I can’t help feel you are confusing a sequence of events with a story. Just because you have a character and setting doesn’t mean you have a story. They parts of a story but not a story in of themselves. To add story you need detailed experiences that lead to a series of meaningful choices.

Moving the character to the chest and opening it is the object and game play rules dictate what actions the player can make. But there are no meaning full choices to make either I open the chest or don’t.

What interactions could you add to the scenario to lead the player to make meaningful choices that allow them to arrive at an objective?

For instance if it was set on a sinking ship, the water level rapidly rising. Player’s goal is to find a way off the ship. There are tools and other passengers in various locations on the ship. They player should known what those characters and tools can do up from the start. Obstacles are also placed in the level that requires a tool or character to overcome. Different paths to different locations may or may not require overcoming obstacles to reach. Mystery is added by unknowns a darkroom, a locked chest. Different success options exist to get off the boat. Different escape options have different amounts of space effecting what you can bring with you when you escape.

The story is then built up from detailed experiences and interactions the player makes while trying escape. The decisions they make about how to purse their objective and the choices they made that resulted in the final outcome. One player might run to captain’s quarters to get a key, and then escape in a row boat with the chest. Another might build a make shift raft and then buy as much time as they could to get as many passengers on the raft as possible, drowning in process but saving everyone else.

Abstract:
In this thread we explore the most important component of narration
in a non-verbal interactive environment by restricting outselves to
compare single changes to an environment void of narrative voice.


Which of the following would you pick if you could only pick one?

Scenario 21: Coherence among objects on the scene
Background is ship interior with no rising water.
Stuff on scene are chest and a girl.

Scenario 22: A threat toward a point of interest
Background is forest with rising water.
Stuff on scene are chest and a girl.

Scenario 23: A threat toward the participant
Background is forest with rising water.
Stuff on scene is only the girl.


[Edited by - Wai on February 27, 2009 1:48:07 PM]