Getting ready to finish off the series of posts on Narrative Artifacts. Don’t know what a narrative artifact is? Find out with the previous posts in the series.

1. Artifacts: building dimension into your narrative.

2. Building structures inside of your story.

3. Expanding your narrative with parallels.

Got any questions? Post them in the comments.

Related articles

• The Stanley Parable: An Interactive Narrative (rhetoric114.wordpress.com)
• The ds106 Narrative Fence (cogdogblog.com)
• An Incentive to Create (rhetoric114.wordpress.com)

Related posts:

1. Expanding your narrative with parallels [Narrative Artifacts: 3 of 4]
2. Artifacts: building dimension into your narrative [Narrative Artifacts: 1 of 4]
3. Story vs Narrative vs Plot

by welshkaren via Flickr

This is a synthesis post. Since I’m trying to build new ideas that all function in the same space (narrative design/transmedia), here are some ideas combining previous post concepts from this week.

I know I haven’t posted a lot this week, so it’ll be a short one.

In my previous post this week dealing with the downsides of a system like DISQUS or Facebook comments I focused on the issues of SEO and historical record. But I think that there is another commenting issue to address. Comments on a blog post or article are narrative-additive artifacts. This means that comments are part of the overall narrative of your post.

This is true in a general sense, though is not always applicable in the specific sense. Trolling comments, spam or the occasional crazy don’t add any real value or substance to the narrative. However, there are constructive comments, some addressing the post’s content directly, some replying because of a mention in a post, or just a conversation around the content.

With content being built around your post, it becomes an evolving narrative. There are possible tellable events growing right there on your page.

As I discussed in the previous post, a narrative is all about how we tell a story. Comments may and should become part of that. Another reason we need to be even more wary about giving up our control (and possibly losing) site comments.

Did my blogging this week make you think of anything cool? Tell me in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Friday synthesis post: Soundscapes and Bookstores
2. Artifacts: building dimension into your narrative [Narrative Artifacts: 1 of 4]
3. Catch up on Narrative Artifacts

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been using the two terms ‘Story’ and ‘Narrative’ very frequently on this blog. As I look back, I realize that I may not have done a very good job defining them, or more importantly, the difference between the two.

The goal here is to explain these concepts and how they relate to each other to someone completely unfamiliar with literary theory.

Story

A ‘story’ is, in simplest terms, a sequence of events. So when thinking of a story it is A then B then C then D, the set of relevant events in chronological order.

Let’s go spelling bee and use these two terms in somewhat defining sentences.

The story of Bob’s Monday begins when he wakes up in the morning. He brushes his teeth, gets dressed, gets in his car, drives to work, parks, sits at his desk, goes to lunch, flirts with his coworkers, goes back to his desk, does more work, drives home, eats dinner and then he goes to sleep at night.

Story is the entire sequence of events (though even that paragraph simplifies some).

Plot

Plot describes a set of events as they relate to each other. The term is concerned with how to sequence and select the events of a story as a structure for its telling and how that telling can find maximum effect.

The plot usually concerns itself with specific points of the story and the pattern of their relation. If we go with Freytag on this, plot breaks down a story into events dealing with exposition, the rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

The plot of Bob’s Monday begins when he wakes up in the morning. The most interesting part of the day is at lunch, when he flirts with his coworkers. The plot ends when he goes to sleep at night.

Narrative

The concept of narrative deals more with how the events are told. Narrative is the ordering of events into a consumable format.

If you don’t mind using the previous words in this one’s definition, narrative is the method and means by which you construct the events of a story into a plot. It concerns itself with the sequence of the events, the medium on which they are told and the way these events are put together into one coherent unit. 

Narratives may involve a reordering of the events of a story. The story’s events can be set out of chronological order; be combined with elements from outside of the story to better tell the consumer what is going on; or to build dramatic effect. Sometimes a narrative may draw attention to things or events the story lacks, because the contrast is interesting.

The narrative comes from the events of the story in order to create a dramatic effect through the structure of the plot.

The narrative of Bob’s Monday: Bob wakes up in the morning, skipping breakfast so he can go straight to work. Though most of Bob’s day is boring, he enjoys lunch, when he frequently flirts with his coworkers. After work he goes straight home to get enough sleep to go to work the next day.

If you’ve been confused by how I use these different terms, hopefully this helps you better understand them. If not, please tell me down in the comments and I can elaborate further.

