Some things i read or saw this week that i thought were interesting.
Natural perspective
I found this blog post fascinating. Basically it talks about how human preception is different than what a photograph would be. For example if there is a big object of interest in the distance it usually looks larger. I never thought much about this before, but now that it has been pointed out to me, it rings very true.
Kill the hero save the (narrative) world
This was a talk fron the GDC conference, by Hannah Nicklin, who is the narrative lead of a video game called Mutazione, talking about the narrative structure of video games. Essentially the speaker was arguing that many video games follow a hero's journey type of plot where the story follows a protagonist's journey to becoming a hero. They feel that this is a structure that works really well in movies: the director can direct your focus to character traits and growth. The 2 hour length is also very suitable to developing a single character's journey. They argue that video games would be better suited to follow the structure of an emsamble cast tv show. They think that this allows a better balance between players being able to do whatever they want but still getting the plot across as the focus is less on the affect of actions on the main character's phsyche and more driven by characters interacting with a community of other characters.
I know very little of video games, so i don't know how true the premise rings. However i found the reasoning quite interesting, and it gave me a lot to think about.
Galatea, Versu, Character Engine
This was a talk from 2018 by Emily Short about making non playable characters in video games feel like real people with inner lives. She also talks a bit about the pros and cons of interactive fiction, which i have always find interesting.
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