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Interactive Fiction News

Winterstrike

You may remember me talking about Yoon Ha Lee‘s rad ‘The Book of Locked Doors‘. Imagine my delight when I saw today’s announcement from Failbetter Games:

Yoon Ha Lee is great. She writes like the unacknowledged offspring of Elizabeth Hand and William Faulkner, and I’ve liked her work since I read The Black Abacus, a short story about love and death and ethics and an unfought war in space. I found out recently that she wrote interactive fiction too. So I asked her to write something for StoryNexus.

She did, and we’re launching it today. It’s called Winterstrike, and it’s rich and strange and very cold. And big. Play it, and learn about the the Ocular Guard and the insectines and the Woman with Tiger Guns… and the ironbird.

Holy moley! Very excited to try this, but afraid I’ll be terribly jealous when comparing it with the one I’m developing. I’m sure it’s worth the risk!

 

Categories
Interactive Fiction News

Skyfall Promo Interactive Fiction

More fun on the IF front: there’s a Skyfall promo game out there.

http://50.112.251.215/


Sufficiently arcane for you? This text game sets itself up as a test to see if you’re eligible for service in the British Secret Service, running you through a series of hoops in which you give commands to an agent in the field.
This point of view is unusual, to my knowledge. “Open door” usually leads to “Through the door you see an ogre” not “Agent: OK, opening it now. … Looks like a server room. what should I do?”. Your commands will complete the mission and keep the agent safe — or not.
I’m glad to see a text adventure being used as part of the campaign, though  I look forward to seeing this sort of thing used for something more than advertising. The game is filled with references to Sony technology and ends with a cut to a trailer for the movie. Come on now. We can do better than that. How about:
  • Get enough successful “recruits” in your zipcode and your local theater gets to see a deleted scene in the theater.
  • A shot of a world map with bright, shiny data points for successful recruits.
  • Beating the game gives you a code. When you see the movie, a QR code comes up. Hit it, enter your personalized code, and get something sent to your phone. A translation of what someone is saying, etc. Live annotations to the film.
  • Make the puzzles really hard, and the top twenty people to get the, right see their usernames in a list of known operatives in the movie.

So many opportunities to make this stuff matter.

Categories
Interactive Fiction News

StoryNexus and Cold Hard Cash

Failbetter Games has opened monetization options for user-generated content made with their StoryNexus platform.

  • Players can buy more actions instead of waiting for them to refresh.
  • They can tip you.
  • You can make certain storylines pay-only.

How much money are we talking here? According to their Terms of Service, Failbetter sells their currency at “around 0.11 GBP each”, and you get 60%. So, somebody pays a couple bucks to get more actions, you get over a dollar. Not a bad percentage!

Categories
Interactive Fiction News

Galahad, a New Transmedia Platform

The Next Web just shook my world with news of Galahad, a new platform for the creation of CYOA video media.

In practical terms, Galahad lets content owners create full digital experiences which can be shared and monetized. As an example, The Shadow Gang created its own demo video, a film noir which you can find here. While it is well produced, what makes it interesting is that it lets viewers choose their own adventure as in a gamebook. (emphasis mine)

Just tell me that doesn’t look like fun. Price point is going to be the real question when we talk about “democratizing” transmedia — I’m hoping for a free version. Definitely one to follow.

Source: The Next Web

Categories
Interactive Fiction News

Failbetter Announces Storynexus, World Get Awesomer

As per my previous post, Failbetter has opened their dev tools to the world.

Failbetter Games is very proud to announce the launch of StoryNexus, an online platform for playing and creating texty games like Fallen London, The Night Circus and Cabinet Noir.  StoryNexus allows anybody to write and edit interactive story games and earn money from their creations. It requires no downloads and no programming experience.


Now get writing!