Related articles

• Week Two – Hypertexts and Interactives (rhetoric114.wordpress.com)
• Constructing My Visual Narrative (jaredb528.wordpress.com)

Related posts:

1. Branching narrative schema and similar narrative structures
2. Building structures inside of your story [Narrative Artifacts: 2 of 4]
3. Story arcs beyond TV [Thinking]

Sometimes it is important to maintain a character or narrative over multiple stories. The tool for that is story arcs. Story arcs are most common in TV and graphic novels, however, with the easy linking of stories, there is an opportunity to expand the use of arcs.

A quick review: A story arc allows you to move one narrative thread through another narrative thread, or is simply an evolving narrative, and is most often used for character development. It is especially common in episodic storytelling, where character story arcs spread over multiple episodes of a story. Sometimes plot-lines outside of characters are also spread out over more than one episode.

Particularly plot-focused episodic narratives may use overlapping arcs, allowing an episode to both complete and start a new primary arc.

Image via Kalkion.

I’m curious if the same techniques behind story arcs in episodic content can be applied to other media.

Journalism

The first possibility is in journalism. Journalists often write each article without thinking if it will need a follow-up. As a result stories tend to stand alone, making it difficult for news websites to engage the participant beyond the landing story. In order to get more impressions, they instead spread the story out over multiple pages. This is one of the reasons that news websites have such high bounce rates.

But news organizations, especially local organizations which often follow a story topic over significant periods of time, have a real opportunity to establish arcs over multiple stories, allowing readers to get a better sense of the whole of the story and the people involved. This can drill down further than topics and get people more engaged. If there is something to really connect readers to other content, than it can build traffic and keep users on the site.

The New York Times sometimes plays with interactive features that build on the concept of an arc through a progressing story. I believe that The Washington Post used to  have a related topics frequency graph of some sort that fed on keywords, but they don’t anymore.

Can you think of any ways that news organizations can innovate to make story arcs a part of building coverage?

Transmedia

I was thinking about the value of leaving hints and bits of story in each transmedia element. This is sort of an ARG concept. Transmedia concepts often reveal depth to a story through content, but I’m thinking more along the lines of hiding points on a story arc throughout different media.

The issue is that it could be revealed in different order each time. Perhaps it could build on a narrative where order is not as important. It might work well with time travel.

Design

The most obvious way is to include elements of previous UI stages in other user interface stages, providing a connection. This isn’t particularly uncommon, but I’m thinking about how the technique can be in narrative terms. Really we are establishing a simple type of story about progression from one level of use to the next.

Is it possible to expand beyond that? Hyperlinks are, I suppose, another way to do it.

What about implementing overlapping arcs in each UI level? Include part of the last UI in the current stage. I’ve seen this done before and it is usually pretty cool. I think that could be especially useful with browser-based interactive fiction.

Music

Establishing a story arc over the course of a commercial album is not entirely unheard of but it is pretty rare. When it is done, it can be fairly successful. I’d like to see it more often. Beyond that, what would be really interesting is to treat each song as an episode, with its own story and arcs connecting them together.

Can you think of any other interesting ways to use story arcs?

Related posts:

1. Thinking about how we could use musical cues with online content
2. Story vs Narrative vs Plot

Image via Wikipedia

Many mediums have a standard narrative structure, for journalism that structure is the inverted pyramid. The three act structure could almost be considered a meta-structure, as it is used in concert with other formats. However, TV tends to use a certain flavor of the 3 act structure. What structures are common in branching and interactive narratives?

The twists and turns of interconnected and multi-branched narratives can move in almost infinite directions. However there are a few that are standard formats that exist.

Strict Choice

This is the ever expanding and thickening web of narrative branches. Each choice has at least as many choices as the last and perhaps more.

Forking Paths

Each decision point in the story is binary, you can either go one way or the other, each has two choices. Though the complexity might be small in the beginning it will increase rapidly.

Detoured Linear Plot

The plot line is linear, but at each decision point you depart from the main story to take a detour and then return.

Limited internavigability

At each level of the narrative’s decision points, you can choose to move to any other decision point at the same level.

Parallel Paths

There are only two narrative tracks, restricted by certain gateway decision points. The best known example is Bioshock. This whole good vs evil approach has become pretty common in video games in general.

Non-linear

A set of pre-defined decision points moved through in any order the participant chooses. This is common in open world video games.

Simultaneous

A narrative with two separate paths occurring simultaneously and affecting each other.

