GDC News and Information Blog

Creating an interactive game narrative can be a complex, nuanced, and difficult process, and at next week's GDC Online, writer and Linden Lab developer Emily Short will take a moment to explore how developers can create choice-driven games for multiple players.

During her session, "Choice and Character: Lessons from Writing Multiplayer Narrative Games," Short will draw from her experience working on Linden Lab's new interactive storytelling platform to discuss various types of player choice, and how designers can create dynamic and emotionally satisfying experiences.

For example, she'll explain how developers can pay off significant player choices by "designing character crises that can be triggered automatically at dramatically appropriate moments." This talk will offer plenty of useful insight for developers working on story-driven games, or those interested in simulating complex, nuanced characters.

Short is particularly well-equipped to discuss complex character simulation, as she is one of the co-founders of the experimental game studio Little Text People, a small company dedicated to exploring the possibilities of interactive fiction (the studio was acquired by Second Life creator Linden Lab earlier this year).

As part of GDC Online's Game Narrative Summit, this talk will be open to All Access pass holders. The show itself will take place October 9-11 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.

In addition to the above presentation, GDC Online recently added the following talks to the show's Game Narrative Summit:

- Playdom designer Martha Sapeta will share the complex backstory of one of the studio's major hidden object titles in "Playdom's Blackwood & Bell Mysteries: The Nutshell Narrative Case." Unlike most social games, Blackwood & Bell Mysteries put a distinct emphasis on story, and during this session Sapeta will discuss how her team found a way to introduce an actual narrative into the typically minimalist Facebook space.

- Elsewhere, Zynga designers Steven Williams and Jonathon Myers will discuss their approach to telling stories on Facebook in "Indiana Jones Adventure World: Narrative for Social Games." Using examples from this popular Facebook game, the pair will discuss how developers can draw inspiration from serialized storytelling techniques and traditional Sunday comic strips to create new, weekly online stories.