Let’s start easy. I’ve got a few things going this fall. I want to talk about them.
THINQ
First off, for my semester project (and beyond, quite possibly) I joined a game project with some of my friends, which they started in the beginning of this year.
I’m joining as writer and game designer and am in charge of the story and narrative of the whole game. Which is really cool and I’m amazingly excited to work on it.
To explain briefly what it is (I’m not sure how public we are about
it yet, but you know, it’s a small team and all friends so I don’t
really think anything is a big deal here), it’s an explorative game that
takes place inside someone’s mind, with abstract environments that
builds up over time. Everything in the world is assembled from polygonal
shapes, which build together to form both environments and more
abstract objects.
They created an awesome demo during the first half
year of production, and now I’m going to be part of building it into a
full game over the next how-many-years that'll take. (THINQ was the name
they used for the previous version, but many things, including the
name, might change over time.)
However, it’s leading me into trying, for the first time, to create
environmental, explorative storytelling, which I’m struggling with a
bit. I’m ridiculously excited about it and I love that type of
storytelling in games, but I’m realizing now that I don’t really know how
to do it. Whenever I’ve created stories in the past, I’ve just started
writing out text, and kept writing until I had something that worked. I
don’t create outlines, I don’t create chapter breakdowns (not until I’ve
written the entire thing, at least).
But environmental storytelling
doesn’t necessarily have text. So I can’t just write a bunch of text and
be done. Which is an interesting realization for me. I’ll probably
return with how I managed to do this in a while, but so far I’m still
experimenting. My inital attempts have been to just write something
anyway. And lo and behold, I think it's sort of working. I just to shape
it into something wildly different later. We'll see!
Sherlock and the Internet of Things
So here’s a thing I never expected to be doing ever. Sherlock and the Internet of Things (abbreviated as SherlockIoT), is a massive global offline/online cooperation (also called a MOOC), where a few hundred people come together from all over the world to create a “connected crimescene”. And I’m part of it!
It started in the end of August and were only just now starting to get it going in full gear, so I don’t entirely know what it exactly entails yet (and I feel that that’s also partly up to the participants to figure out what they want to do).
The idea is to explore storytelling and play and interaction with the Internet of Things, and exploring ways to use the connectedness of objects to tell stories. So we’ve so far gathered a bunch of objects (not physically, I’m working with people from America to the Phillipines, so that would be a little challenging), and are now starting to build it together into a crime scene.
It’s an amazingly ambitious project that I’m really lucky to be a part of, and I’ve absolutely no idea how it’s going to go. But hey, I think that’s part of it, and I’m honestly just surprised I even got in.
You can read more about SherlockIoT (and even participate with and RFP team) here:
The Sequel and Book revisions
During the summer holiday, I maybe did something stupid.
I started writing a second book. Before my first one’s done. Yeah.
Okay, okay. Hear me out, I had a reason.
I’m having beta readers
reading my first book right now (for the second time), and I find myself
in the peculiar spot of wanting to write on it but not really because I
want to get feedback before I start messing with everything they’re
reading.
So I started a second book. Because I got an idea for a first scene
and then it just snowballed from there. There’s actually a fairly
interesting story behind the story of this book, but that’s for another
time.
For now, all I’m satisfied with is that it’s a sequel to my
first book, so while I’m not writing out that story I’m still
inadvertently doing world-building and helping set the tone of my world
and my characters, which is useful for when I go back to that book, I
think.
So that’s the main three things I have going on right now. It’s a
bit, and I have some other side projects and hobby-style things on the
side when I grow tired of working on any of those.
Heh. Right. Like that’s going to be the problem. Well, still. You
know. It’s fun! Trying to get the most out of my increasingly limited
time as a student. Soon I’ll have to start earning money for a living.
Christ. That sounds scary.
(Image Source: http://deathtothestockphoto.com/)