Dynamic

This narrative type provides a number of objects, goals or decision points that is reached via multiple paths. It allows the user to pick their own story and mix up various story elements and events themselves. This is common in ‘endless’ games like The Sims.

Sources:

“Branching Narrative” by Hartzog

Narrative on Play With Learning

Related posts:

1. Building structures inside of your story [Narrative Artifacts: 2 of 4]
2. Story vs Narrative vs Plot
3. Expanding your narrative with parallels [Narrative Artifacts: 3 of 4]

Building a better story doesn’t require you working in the story itself. Sometimes, the universe around your narrative can offer all sorts of opportunities for greater scope and better engagement.

Image via Wikipedia

Of the three artifact types, I believe that narrative-parallel artifacts are the most common. They’re easy to create and deploy and they are the closest transmedia storytelling comes to easy franchising of a narrative. That is not to say that a well crafted narrative-parallel artifact is easy to create, the best are complex and deep narratives in and of themselves and used by prestigious authors, including Shakespeare.

A narrative-parallel artifact is narrative fragment that runs external to your main narrative but still relates to it. It can be accessible to your characters, but does not have to be in their reach. Essentially it is an artifact that runs parallel to your main narrative thread.

Why use narrative-parallel artifacts?

This specific type of artifact comes with a host of advantages for creators. It allows you to influence the readers’ perception without forcing characters into obvious foreshadowing, authors can create implications and pass judgement calls outside of the main narrative and without disrupting the reliability of the narrative voice.

Parallel artifacts also allow you to build a world around your narrative without forcing excessive exposition on your readers. It can also work to construct and reinforce a certain mood within a narrative.

Where have narrative-parallel artifacts been used?

Once again, I’ve assembled a list of both general and specific narrative-parallel artifacts in action to provide context.

Video games

There are a number of different implementations of narrative-parallel artifacts in video games. The two most common are in-game TV and book chapters.

Two prominent examples of effective in-game video use are Max Payne and Alan Wake. Here are two videos:

The first is from Max Payne. This is one of two compilations of one of the in-game TV shows that played on televisions left on throughout the game. The player could walk right past them, skipping most of the content, or choose to stay and watch them play out over a brief period. You can watch the first few minutes show two different executions of the technique.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The second video is from Alan Wake, where most of the TVs in the game play a very short episode of Night Springs, a story based on the inspirations for the game, Twin Peaks and The Twilight Zone. Players interacted with these videos in much the same way.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In Max Payne the videos sometimes foreshadows symbols or narrative elements that will appear later. Sometimes the videos just help set the creepy and sort of over the top mood. For Alan Wake, the videos provide all that and, sometimes, explain some of the more complex underlying concepts of the narrative.

The other narrative-parallel artifacts frequently found in video games are books. The best executed in-narrative books are found in Deus Ex. They both compounded emotion during the game and create greater depth. Sometimes they act as foreshadowing and at other times they provide background information for the narrative. In either case, they are also optional.

Comics

I could probably find a number of examples within comics, which are famously self-referencing and recursive. However, I’ll start and stop with the most prominent.

Reading a comic inside a comic

Watchmen uses many narrative artifacts between its two covers. In fact I could probably write a post just on Watchmen‘s artifact use. The most prominent and persistent of these artifacts is The Black Freighter. A comic within the narrative that provides subtext and depth to Alan Moore’s world, one that lacks morals and ethical direction. Moore used the horrifying text of The Black Freighter to help illustrate the apparent hopeless, heartless and self-destructive world of his characters. As revelations unfolded within the story, parallel revelations were occurring for and around the main characters.

In fact, the series of asides which contained The Black Freighter, independent from the characters, could be considered an artifact itself. The asides placed between chapters are also a form of narrative-parallel artifact.

Journalism

In journalism the most common implementation of narrative-parallel artifacts is the sidebar. I’m referring to a box to the side or otherwise separated from the story that contains information relevant to understanding the story, but not necessarily in the story.

In TV journalism the lower-third is a common location for narrative-parallel content.

Shakespeare

While there are earlier appearances  of the story within a story, the most popular in modern culture is Hamlet. The Danish prince crafts his own play within Shakespeare’s play, creating a narrative-parallel artifact that illuminates the character’s thinking and provides a significant plot point.

This blog

While I’ve done the occasional sidebar, I’d have to say that my most common usage of narrative-parallel artifacts is in the pink-highlight asides that are  throughout my posts.

