Telling Tales

I was listening to Digital Human on Radio 4 on the way home from work this afternoon and this week’s edition was about how storytelling is changing, rather interestingly one of the people interviewed claimed that storytelling is taking a step backwards to older times with people telling stories they’ve heard from others in different mediums, similar to how stories would move from place to place as people travelled but now travel can be a digital step, rather than a physical one.

A lot of the episode was about something I’ve never heard of called Slender Man, which has apparently got a large following. However another part of the episode involved Alison Norrington, who has in the past used Second Life as part of a transmedia storytelling project, that was back in 2007 so it isn’t new. Transmedia is using different formats to tell your story, each one delivering a unique piece of the project, so for example, in Alison’s case she used blogs, emails, Second Life, YouTube etc. to tell the story, rather than having the whole story on each format … I think I’ve got that right!

I don’t think Alison is in Second Life anymore, maybe The Blarney Stone was too much drunken debauchery for her, but the project and use of Second Life was an interesing concept.

Second Life’s limitations with regards to reading, lend itself to other forms of telling stories, which brings home the concept of older oral traditions of storytelling, this is one area whereby Second Life’s introduction of voice is a boost and we can see from projects such as Crap Mariner’s 100 word stories project that Second Life is a decent medium for telling stories. On The Isle Of Dee we’ve had The Bardic Circle where someone will read a story, mileage varies as to how popular these events are but people have came and listened to the storyteller in the past.

However it’s not just storytelling itself whereby Second Life can be used to bring people from all over the world together to listen, it’s talking too, just over three years ago Terry Pratchett was live inworld for a Q&A session and Sci Fi author Kim Stanley Robinson appeared at Sophrosyne’s Saturday Salon back in 2009. What on earth happened to Sophrosyne’s Saturday Salon? That was a good event.

Whereas Second Life does have some good use cases for storytelling, there are of course limitations, as I mentioned earlier, it’s not a comfortable platform for reading, sims have limits on attendance, you can do the four sim trick if you’re rich enough, but that’s outside of the reach of the vast majority of Second Life users and rentals from Linden Lab for a short event aren’t cheap, it always seems to end up going back to tier pricing, but that is a reality that people have to face.

I’d like to see more storytelling and definitely interactive fiction within Second Life, the platform should have the potential to do that in some ways, it’s something that could be embraced if enough use cases emerge. Whereas I don’t think it’s great for reading, it is a 3D world and can deliver visual and interactive results, there have been stage productions, although they fall into the category of technical limitations at times.

Roleplaying is a form of storytelling, in many ways it’s a more chaotic way of telling stories, but it can be utilised that way and the potential for an open ended nature allows people to develop their own stories, although roleplaying admins will baulk at people introducing their own major story arc, it can be a bit more complicated than you imagine. However it allows people to engage, and that’s something that should be welcomed. Storytelling in Second Life seems to be underplayed, maybe that will change in the future.

Tweet