Technology and How It Is Evolving Storytelling in Our Entertainment Experiences / GHC14

What luck! An invited technical speaker at GHC wants to talk about storytelling and games! As Bonnie Ross' abstract states, "stories spill into every aspect and facet of our lives; narrative leaps between nations, and stories span devices, media and demographics. The entertainment industry stands at the crossroads of where those stories intersect, how those stories are told and who tells them."  Here is my summary of Bonnie's talk.

Image from GHC speaker profile

Recent stats: 48% of gamers are women.  But where are we on the creation side? Software is omnipresent, and it's harder to see what you can do when you finish a degree in technology.  Bonnie originally came to gaming because of technology, and wasn't planning on staying more than a year.  But she found a passion.  She hopes some of us will too.

Bonnie showed us a video prologue of the Halo story.  She asks, what tools and technology have enabled us to tell more immersive stories? Games have different genres, and different styles requiring different graphics.  Similarly, games have different needs in terms of storytelling.  Audiences are asked to have some kind of suspension of disbelief when consuming entertainment.

Technology had advanced to support this suspension disbelief in many areas, but one that has helped immensely with Halo is facial motion capture.  Golum was one of the first characters to use this, but now it's in many movies and games.  The technique leads to more believable performances, helps bridge the uncanny valley, and leads to more efficient development.  We get a stronger emotional attachment to the higher fidelity characters.

One funny thing about casting interviews for character actors: they don't tell the interviewees what they are doing, and just ask them to move their faces around in a wide range of emotions.  What they are really looking for is botox, because they need every wrinkle to move for facial motion capture to work.

Bonnie showed us several examples of various stages of animations, and I must say I am flabbergasted.

Fans are also now becoming part of the Halo story.  They've always wanted to be, but it used to be a more physical form (cosplay, for example).  Lost engaged fans through things like ARGs and really invited them into their story.  Is this a good thing? Bonnie says yes.  The more the users feel ownership in your story, the more they will stick with you.  Is there a way to bring the Halo story and the fans' story together into something bigger? Perhaps through ARGs, transmedia initiatives and the like...

Bonnie hopes we all walk away thinking about what new things we can do with technology.  That we see the balance of art and science in games.  That everyone coming out of university realized we all need some kind of technical background.  Now that's a story I can buy into!