brainstorm ideas – talk them through – shape ideas – share with other groups – review – structure and flowchart – script
Mind Mapping The Story
Over the weeks the different groups of young people from the different school brainstormed ideas for different scenes. They shared ideas and talked about them. They thought about the structure of the story and the logic of the game. For example:
1. Pys has created an AI set of glasses – cross between modernist and steampunk. The player is the glasses.
2. She sneaks around forbidden places looking for old tech to play with. The player/glasses help her.
3. She gets caught by Security Droid.
.
.
.
X. She gets banished from the city.
The different groups reviewed each other’s ideas, critiqued and revised them. It was amazing how well they collaborated. They were supportive and encouraging of each other’s work, and enjoyed seeing what other people had come up with, and then taking it that little bit further.
They shaped their ideas using mind-mapping software, planning the different events that followed from the player’s decisions and creating flowcharts.
This was a very challenging process. Working out the player’s choices and the different paths they might take was new to them, and required some deep thinking.
These flowcharts included all the main elements for the game:
- summary of the text
- background sounds
- sound effects
- images
From the flowcharts, they wrote the dialogue scripts, which provided the speech for the performers and the text for the designers. For example: Script: Draft 1