Spatial storytelling is the art of designing environments to encourage behavior and elicit emotion. By taking great care in constructing the environments in a game, you open up possibilities of a different kind of storytelling. A great example of this practice in modern gaming is Gone Home by Fullbright, a game where your only objective is to explore a house in order to uncover the story behind it. In using a non-linear method of story-telling, and allowing the player to move freely around the environment, the player can choose where to focus their attention and in doing so they can uncover snippets up the larger narrative, and the many sub-plots that evolve around it. This results in a more organic intake of the story for the player, picking away further at the threads they have discovered, a more rewarding method of uncovering story than just being shown cut scenes at pre-determined intervals.
1. "Spaces can be designed. They can be made to promote certain pathways, encourage specific behaviors, even elicit emotional reactions" - Sharang Biswas
This kind of storytelling is similar to the way that we as humans perceive the real world, by exploring, picking up on visual clues, coming to conclusions. As a result, the process of exploring environments feels natural, and results in the stories we uncover feeling all the more real.
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| Gone Home |
1. Sharang Biswas - Videogames and the Art of Spatial Storytelling (https://killscreen.com/articles/videogames-and-the-art-of-spatial-storytelling/)
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