There is this chart that has been floating around the Internet for some time. I’m sure you’ve seen it already, but in case you haven’t I’ll post it for you here:
Look at that. Over $50 million has been donated to independent games on Kickstarter in 2012! And look at the jump from 2011! The significance to this chart is astounding – players want games created for them by developers that understand them. They want games created by others like them. They want games created by you! As the major publishers focus more and more of their money and efforts on creating the next “BIG” game they are inevitably wasting their time. They are mass marketing to the whole planet! While this has worked for years and years in the marketing world for big names such as Coke or McDonald’s the time is coming to an end. We are now firmly set in the information age, meaning people all over the world have access to any information they care to find – and it’s all at their fingertips.
Seth Godin covers this in great detail in his manifesto “Stop Stealing Dreams”. Read it.
Why am I talking about mass marketing and the revolution of crowd funding? Because it is time to look at the true potential of interactive storytelling in video games. All of that $50 million that people donated tells me that people aren’t satisfied with the watered down content they’re receiving from the big publishers. Video games have been around for decades now and we still haven’t come close to tapping their true potential. We’ve seen slow progress in games such as Fable where the player’s overall decisions pave the way of the story – but where Fable fails is its inability to affect your emotions when making those decisions.
What is encouraging is that we’ve begun to see independent games experimenting with interactive storytelling. One game that comes to mind and was recently featured in Geek & Sundry’s Google+ Hangout is the PC freeware game Facade. The game has been out for a long time so many of you have probably played it, but essentially it plops you down in the center of a dinner party with a married couple that you are old friends with. Over the course of the night you are forced to interact with the couple to help them sort out the problems they are facing with their marriage. The game succeeds in the moments of horror that occur when you realize you’ve said something that could impact the lives of these people. The way the game does this is by having the characters act out different situations we’ve all been witness to over the course of our lives. Things such as a couple arguing, disagreeing, and asking you to take one side or another. We’ve all been there at least once in our lives whether it was close friends in school or our parents at home.
If we look to the world of tabletop games we see various forms of interactivity in storytelling. Dungeons & Dragons offers a social interaction with friends. You control the entirety of your character’s personality and decision-making. You and your friends carve out a story that is interesting and rewarding to you all. Some parties have games that go on for years because they get emotionally attached to the stories and the characters.
Another newer indie tabletop game is Fiasco. In this game you and your friends pick general guidelines to a story from the outset. You create your characters and form relationships between them. That in its self is a fun experience because you are creating something, and because of that creation you later become emotionally attached to the story and your character. As the story unfolds it is up to each person at the table to drive it forward in some unexpected way. This is a great example of interactive storytelling.
“…but for the next big step for genre storytelling, videogames will be a major component.” – Guillermo Del Toro
This statement is too true. With the evidence of crowd funding now becoming the next big step in the global economy, and a whole new generation born into the information age, it is time for video games to take their place as the interactive storytelling format of a generation.
What are you doing to lead the way?
Talk soon,
-Patrick
follow me on Twitter: @PDS271
Patrick Stephens 