Concepts
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| James Marsh |
We discussed various concepts for the game early in 2009, including treasure hunts, murder mysteries and various Olympian themes. Felicity Paynter, an intern at Stream who was doing some background research, discovered that James Marsh (1794-1846 of Marsh Test fame) had worked as a chemist at the Woolwich Arsenal. While there, he had been asked to give evidence at a murder trail, and as a result, decided to perfect his test for arsenic.
I went to the Heritage Centre to meet the librarians and peruse the books pertaining to its history. This was how I became aware of the stories of the canary girls, whose skin turned yellow when they worked with trinitrotoluene to make munitions for WW1 troops (1914-1918).
The staff at the Heritage Centre also drew my attention to the great prison ships moored alongside the Arsenal, and how their occupants were treated as slave labour for building. Subsequent investigation into the phenomenon of the hulks was inspirational, so that I ended up with 3 deaths for players to investigate: Benjamin Blight in 1777 (fictional prisoner), George Bodle in 1833 (real arsenic victim) and Rose Mayflower in 1916 (fictional munitions worker).
The staff at the Heritage Centre also drew my attention to the great prison ships moored alongside the Arsenal, and how their occupants were treated as slave labour for building. Subsequent investigation into the phenomenon of the hulks was inspirational, so that I ended up with 3 deaths for players to investigate: Benjamin Blight in 1777 (fictional prisoner), George Bodle in 1833 (real arsenic victim) and Rose Mayflower in 1916 (fictional munitions worker).
Definitions
As well as being a pervasive game, there are several different categories into which the BWTG fits. I would like to clarify these terms. What are the distinctions between narrative design, interactive story-telling and interactive fiction?
Narrative Design
The role of narrative designer is a key one in the videogames industry, where much of the story may be expressed using the space and the action, not necessarily through a written script for characters. Descriptive passages, for example, will be realised by game artists, and character emotions may be expressed through animation not words. Tom Jubert, interviewed in Rock Paper Shotgun [2] describes this as half game design and half writing. Stephen Dinehart [3], another games industry professional, defines it as the creation of story elements and the formulation of a structure that creates a coherent meta-narrative.
Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS)
Ernest Adams [4] points out that narrative is fixed but storytelling is fluid and takes place dynamically in time, in the oral tradition. He notes that in the IDS community, some people feel that there is a requirement for the player to have agency with regard to the plot (which must be responsive). Research in the area has most commonly been focused on the development of “intelligent” systems that underpin character and dramatic progression. Chris Crawford [5] states that: “Interactivity is a cyclic process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listens, thinks and speaks...” This notion of the agent thinking implies the use of artificial intelligence to generate different outcomes. Mateus and Stern [6 ] have also explored this idea in their generative story-system project, Facade, which uses player agency to develop the storyline and the reactions of the agents, thereby creating an emergent narrative. Interestingly, they stress the importance of “build it to understand it” – meaning that the design problem cannot be properly defined until some game development is underway.
On the other hand, Adams [7] states: ”It’s an interactive story if the player interacts with the story ... by making decisions and trying to overcome challenges.” This explanation is useful in that it releases us from the tension that exists between freedom to play and the closure enjoyed in a linear experience (ludology v. narratology).
Interactive Fiction
Interactive fiction is non-linear text that comes in many forms. It is often presented as a text-based adventure game where the story may be obscured by puzzles, but the narrative is pre-defined. This distinguishes it from IDS, where the emphasis is on creating a dynamic environment with the reader/player having some agency over the outcome of the story.
The development of the BWTG incorporated elements from each of these fields. The script writing and modularisation of the story was an exercise in narrative design; the players interacted with the story and made decisions that affected their playing experience (IDS); the form of the piece resembled a text adventure game in that the scripts could not be changed dynamically through player agency.
