Context of Practice Book Review

Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling
When looking back at my context of practice I found that one book or source did not give the necessary drive in the right direction, but a number of them all combined did. Through looking at a number of different material I found a lot of them come together and act like one large source of information that I could take bits from all parts of.

The book that I took a huge influence from, and probably the most, was Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. Chris Crawford is a games designer that creates very unusual and strange games that you wouldn't normally think about. He has a lot of vision and is able to convey many ideas into the series of books that he has written on game design and other aspects of it, like interactivity and probably my favourite quote from him features below from one of his other books, Chris Crawford on Game Design, and it perfectly describes his vision and goals for a game that look at the social nature and focus on the interactions with a well-defined character.

'I dreamed of the day when computer games would be a viable medium of artistic expression — an art form. I dreamed of computer games expressing the full breadth of human experience and emotion. I dreamed of computer games that were tragedies, games about duty and honour, self-sacrifice and patriotism. I dreamed of satirical games and political games; games about the passionate love between a boy and girl, and the serene and mature love of a husband and wife of decades; games about a boy becoming a man, and a man realizing that he is no longer young. I dreamed of games about a man facing truth on a dusty main street at high noon, and a boy and his dog, and a prostitute with a heart of gold.'

I thoroughly enjoyed reading through his book as he goes on to describe a number of different ways and techniques that can be used as a means to tell a story using different forms of digital media. There are ways in which interactive storytelling can be used, whether it be in film or games and I found this book extremely interesting to read.  The book begins to describe everything you need to know about storytelling and how this can be used in an interactive way to convey different types of genres, different themes and generally suit to different audiences across the whole subject.

Where this book came into particularly good use for me is the quotes that I used in my essay. I found this quote below to be particularly useful in the fact that it describes what a story actually is and how it is about the character and their development but also it could be about an object or a place instead and how these can be interchangeable but a character can't be as they are unique.

'But aren't there plenty of stories that revolve around things? What about The Maltese Falcon, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Lord of the Rings' 'No, the objects in the cited storied do not play central roles. Lord of the Rings, for example, is not about the ring, but about Frodo's struggle. Replacing the ring with a magic sock or a hat or eyeglass would not have changed the story much. Replacing Frodo with Han Solo, Don Quixoto, or Huck Finn would have changed the story beyond recognition.'  

This for me is really interesting and it was something that I felt I could talk about in my essay and also give it the opportunity to influence my practical element as I could have gone down the path of it being about an object that is influencing the characters actions. Chris Crawford then looks at interactivity in more detail stating that;

 'Interactivity depends on the choices available to the user.'  'I can offer three reasons for getting on the interactivity bandwagon: It's the medium's basis of competitive advantage, it's revolutionary, and it's powerful.'  'A story world is composed of closely balanced decisions that can reasonably go either way,' 'The story builders most important task is creating and harmonizing a large set of dramatically significant, closely balanced choices for the player.'

This again really helped me to write up my essay. I felt that it was a big help in the section that I wrote about interactivity and how it compared between AAA and Indie games. It was interesting to see how it mirrored up with my survey results as well as I really wanted to be able to link these together. What was conclusive on both parts is that everyone wants a high level of interactivity in their game levels and if this could be added into my practical that would be great, but due to time constraints it would be difficult.

So, to conclude, looking at this book has been a brilliant influence for my project due to how well detailed it was when it came down to using his influence in not only my essay but my practical as well. Due to the fact that he, himself, creates quite unusual and strange games that don't necessarily have much fun in them, but do use strategy and logic to play through them worked out better than I thought as there was lots of writings in his book that actually helped in my own and I was able to easily become influenced by it.