Besides allowing me to address you in a different voice than use in most of my posts, the tooltips create opportunities for additive, but not required, information that can help you expand your understanding or find a chuckle.

Building your universe with narrative-parallel artifacts

The best place to start is to understand that your narrative does not live in isolation. Even if it just fell out of your head on to a piece of paper this very moment your story has background, context, a past and a future. If you can gain a better grasp on the universe of your narrative you’ll find opportunities for narrative-parallel artifacts will pop up frequently.

This is especially useful the more interactive your medium is. Narrative-parallel artifacts thrive on giving your participants a choice, so that they can take part in the slow construction of your universe.

Later: Narrative-additive artifacts.

Before: Building structures inside of your story with narrative-centric artifacts.

Related articles

• The Game Narrative Triangle [Design] (kotaku.com)
• Building structures inside of your story [Narrative Artifacts: 2 of 4] (hacktext.com)
• Artifacts: building dimension into your narrative [Narrative Artifacts: 1 of 4] (hacktext.com)
• What is a text and how do I hack it? (hacktext.com)
• Let’s Discuss Alan Wake Episode Two – Now [Game Club] (kotaku.com)

Related posts:

1. Artifacts: building dimension into your narrative [Narrative Artifacts: 1 of 4]
2. Building structures inside of your story [Narrative Artifacts: 2 of 4]
3. Catch up on Narrative Artifacts

Sometimes it is valuable to have something inside of a story that both the characters and participants can manipulate. Building an artifact that intersects with your main narrative thread is more common than you might think and very useful.

The first narrative artifact-type I’d like to deal with are narrative-centric artifacts. These are narrative fragments that are internal to a story. Essentially it is a piece of the story within the story, one that both the characters internal to the story and the participants external to the story can interact with. I’ve identified them in a number of works and formats and they are essential to enriching your text.

Why use narrative-centric artifacts?

Image via ImageShack

The most prominent reason to use a narrative-centric artifact is to increase engagement of participants in the narrative. When the user interacts with an artifact together with the characters it deepens the universe and the characters.

Depending on the artifact, it may even lend a physical aspect to your universe, by giving your users something of your world that they can hold in their hands.

Where have narrative-centric artifacts been used?

I’ve put together a list of both general and specific examples of narrative-centric artifacts and how they are used to give this a little context. Hopefully it will also help build a better understanding of how to use narrative artifacts in your own work.

Video Games:

Perhaps the most common and easiest to explain narrative-centric artifact is the cloth map. In-game, your character and others would presumably have some sort of map to help them find their way around. By giving your audience a physical map that they too can consult with, it makes it feel like this universe matters enough to be mapped out with.

That solidity of cloth maps implies a whole spectrum of other elements: explorers, cartographers, illustrators, unexplored areas, and places beyond the map. Very effective.

General Entertainment:

TV, video games and movies all make use of physical tie-ins. While action figures don’t count, the existence of weapons from a narrative is fairly commonplace. Once again, this is all about deepening the world for participants. With this in mind, the closer to real the weapon is, the more effective an artifact.

TV shows, especially the USA Network’s shows, also do promotion through various media formats, most notably blogs, done in the voices of their characters. They were one of the first to allow participants to receive texts from in-narrative personalities. Character-audience participation that doesn’t break the fourth wall is often a narrative-centric artifact.

Journalism:

I found it surprisingly difficult to tie down examples of narrative-centric artifacts in journalism. I know they exist and have seen them, but I just cannot find them at the moment. I suppose data journalism is a good example, when the same data is known by the subjects of a piece and is available to the readers.

Perhaps the highest profile case of narrative-centric artifacts in journalism is WikiLeaks. This is a major case in which the primary topic of many reports is a document or documents that are available as easily to the reader as the reporter. For journalism, since you are already dealing in reality, narrative-centric artifacts help engage and educate readers while giving rise to a more intelligent discussion.

In some cases, infographics may also qualify.

Web-comics:

There may be other ways that web-comic creators use narrative-centric artifacts than Twitter but, from what I’ve seen, none are more effective. Participants follow characters’ Twitter accounts in droves. Two excellent examples are the casts of the Dresden Codak and Questionable Content (QC). In both cases the creators of the comics build mini-narratives into their characters’ Twitter streams, including interactions with other characters from the same universe.

Overall, in-character twittering seems to effectively increase draw (short-format narratives that exist continually inside the universe of the primary narrative allow for more frequent participation) and engagement. Besides increasing the web-comics’ reality, the tweets are also effective promotion, allowing fans to readily and frequently promote content through re-tweets.

