We Tell Stories - A New Form of Storytelling
Speaker: Adrian Hon (Chief Creative Officer, Six to Start)
Date/Time: Wednesday (September 17, 2008) 3:00pm — 4:00pm
Location (room): Ballroom B
Track: Writing for Games
Format: 60-minute Lecture
Experience Level: Intermediate

Session Description
In We Tell Stories, we worked with six bestselling novelists from Penguin to create original stories tailored for an interactive audience. From a thriller told inside Google Maps to a hybrid text adventure/choose your own adventure, we designed genuinely new forms of storytelling that aren’t quite games and aren’t quite linear ­- but are extremely popular. This talk will involve a demo of the six stories and a walkthrough of the development process. Unlike most games, the writers for We Tell Stories were highly involved in the game design, and vice versa, to the point where some of the writers essentially became game designers. This was even more unusual due to the fact that none of the writers had ever written for games before, being professional novelists first and foremost.

Idea Takeaway
-(Surprising) findings on what readers want, and don’t want,­ from interactive fiction. -The importance of interface design when it comes to introducing new forms of storytelling to a general audience. -The process of working with professional non-gaming novelists on a story-led game -How the development process of a story-led game could be used in more traditional game production

Intended Audience
Writers interested in novel ways to tell stories to gamers, and in ways to create games that are story-led.