I mentioned in my last article that I was going to do some further research in to this type of media. Due to the interactivity of this project, the most obvious area of media to look at was games. They're currently about as interactive as media can get, and one game I played recently stands out as one to talk about.

Bioshock is a game created by "2K Games", it's primarily a first person shooter, with some RPG elements. The area which interested me the most were the moral decisions thrown at the user throughout the game, which actually effected the outcome of the plot. Much like the project we're about to do, there were two options presented. The screen shots below show in some detail how these decisions are played out.










What you can see happening here is the user choosing whether or not to kill the "little sisters". If you choose to kill them, you're instantly presented with "Adam" a necessity to survive in the game. The downfall of this is you become evil and this effects the outcome of the plot. The other option is to save the little sisters, for which you're presented a small amount of Adam, but taking this path way presents you with rewards. The way you choose between the two is to simply press a button, as in our work. It adds a twist to the usual gaming formula, and I loved making these kind of moral decisions. While you do get different endings either way, the rest of the game plays out exactly the same no matter which path way you take. I was a little disappointed by this as I wanted my decisions to have more of an impact on the story.

I've also been looking at other peoples blogs to see what they're doing for this project. Looking at Kane Pickerill's blog he had a link to a really useful website which went in to great detail on what Narrative is. In particular it discusses narrative in relationship to interactive design. They've produced a very similar narrative formula to the ones we've seen in lectures and seminars.

I'm starting to gain some confidence with this project now, as I was quite weary at the start. We don't have much longer to get this finished, but I feel I've got enough time so not to rush things. I like to take an ordered approach to work, but I think maybe this time I've left things a little too late. We'll see what happens in this next week though.