October 2017: Writing for Interactive Media

In our October meeting, we examine the differences and parallels between writing for traditionally non-interactive media (prose and scripts) and interactive media (board games, role playing games, choose-your-own-adventure stories, and video games). We’ll look at some of the fundamental types of writing needed for a few interactive mediums, then workshop a few examples, such as diagramming a dialogue tree, adding flavor text to a collectable card game, and coming up with branching descriptions and story consequences for a rogue-like*, randomly generated game.

*Rogue-like is a genre of video games named after the 1980 UNIX game Rogue. Rogue-like games feature random or procedural generation of worlds or levels. They generally rely on simple enough gameplay that they don’t depend on modern graphics (Rogue itself had no graphics and relied entirely on using letters and symbols to represent the objects on the screen and text to communicate information to the player). Rogue-likes also have natural growth and evolution of the player’s avatar via gaining abilities, equipment, and growth of stats that affect gameplay, and permanent death, so that when the player’s avatar ‘dies’ in game, they must start back at the beginning in a new randomly generated setting.

Presenter: Hugh Sullivan
Location: Barnes & Noble, Pittsford
Meeting Time: October 3, 2017 from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Post-meeting note: The four worksheets for the group activities have been added to post for anyone who is interested.