Digital Storytelling A Creator's Guide to Interactive Entertainment

457 Pages·2004·5.683 MB·English

by  Carolyn Handler Miller

Digital Storytelling
Digital Storytelling
A Creator’s Guide to
Interactive Entertainment
Carolyn Handler Miller
AMSTERDAM(cid:1) BOSTON(cid:1) HEIDELBERG(cid:1) LONDON (cid:1) NEWYORK(cid:1) OXFORD
PARIS(cid:1) SANDIEGO (cid:1) SANFRANCISCO (cid:1) SINGAPORE(cid:1) SYDNEY(cid:1) TOKYO
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ISBN0-240-80510-0(pbk.:alk.paper)
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006.7–dc22 2004010366
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I dedicate this book to my husband, Terry, who has taken
the meaning of the word "support" to a whole new level,
and who has encouraged me, kept me going, and even managed
to make me laugh, even in the most stressful of times.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD ix
PREFACE xiii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xvii
PART ONE New Technologies, New Creative Opportunities 1
CHAPTER1 InteractiveStorytelling:ABriefHistory 3
CHAPTER2 BackwatertoMainstream:TheGrowthofDigitalEntertainment 15
CHAPTER3 MovingTowardConvergence 39
PART TWO Creating Entertainment-Rich Projects 53
CHAPTER4 InteractivityandItsEffects 55
CHAPTER5 OldTools/NewTools 71
CHAPTER6 Characters,Dialogue,andEmotions 89
CHAPTER7 StructureinInteractiveMedia 119
CHAPTER8 BlendingEntertainmentwithOtherGoals 135
CHAPTER9 TacklingProjectsforChildren 159
vii
viii Table of Contents
CHAPTER10 CreatingaNewProject:TheDevelopmentProcess 183
PART THREE Media and Models: Under the Hood 207
CHAPTER11 VideoGames 209
CHAPTER12 MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineGames 225
CHAPTER13 TheInternet 243
CHAPTER14 InteractiveTelevision 259
CHAPTER15 Cross-MediaProductions 275
CHAPTER16 SmartToys 305
CHAPTER17 WirelessDevices 321
CHAPTER18 InteractiveCinema 333
CHAPTER19 ImmersiveEnvironments 349
CHAPTER20 DVDs 365
CHAPTER21 Kiosks 375
PART FOUR Career Considerations 389
CHAPTER22 WorkingasaDigitalStoryteller 391
CHAPTER23 CreatingYourOwnShowcase 407
CONCLUSION 419
GLOSSARY 421
ADDITIONALREADINGS 433
SUBJECTINDEX 435
PROJECTINDEX 451
Foreword
By Ken Goldstein
Something Happened.
‘Twasroundabout themid ’80s,just about thetime we wereall truly starting
to grok the impact of Apple’s once-run Super Bowl spot that sounded the war
cry to dismantle Big Brother. Almost ancient history now, but in retrospect
it seemed to have a lot to do with the PC world taking a lesson from the Mac,
replacing the monochrome monitor with 8-bit color, and there you have it, we
decided we were all making interactive movies.
My own journey started almost entirely by accident, as any writer tempered
by honesty is likely to share, largely due to too much time on my hands. Still
looking for a crack in the armor through which I might find an excuse to force
my way into ‘‘The Club,’’ I attended a conference at UCLA called ‘‘The Future
of Television.’’ Speakers on the keynote panel included one of the foremost execu-
tive producers of all time, and if He had something to say about the future of
television, I needed to be His disciple. Besides, I knew if I could ask just one
intelligent question, I could leverage that into a post-conference spec script read-
ing, and within days, the calls from my student loan officer would no longer be
troublesome. Still new to town and terrified that traffic would come between me
and my soon-to-be-acquired nest egg, I arrived much too early at the conference,
hours before the keynote (curious, since I had always understood keynotes as
kickoffs for conferences, but back then L.A. was too hip for anything important to
start too early in the day). As fate would have it, we were offered a warm-up
panel, and given that it was in an air-conditioned auditorium and I couldn’t
affordtheFrenchtoastspecialinthecafeteria,Iparkedmyselfinthemini-audience
and started to learn about something called interactivity.
WhatIremembermostaboutthatpanelwasthatnoonehadasingleexample
of any work they could show. They tried to make us believe this was because
their work was so secret it could not be revealed in public, but I soon learned it
was because none of their musings had yet been created. What they were saying
sure sounded interesting, though—getting the audience into the story as a partici-
pant,technologyallowingresponsivenesstoaudiencechoice,afuturewherestories
had unending endings or no endings at all. It was a revolution still in the making;
the theorists were theorizing before there was reality to evaluate. There were only
two possible outcomes: Either this was reject material for Saturday Night Live, or
this was opportunity. To this day I thank the Force that I guessed right.
One thing has remained constant in the business of interactivity; there has
never been a shortage of conferences. For the next several years, as the dour ’80s
ix
x Foreword
became the tech-hot ’90s, I remember arguing with people at the third, fourth, and
umpteenth CD-ROM conferences about what the word interactivity actually meant.
AlreadytestswerebeingrunforsomethingcalledinteractiveTV,whereinteractivity
was little more than rapid-clip pounding on a remote control, clicking on the cash-
