Let Me Be Boring.

Stories benefit from what is absent—from gaps. And different media create different gaps. Don’t leave! I’m not even at the boring part yet. Gaps are invitations for the audience to participate. For instance, literature supplies words but no voices and no faces. The reader must supply the sights and sounds. Radio plays don’t have visuals. The listener conjures them. Presentational theater might have an actor holding up a sign saying: Forest of Arden. The audience shrugs and says, Continue. Comics contain their action between the panels. The reader creates the continuity between images.
Still here? Great! In each medium, the gaps give room for the audience to enter as a co-producer.

Here’s the kicker! Video games have gaps, too. These gaps invite participation in the character’s achievements. The player becomes co-owner of the quest. When Helmer, for example, has to leap across a crumbling bridge to finish a quest, he doesn’t do it on his own — you, the player, have to hit the buttons at the right time to drive him forward. When you do, you share in his effort. You own a piece of his victory. When Helmer must solve a puzzle, you not only give the clicks, but the reasoning that orders the sequence.
Each medium’s gaps invite a different kind of participation. And the separate media keep the same story from being redundant.

The Point

You may have heard (because we’ve said it one billion times), we are publishing Green Ember: Helmer in the Dragon Tomb as both a novel AND a video game. Both share a plot, but the experience of the story is completely different. My wish is that kids who play the game will read the book. I think this is plausible because of a point Cicero once made. He held that humans find justice, honor, and utility naturally compelling. Our hunger for justice causes stories like The Count of Monte Cristo to grip us. Honor stories, like Morte d’Arthur, pull us along as well. But video games appeal to our strong interest in utility — problem solving — the mechanical aspects of reality. Games can’t help but impose this value on a story. I’ll prove it.

Imagine Jane Austen’s Emma as a video game. Whereas the novel unfurls a spiritual journey of a young girl to maturity, a video game would constrain the story to a series of relationship puzzles. I mentioned this difference to my wife, and she said, “I’d play that game.” And that’s the point. The book and game aren’t interchangeable experiences—not redundant, but each can complement the other.

So, while the Green Ember: Helmer in the Dragon Tomb video game lets you enter into Helmer’s mechanical efforts to complete his quest (utility), the novel lets you enter into the deeper human values of honor and justice. Experience both media, and let each enrich the other!

BORING PART!

The report was submitted according to the procedures outlined in section 4.3 of the manual. Wow, thanks. Had to get that off my chest. Because this week’s newsletter was moderately long, I’ll make next week’s newsletter moderately short. You’ve earned it (if you REALLY want to earn it, download the demo for Green Ember: Helmer in the Dragon Tomb on Steam).