Ponder This

I like your chart, David, very illustrative of your thoughts! I agree with you that there are barriers. Let me expand on how I see it, as I got inspired by your chart. (c:

Creating Stories

Story Listeners. The masses are the story listeners. In our XNA world, they are the gamers. These are by far the majority of humanity, and they have no intention of ever creating their own story. They don’t mind participating in a story, though a game for example, as long as they don’t have to be extremely creative themselves.

Storytellers. Then there are the storytellers. These are the guys who have great, epic sagas to tell. They are happy as long as people want to hear their stories, no matter what form they may take. In this modern society, there are books, movies, and computer games, but there have always been bards, priests, and other storytellers.

Arrows Down. All arrows pointing down show ways in which storytellers get their stories out there.

Distributors. The guys which help storytellers get their stories out there, much as Reflexive.com or Warner Brothers is doing, are very important.

Editors. There is a need for quality consultants, which is not a field yet fully developed in the gaming industry. Yes, there are quality filters, on for example the Xbox Live Arcade, but there are not so many people providing the service of improving the quality, to make a game pass that filter.

Now, that might be a very fun job! This job is called an editor in the world of books. I propose that the next step for the casual gaming portals will be gaming editors, designers, programmers and artists who work with the indie developers to polish games with potential.

Listener Tools. Even Microsoft is helping out with distribution, with their OneClick installation system.

Creating Storytellers

There are also a whole batch of activities to help people advance from story listener to storyteller. The reason I draw it like a pyramid, is because people strive to reach the top. Arrows pointing up indicate things which help people become storytellers.

Teller Tools. XNA Game Studio Express is just a tool for telling stories, much like a typewriter is for an author. There are game programming tools of varying quality, just like that are pen and paper, typewriters, and word processors.

Uplifters. Some people out there are happy improving on these tools. Improvements range from spell and grammar checkers, through Georges Polti’s book “Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations” and reimplementing Shakespeare’s plots.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to marginalize the game component writers. The better the tools are, the smaller the barrier is for people to move from being a story listener to a storyteller, so these game component makers are providing one of the greatest services there are. Yes, everybody wants a good game, but everybody dreams of making a good game, and for making that easier, you guys are have my respect.

Teachers. However, For many, a great tool is not enough, and there is a need for a push to use it too. There are teachers lifting people from story listeners to storytellers, such as literary teachers and tutorial writers.

As I see it, much of the XNA community right now has the wrong focus. Yes, there is a need for people who educate the Uplifters. There is a bunch of really advanced tutorials already out there, which is great.

But there is a much greater need for people who show story listeners the ropes, so they can become storytellers. That’s what I’m trying to do with XNAtutorial.com.

I’m suspecting that this is temporary. Right now, during the beta of XNA, all the l33t programmers are moving to XNA, which is why there is such a large amount of advanced tutorials in production. This will change.

By next year, there will be an influx of total beginners, who will want to know how to tell their stories. I propose that the very best stories to come from those future beginners, will be the ones that thoroughly understand the storytelling tools they use. For this, they need help.

This need to teach beginners is partly done by for example GarageGames and their TorqueX engine. They are on the right track, but only half-way so. Their focus is on receiving feedback through their forums and support system, to be able to provide a better product. In a way, their arrow points down, as part of the distribution system.

It doesn’t make business sense for them to turn that arrow around to point up. They don’t need to waste their time teaching their storyteller-wannabe customers the internal workings of their game components.

Beyond

Last, there is a small group of people, who have broken free from the human need for storytelling. These hard scientists and business leaders are spending their lives trying to find the truth of the universe and the human condition instead, trying to advance mankind in real life.

In a way, they are not telling a story, they ARE the story. Who would this be in the world of computer games? Maybe the Architect of the Matrix? (c:

Now, where are the tools, supporters, and teachers of those who want to reach this level? Maybe it will be geography, like in so many science fiction stories which liken the colonization of the Americas, and the creation of the greatest nations on Earth, with the colonization of the Moon and stars?

I’m off on a tangent (barely) to your post again, Daniel… Hope it made sense, at least partially.

Cheers!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 15:40 and is filed under XNA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.