Storytelling is an art form that I often think doesn’t realise anywhere near its potential in Second Life. However, when you stop and think a bit longer, we see lots of roleplaying, which is a form of storytelling and then we have interactive games from producers such as Madpea Games and that’s the focus of this blog post, because the lastest episode of The Drax Files involves an interview with Kiana Writer of Madpea Games. I’ll embed the interview at the end of the post, along with some trailers from Madpea Games, as long as the Shockwave Flash plugin doesn’t crash again, all should be well!
This episode has a twist, a bit like those films where cartoon characters appear, in this episode we see Kiana’s avatar but Drax in all his RL glory. However we do see some of the content creators for Madpea Games in action, including an amusing scene where one of them holds up a help sign!
Kiana starts by saying that she thinks Second Life is the perfect platform for designing games, something that I really can’t agree with. However Madpea have produced some excellent examples of storytelling and games on the Second Life platform. Kiana explains how Second Life has allowed her to bring her stories to life. That’s a really impressive point to note.
Kiana describes herself as the painter who can’t paint, but she has a team who help her bring her storytelling ideas to life in the form of a game environment and another important factor is that the team are from different countries, leaving Kiana to observe that in Second Life it doesn’t feel like they are in different countries because they are in the same (virtual) space. We also see here examples of collaboration between people of different skillsets, Kiana isn’t a graphics artist, but she is a storyteller, alongside her in her team are graphic artists, scripters, yadda yadda yadda, this is a team effort and Second Life enables not only the end product, but also that ability to work as a team within the platform.
However how far can Second Life go with games? Well Kiana suggests that it can go further than many believe and informs us that their latest game, entitled Unia, is an action game currently in production that will prove the naysayers wrong about the sort of games that can be developed in Second Life.
Time will tell on that, but the interview is yet again an excellent one, Draxtor keeps on delivering with these interviews. The concepts covered in this episode, games, storytelling etc. are ones that really interest me. However Madpea are in a position that many individual residents aren’t, therefore the main challenges of delivering a game/storytelling/roleplaying environment that individual residents face, such as meeting tier payments, are not as big stumbling block for Madpea as they would be for an individual resident wo was looking to develop in these areas. That’s not to say Madpea don’t need to meet tier, I have no idea how they are funded, but they are in a position to deliver content, which is great to see and great for Second Life. However for many people in Second Life, the high cost of tier stifles even dipping their toes in the water when it comes to storytelling and games, which is a shame, but that’s how the land lies.
However as I said, great interview and great concepts discussed. I’ll end this post by embedding the interview and then beneath some trailers from Madpea Games.
Oh and finally, a trailer for Unia…. this is very brief!
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