Also, people just seem to really like following fictional characters on Twitter.

This blog:

Honestly, I don’t really use narrative-centric artifacts on this blog because I rarely deal in characters, fiction or factual. Except myself. I could argue that my Amps are narrative-centric since they present an artifact (someone else’s article) and my discussion around it.

Styled text and headers are also types of narrative-centric artifacts, in that they intersect with my narrative and are used by both participants and the author/character. However, they don’t really enlarge my content, so while they are great SEO, they are poor artifacts. I wonder how to enhance them to be more effective? Ideas?

Depending on how central linked content is to a post, links might also present narrative-centric artifacts. This is one of the reasons I really like playing with Apture. It doesn’t always work, but when it does it allows me to embed a fragment of other sites inside my own. I think that’s probably the closest to narrative-centric artifacts that I have on this blog.

Building your universe with narrative-centric artifacts:

Besides the various examples here the most common and easily executed way to place narrative-centric artifacts in a universe is through fictional documentation. Maps are the most common example, but creators can easily go beyond that. Video games and transmedia experiences commonly provide descriptions of ships, weapon specifications and other fictional texts that come from the story and with which both the participants and the characters interact.

Later: Narrative-parallel artifacts.

Before: What are narrative artifacts?

Related articles

• Artifacts: building dimension into your narrative [Narrative Artifacts: 1 of 4] (hacktext.com)
• What is a text and how do I hack it? (hacktext.com)
• Narrative Medicine and Blood Pressure (33charts.com)
• Thought police? Darpa wants to know how stories influence human mind, actions (networkworld.com)

Related posts:

1. Artifacts: building dimension into your narrative [Narrative Artifacts: 1 of 4]
2. Expanding your narrative with parallels [Narrative Artifacts: 3 of 4]
3. Catch up on Narrative Artifacts

It’s time to consider the other ways your stories can engage readers. Narrative artifacts allow you to build dimension into the universe of your story and are universally applicable. From journalism to video games, artifacts are key to pulling in and keeping your audience.

Narrative artifacts are the things that surround and add to universe of your narrative. In many ways they are one of the most important elements of a transmedia experience.

Definition:

A narrative artifact is a self-contained narrative fragment of a storyline that is separate, related or parallel to the central narrative.

It is often the first step in building the sense of a greater universe around a central story or character and comes in three formats:

1. Narrative-centric: A narrative fragment internal to a story, one that both users and characters can interact with meaningfully. A good example is a map of the continent the characters are on. Though it is within your central narrative thread, its very existence suggests a larger universe outside of the character’s perceptions.
   
   This is an artifact that intersects with your main narrative thread.

2. Narrative-parallel: A narrative fragment that runs outside of the story but still relates to it. This is often in a format that may or may not be accessible to characters of the story but is accessible to the reader. While it exists in the universe of your story it is not directly part of the narrative thread. A good example is a chapter from a book about something relating to, but not of the story, one that does not involve the primary characters.
   
   This is an artifact that runs parallel to your main narrative thread.

3. Narrative-additive: A narrative fragment completely external to the story. It is not accessible to the characters of the narrative, nor are they aware of it. A good example is an epigraph. It may be part of the same universe of the story, perhaps even involving some of the same characters, but it is not part of the actual story. It does not necessarily directly relate to the narrative either.
   
   This is an artifact that adds depth to your narrative thread without being part of it.

I intend to go into greater depth on each of these types of narrative artifacts, how they were used in the past and how they could be used in the future. Each narrative artifact type will get its own post in the series. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Building structures inside of your story [Narrative Artifacts: 2 of 4]
2. Expanding your narrative with parallels [Narrative Artifacts: 3 of 4]
3. Catch up on Narrative Artifacts

Current’s newest TV show, Bar Karma, is an evolution in storytelling. The show is a platform for community contributions, ideas and amplified cooperation. The creators leverage contributions, recommendations, pitches and votes through a platform created by video-game great Will Wright.

The project is powered by a tool called Storymaker, which would be very useful to journalists, video game developers and narrative designers.

You may not be familiar with Current TV, Al Gore’s television channel is not carried in the default package by all cable subscribers and is often ignored by other media outlets. It is best known for its focus on community created content. Current produces some pretty high quality shows, the most notable of which are Vanguard, an excellent documentary series, and infoMania, a clever cross between The Daily Show and The Soup.

