OFFICIAL SESSION NAME: (4:30pm)
“The Lost (But Critical) Art of Storytelling in Serious Gaming” David Versaw, WILL Interactive

SUMMARY:
Basically a demonstration of their branching video projects. Uh, I feel it’s pretty clear “interactive movies” didn’t catch on 10 years ago. shrug.

ECAMPUS TAKEAWAY:
We won’t be paying for these professional movie making services anytime soon, but it is always fun to keep the importance of “cinematic storytelling” in mind when creating our future videos. [random thought: it might be cool to try and rope some aspiring OSU filmmakers into experimenting with storytelling for our videos.]

RAW NOTES:
…arrived a couple minutes late to this talk… audience seemed pretty hostile (I was definitely expecting more theory and less vague commercial from the talk’s title).

We all sit around in the dark, watching story videos with some decisions now and then. (3 minutes of video, then you can choose what do do next). One sample follows a man losing his house, and another follows a sports star screwing up his career. Audience seems really unhappy with the lack of constant interaction in this whole concept.

A lady in the audience mentions 56 sage street – a money management game, where you start homeless (with only a phone). [alternate approach to money management conundrum]

Someone notes the conflict between fidelity of options and fidelity of emotions. (good point).

Average cost for this company’s services, for a full video package, is between $400k and 900k. [yoinks]

COME BACK LATER FOR:
… probably no need to check back on this one actually