Alex Livingston

Blog

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • 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

  • 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!

     

     

  • Assassin’s Creed 3 Preorder Bonuses – WHYYYY?!?!

    I think we’ve established that I like Assassin’s Creed. So, what to do about the preorder situation? I want to play ALL the content. Every blessed bit of it. But different stores have different missions!

    http://www.sidequesting.com/2012/09/assassins-creed-3-pre-order-exclusives-detailed/

    Gamestop: The Lost Mayan Ruins

    Best Buy: Ghost of War

    Walmart: A Dangerous Secret.

    Amazon: Capt of the Aquila, which is just cosmetic, maybe?

    The Ubisoft Deluxe has it all, but is only for PC. Drat.

    In Revelations, the preorder bonus brought you to a little run-jump dungeon and gave you a sword. I’m assuming these will be the same. Probably not much in the way of story.

    But still.

     

  • Storynexus Launches Dev App — I Go Nutso

    Fallen London. It’s good, and you should go check it.

    One city.
    A thousand choices.

    Discover a dark and hilarious Gothic underworld where your actions affect everything from the fate of the British Empire to the price of your soul. Dance with devils. Seduce an artist. Wrestle tigers. Converse with cats. Plot a revolution. All in your coffee break. And did we mention it’s free?

    Welcome. Delicious friend.

    The stories are fantastic, the style is unique, etc etc. It’s one of the touchstones of contemporary interactive fiction.

    And they’ve released their development tools. So anybody can make one now. Woot!

    I’ve started building a game based in the world of my current work in progress. Storylines unrelated to the book, of course, but fleshing out the world a bit. Further updates as events warrant.

  • Belief, Goal, and Instinct — Mouse Guard RPG and Writing Characters

    When I read the first issue of Mouse Guard, I was struck immediately by how well the characters of Kenzie, Saxon, and Lieam were defined by their speech in the very first panel of their adventure.

    Naturally, I can’t find a scan of it online anywhere, and no longer have the brill comic in my hot little hands. So, I’ll have to ask you to believe me: it was cool. I’ve posted about my struggles with this sort of thing before, and this example pulled me right in.

    I had the opportunity to play a session of the Mouse Guard RPG this weekend. Firstly, let me tell you it was a blast. Secondly, I came away from the table with something which I hope will help me with the character development in my current work in progress. Considering how well Petersen handles characterization, it should come as no surprise that the game focuses heavily on narrative and character choices.

    I was provided with a pre-gen character, a compassionate little fellow possessed of the following attributes:

    Belief: I will make a good name for the Mouse Guard.

    Goal: Convince the patrol leader I’m ready for a promotion in rank.

    Instinct: Run to the aid of a friend in need.

    These three points helped me define every action the character, Baron, took. He went the extra mile to show himself to be capable — and to make sure the boss saw him doing it. An NPC friend confessed to a shady side-business, and Baron helped him keep it quiet.

    These actions were not natural for me, but fit the character perfectly. Which is something a writer is supposed to be able to do, right?

    What values and beliefs guides your character? How does she initially react to conflicts? What does he want out of this scene? All very writerly stuff. So, I’m going to gin up answers to these three elements for my main characters to use as guideposts. It’s the sort of thing you do in the back of your mind anyway, but it certainly can’t hurt to keep a few cards to look at.

  • The Risks of Quotes

    Allow me to present to you a timeline:

    • Sep 1986 – The comic book Watchmen debuts.
    • Aug 1996 – The novel Game of Thrones is published.
    • Feb 2006 – The comic book Mouse Guard debuts.
    • Mar 2009 – The movie Watchmen is released.
    • Apr 2011 – HBO’s Game of Thrones series begins.
    • Sep 2012 – I read Mouse Guard, and am surprised to find the phrases, “we’re not stuck in here with you, you’re stuck in here with us” and “winter is coming” so flagrantly stolen.

    Oh wait. Back in ’06, only hardcore nerdlingers like myself would recognize either of those phrases. And we’d probably just accept them as nods to two pillars of their respective genres. Now they stick out, and seem almost tawdry. Lesson learned.

    Oh, and go read Mouse Guard. It’s good.

     

     

  • Writing Dreams

    I like to write about dreams. My first text-based game, indeed the whole Waking Cassandra project is about dreams. So when I saw that Kat Howard (with whom I just finished a great class at Litreactor) had a story up at Apex about dreams, I had to check it out.

    The best dream scenes are written in the language of symbol. In this story, we see this in three different ways.

    Personal symbol: The things we see in dreams often have meaning to us alone. An oven mitt might mean nothing to you, but it might remind the dreamer of her grandmother’s house, representing safety and happiness. A frog could bring back frightening emotions from the time you fell in the ravine. Kora chooses a particular mask “for the desire for wings”. They symbolize something to her, something she wants.

    Shared symbol: Stop signs. An S with a vertical line through it. Or, in this case, Tarot cards. The dreamer brings these symbols from the external world in with her – and they make recognizable signposts for the reader.

    Archetypal symbol: The Horned Man. The Pomegranate. The Serpent. Whether you want to go all Jungian dreamcloudy or just consider these part of our cultural, literary, and folkloric heritage, some symbols have old, powerful meanings. They speak to the great forces of human life, of the life of every person in every time and each place. Poorly handled, they can seem trite. Read this story for an example of how to use them well.

    So, yeah. Go read Murdered Sleep. There’s a lot going on in the story, only a small bit of which was covered here. And pay attention to those dreams of yours – sleep isn’t always a restful state.

  • The Midpoint

    I hit the midpoint of the new novel this weekend. The part where the protagonist stops reacting to things and starts doing things, based on the novel structure I’m trying out this time around.

    From here on out, she goes from passive bystander to active ass-kicker, changing the world into what she wants it to be. Trying to, at least. I call it the “fuck this” moment, and marked it with Robin breaking a monitor with the heel of her new Docs. It was a sudden, violent overreaction, but felt sooooo good.

    I’m hoping this will get the typing hydraulics pumping a bit more smoothly. No more hemming, and certainly no more hawing. Now, how precisely she and her buddies are going to pull off their appointed task, especially considering the very unfair odds, I’m not sure. I’m not sure if it’s going to happen at all. But I have a decent concept of how they’re going to try, so we’ll just stick to that.