As of this week, Current adds a new show to their lineup, Bar Karma. The show comes from the mind of SimCity creator Will Wright and ex-Nickelodeon president Albie Hecht. Oh and Current Creation Studio’s medium-sized community of story-writing hopefuls and invested contributer-viewers. The concept for the show itself came from Current’s contributors, as does every single episode, in various levels of detail.

The site provides web-based software called Storymaker to allow people to create story ideas, pitch episodes and create concepts for various in-show artifacts. Professional producers then take the community contributions and use them as the kernel around which to base a show. They also have used community ideas to build a mythology for the titular Bar Karma creating an ever-expanding playground for contributors.

The first episode premieres this Friday and only then will we really begin to get a sense of if Bar Karma will be a success. I’d recommend watching it. All that being said, the most interesting part of Bar Karma is not the cast, producers or the community on the site. It’s the tool.

Storymaker: a serious tool for communities, multi-thread storylines and group content creation

I’ve spent a few weeks exploring the Bar Karma site, even trying out its iPad application. It is no exaggeration when I say that Storymaker is one of the most fascinating story-building tools I’ve ever seen. It provides excellent functionality in three areas: story-building, contribution display and community management.

Building narratives with Storymaker

Building narratives with Storymaker’s cards tool is one of the most organic experiences you can have. Each card represents around one minute of screen time and allows you to add an image from an easy search tool to help visualize any given scene. You can create descriptions of scenes, or out-and-out screen-play style text.

Storymaker Card View

Each card can be commented on, reported or individually recommended. Writing in each card is easy and mostly error-free. In writing 30 cards, I experienced data loss three times, but it was because I was frequently clicking in and out of Storymaker with multiple screens, copying and pasting for spellcheck. It’s not a normal use case and it is no longer required, as they seem to have now integrated spellcheck into the system.

When looking at an individual scene, you can even shuffle other people’s cards, to see what they’ve suggested. The system is aware of other cards in the same position and allows for threads to emanate from cards at any level of the system.

Storymaker tree view

The story tree view gives you a view of the various storylines in the system, allowing you to see various branches of stories from each points and all the available scene cards, via the visualization image. Besides being used for community-empowered storytelling, Storymaker could be an excellent way to plan out complex multi-branching storylines that are common to modern video games. It would also be useful for showing a timeline of events, how one event spurred a series of other occurrences, literally visualizing the chain reactions in history. It could be a great tool for journalists who want to break down complex stories into simple sets of events.

Storymaker’s pitch system

The tool seems to handle two types of content: short and long pitches. With short pitches, users throw out a brief idea which can then be recommended by other viewers. There is a maximum length and multiple short pitches are often created by the same person. The other type of pitch uses Storymaker’s primary function. You create your collection of cards and submit them for viewing by other users.

A Storymaker submission

Once submitted it shows up in the pitch request’s thread and can be shared, printed or ‘played.’ In the latter, users can choose one of three speeds and watch the story play itself automatically. They can also flip through the individual cards themselves, scrolling through any long text.

Recommendations and Community building with Storymaker

Storymaker presents a positive-only system for dealing with members of the community. There are no opportunities to vote or be voted down, instead you can only recommend content or choose not to recommend it. In addition, threaded commenting is present throughout the system, to allow you to comment on pitches, cards and full on storyboards.

Recommendations, along with selections and credits from the producers, display on a leaderboard.

You can vote on your own content only once and numbers are not displayed next to the content itself, though you can order most threads by ‘Most Recommended.’

Overall, I suspect that the positive reenforcement is highly beneficial to the community. If there was any backbiting or anger displayed, I didn’t see it in my browsing.

The future?

Very soon we’ll see just how much of the community input is taken into account in the first few episodes of Bar Karma. I suspect that will decide whether the show is a success of failure. I intend to post about this again once I’ve seen the first episode.

Either way, the Storymaker tool is really something remarkable. I’d love to see Current and Will Wright open source it, or at least give away a package that others can play with on their own.

Preview image via

Related articles

• Help Chart the Course of Current TV’s Bar Karma (dreadcentral.com)
• Current TV Begins Production on Original Drama Series, ‘Bar Karma’ (tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com)
• Will Wright Wants YOU to Choose What Happens In ‘Bar Karma’ (screenrant.com)
• Sims Creator Working On TV Show [The Sims] (kotaku.com)
• Will Wright Takes the Sims to Current TV With Bar Karma (wired.com)

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