by Jeff Tidball | Jun 2, 2009 | Movies, Props, Story, Writing
Here’s a weird confluence of story and game for you: I’m working on a screenplay that’s about—among other things—people who play a particular game. This has been done before, of course. Take Jumanji, Zathura, and perhaps most obviously, The Game. In...
by Jeff Tidball | May 23, 2009 | Story
What do we wish for in the perfect game? Do we wish for Our Team to take the field and thrash the opposition from the First Moment, rolling up a walkover score at the final gun? No. We wish for a closely fought match that contains many satisfying reversals, but which...
by Jeff Tidball | May 7, 2009 | RPGs, Story
Here’s what I apparently do: I flog hope and fear as the pair of emotions that hit a game-player or story-reader in the gut and make any game or story worth a damn. Many months ago, I scribbled a note to myself while I was playing in a game of Grimm, to the...
by Jeff Tidball | Apr 22, 2009 | Business, Story
I’ve been thinking and writing about stories and their uses recently, for reasons that will become apparent in the Fall or Winter. A few days ago, a post went by on Signal vs. Noise about the way online retailer The J. Peterman Company spins stories to sell you...
by Jeff Tidball | Apr 1, 2009 | Movies, Story, Video Games
Yesterday’s issue of The Escapist included “A Videogame, in Three Acts,” an article I wrote about using the Hollywood three-act structure to add emotional impact to videogames. Parts of my argument there may sound familiar; I’ve been beating...
by Will Hindmarch | Mar 24, 2009 | MMOs, Musing, Story
Peter Sagal, who you know from Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, recently recorded a new commentary on the imaginary people we grow up with. Some day, alas, Viggo Mortensen will (presumably) pass away, but the Aragorns we know through Lord of the Rings games (Sagal...
