints to guide the experience so people aren’t just wondering around but wants players to walk the line of figuring things out for themselves and getting stuck with unsolvable blocks. Now with branching storylines, players can make their way through their own series of interesting choices that help build the story instead of choosing what the developer wants for the player to choose to make it a more personal journey.
Previous Telltale games writing partners Desiree Proctor and Erica Harrell talked about writing branching story and how they’ve learned how to write for decision-based games. This type of storytelling seems to be the future of games but it does come with a much larger set of challenges. The difficulties include having to change the story based on what can be built in a game and look good, still keeping the story going in a desired direction without detracting from the player’s choices, and still leaving room for future plans in a storyline that may come up in future installations of a game or its DLC.
Shanon Ingless formerly of Telltale’s Batman is striving to make her mark on video games and believes that there has never been a better time in the new medium’s lifespan so far. Its become more of a conversation with the player than other mediums and wants to push the limits of customized stories tailoring the game to how the player makes decisions. Further remarking the amount of lore that goes into creating the world for players to be able to have that discussion in a video game without being lost is going to be a huge task for all who take it on.
All the panelists seemed to share a vision of the future of games that would be more customized than games have ever been before. Regardless of the future of storytelling in games, I truly look forward to what can be created with advancing technologies and deeper more thoroughly realized worlds created by huge teams of people shaping their new reality.
I've been a life long nerd and video game junkie known to associate with the likes of Link, Nathan Drake, Batman, and Master Chief. I'm a filmmaker by profession, but spend lots of time behind a controller escaping the real world. @GregVelde on Instagram/Twitter/YouTube
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