meresweaterwornbyadarlingsitcomactress,andhavingitsenttoyouovernight
with a quick ding to an on-file credit card (the concept of Privacy wouldn’t be
inventedforanotherfifteenyears).Otherfascinatingapplicationsincludedpointing
atdumbed-downiconographyonamonitorsothatonecouldorderapizzaduring
Act I of Hill Street Blues and have it arrive before the end credits, without one’s
fuzzy slippers ever touching the carpet until the doorbell rang. I kid ye not; many
visionaries in control of very large investment portfolios considered this about
as much control as your average consumer would ever want. Others thought it
was about letting the audience vote to pick the ending of the show (as long as
it was A or B, the unused footage, of course, economically being saved for next
week’s choice). Still others thought it was about branching, about story trees that
went wider and broader and created thousands (and with the powerof exponents,
someday trillions) of lines of dialogue that would still lead back to the same two
endings!
As the early and mid ’90s of CD-ROM lore tipped to the late ’90s of Internet
infamy, I remember yet another conference. I was extremely honored to sit on
a panel at the first Writers Guild of America West’s ‘‘Words into Pictures’’ affair.
I believe there were some seven people in the audience and three of us on the
panel still trying to define interactivity. The rest of the conference attendees were
in another room listening to a collection of screenwriting luminaries with whom
I got to drink excellent wine later that night. I also got a great gift bag with a
sweatshirt I still keep around the house, mostly because I loved the name of the
conference: ‘‘Words into Pictures.’’
Thatwasourtietothepastandourlinktothefuture.Atitscore,ourheritage
remains that of audiovisual media. And yes, something happened. While we were
arguing at conference after conference about what was meant by Interactivity,
revenue for the computer and video game industry eclipsed that of the motion
picture box office for North America. A generation of media consumers came to
decide that active was more seductive than passive. Storytelling got stood on its
head, but interactive or not, it was still storytelling, and it still required story-
tellers—a new generation of storytellers, but storytellers nonetheless. To capture
the powerof the chip, writers learned to do something they had never particularly
liked—give up control. The most difficult lesson the digital storyteller learned
was that, in order to become proficient in this virtual theater, digital storytelling
by definition meant the release of control to the audience.
Truth be told, this is antithetical to every single thing you have ever learned
or been taught about storytelling. Isn’t storytelling the art of creating suspension
of disbelief? Isn’t every great writer a master at sweeping people away to another
place, taking a reader or an audience to worlds where they have never been? Yes,
that is still your job—that, and helping people to get that sweater that looks so
goodonyou-know-who,orperhaps‘‘realtime’’helpingtopickthenextgeneration
American Idol, or at last getting that pizza home piping hot before Jeff reveals the
lone Survivor. Played any good games lately?
Needless to say, Revolution has come slowly. But graciously enough, it has
come. Thus, you have Carolyn Miller to guide you through a comprehensive
romp that illustrates her own journey. Throughout the madness, throughout the
Foreword xi
many years of opinions, ideas, and conferences, there were experiments. Many,
many experiments. Some noble, some outlandish, many embarrassing, and as is
so often the case, a very few both critically and commercially acclaimed. As
Carolyn has admirably documented, she has been both student and artist on this
all-too-strange path into tomorrow. She has played and she has made, studied
and learned, created and captured the continuum that is our brief academic
investigation. Since most of you missed these many conferences (trust me, your
time was much better spent playing Asteroids, Tetris, or Doom), you now have the
unique opportunity to let Carolyn, as storyteller, take you through the forest of
many paths and few real trails. Digital Storytelling takes you behind the notions,
brainchildren, and engines that have fueled our growth to the very point of
origin at which we remain. Indeed, we are still at the beginning, an excellent time
to join ‘‘The Club.’’
Hello World!
Sierra Madre, California
March 2004
Ken GoldsteinisExecutive Vice Presidentand ManagingDirectorof Disney Online,
wherehehasbeenahumbleservantoftheInternetsince1998.Previously,hewasthefound-
ing Vice President and General Manager of Red Orb Entertainment, a division of
Broderbund Software, Inc., and Executive Publisher of Entertainment and Education
Products for Broderbund. A long time ago in a county called Marin he hired a clever
writer named Carolyn Miller to help put words in the mouth of a certain Carmen
Sandiego.Anevenlongertimeago,hetoomadealivingasawriterandinteractivedesigner
on now long-forgotten games played by kids who are now having their own kids, but he
left all that fun behind to help hire smart people like Carolyn.