WordPlay 2018 Speaker Lineup
WordPlay is our free one-day festival celebrating the most interesting uses of writing and words in contemporary games. Back in Toronto for our sixth year, we will once again host a curated game showcase, talks by creators about their craft, and ways for the public to try their hand at making games! Thanks also to WordNik for their contribution.
Event Details
Sat. November 10th, 12-5pm
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway)
FREE!
The final schedule and arcade showcase will be announced very soon. In the meantime, travel through a bleak American folk tale, grapple with history, party with pirates and NPC encounters, find love and laughter in a senior’s residence, and learn about everything from writing anti-Brexit interactive fiction to Twitter-based Choose Your Own Adventures. Oh, there will also be a Nicolas Cage-theme LARP for those so inclined. Check out our WordPlay 2018 speakers below!
A Journey Through “Where the Water Tastes Like Wine”
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a narrative game about traveling, sharing stories, and surviving manifest destiny. 26 different writers contributed words to the game, including Cara Ellison, Leigh Alexander, Austin Walker, Emily Short, Matthew S. Burns, and Elizabeth LaPensée. That is a lot of people! This talk will cover what it was like to edit all those words, and how editing can enhance or resonate with a narrative game’s core principles or goals. It will also discuss some takeaways which we hope more game developers will incorporate into their projects.
Laura Michet is a writer, designer, and fiction/nonfiction editor who lives in Los Angeles. She currently works as an editor at Riot Games. She’s interested in procgen text, twitter bots, archival writing, Twine, and 70s thriller films. She has yet to combine all these interests into the same project, but she’ll probably figure something out eventually.
How to Make a Game Political
All games are inherently political; some indies wear this identity proudly, some creators crave it, while some studios run away from the label protesting that their dystopian stories about Nazis and governmental collapse have nothing at all to do with current events. In this talk, Greg Buchanan — creator of several anti-Brexit and anti-Trump political games, which have been covered by Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun — will propose ways in which narrative games can expose their own political power. The talk will discuss practical methods and considerations for writing interactive fiction projects and adventure games with political elements, and how to play around with the player’s varying ability/inability to control the outcome of any story.
Greg Buchanan is a British writer and narrative designer for AAA, indie, and everything in-between. Since completing his PhD in identification and ethics at King’s College London, Greg has worked on a variety of bestselling, award-winning video games, including the acclaimed 30 hour story update No Man’s Sky: Atlas Rises and its subsequent release, No Man’s Sky: NEXT. In early 2018 he was named in GamesIndustry.biz’s Top 100 list. He is a member of BAFTA Crew Games and sits on the Games Committee of the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain. He is currently working on the successor to Epistory: Typing Chronicles, an unannounced mobile game, and a new political game due for release in early 2019.
I Was A Teenage Acolyte: What Mowing Lawns for a Cult Taught Me About Narrative Design
Critically-acclaimed freelance narrative designer Xalavier Nelson Jr. reveals his hilarious and eerie teenage experiences doing chores for members of a cult in the boondocks of the Pacific Northwest, and discusses what these experiences taught him about storytelling, technique, life, love, and where to hide the bodies.
Despite Your Rage You Are Still A Rat In A Cage — Nicolas Cage, Who Is Suspending You Over A Pit Of Lava With His Former Servant Igor (#CAGEGAME)
Experience the THRILL and ADVENTURE of being SUSPENDED in a CAGE by NICOLAS CAGE with his FORMER SERVANT IGOR and A RANDOM NPC WHO WILL DIE later in the story for EMOTIONAL EFFECT. Escape the LITERAL cage, and explore the METAPHORICAL cage of NICOLAS CAGE’S DEEPEST REGRETS within his CASTLE OF BONE. Confront NICOLAS CAGE HIMSELF and SAVE his ACADEMY-AWARD WINNING SOUL by convincing him to LET IGOR UNIONIZE. #CAGEGAME is an absurd collaborative storytelling game sequel to Billy Ocean Kills The Ocean And Also You Help and Jeff Goldblum is Concerned About Your Academic Progress And So You Must Tend To His Menagerie Of Gentle Mutant Abominations hosted by critically-acclaimed freelance narrative designer, Strange Events Person, and game developer Xalavier Nelson Jr., who is adding more words to the end of the sentence so there isn’t a double period at the end of his name.
Xalavier Nelson Jr. is a freelance narrative designer, game developer, writer, PCGamer columnist, IntroComp organizer, and MCV Rising Star. He is very tired as a result, and appreciates your understanding.
We’re all gonna die!!! Writing Interactive Romance About the Elderly
In Bloom Digital’s upcoming interactive romance, Later Daters, you play a single senior looking for love in a gossipy, tight-knit and surprisingly amorous senior’s residence called ye OLDE (Oceanview Living Domicile for the Elderly). It’s a funny, heartfelt story, that also tackles realities like loss, infirmity and death in aging communities. Bloom’s previous game, LongStory, was designed with young people in mind and explored issues of first relationships, emerging sexuality and nascent identity. Writing romance about elders who appear to face the opposite set of circumstances was a huge shift for the team and led us to two core questions: How can love transcend loss? And; What makes a life worth living? In this talk, Miriam Verburg, Later Daters executive producer, will preview scenes and characters from the game, discuss why we think the stories in Later Daters are important for all ages, and hold the controversial opinion that love is always a negotiation with death.
Miriam Verburg is the CEO of Bloom Digital Media, an Ontario-based game company that has been releasing original and captivating mobile games since 2012. With a strategic focus on developing accessible games for under-served players Bloom has created successful titles on small budgets and nurtured a passionate fan base. Bloom’s first original IP LongStory, a romance game for young players has been downloaded over 1 million times. Miriam is a member of the women’s gaming collective DMG-TO, Interactive Ontario, teaches at Humber in the School of Media Studies and Information Technology, and at Centennial College in the Game Design and Development program.
‘Beware and Warning! This Tweet Is Different From Other Tweets!’: Social Media As An Interactive Storytelling Medium
Social media is most frequently used as a space for venting our frustrations, connecting with far-flung family and friends, networking, and political resistance. But it can also be a space for creativity, interaction, and performance. In this workshop, we’ll explore examples of social networks being used as an interactive storytelling medium. Through some short exercises, we’ll apply insights gleaned from social media to more traditional interactive fiction and games. We’ll end with instructions for creating your own interactive storytelling Twitter bots.
Josh Labelle is a Toronto-based interactive fiction writer and game designer. Professionally, he writes and designs AI-based simulations for a local e-learning start-up. In addition to creating more long-form works of interactive fiction, he also runs an exciting Twitter account where he tells Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories by poll. Outside of games, he’s a graduate of Ryerson’s film program, where he focused primarily on screenwriting, and has four years of experience in film encoding and distribution.
Not-Quite-Random Adventures: Designing, Writing, and Implementing World Map Encounters in Obsidian Entertainment’s Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
The vignettes that occur across the Deadfire’s map in Obsidian’s follow-up to Pillars of Eternity shipped in a dramatically different form than how they were initially conceived. Obsidian Narrative Designer Alex Scokel discusses the mutation (and maturation) of the encounters from skeletal content with a focus on repeatability and combat to the unique – and sometimes surreal – scenes that now pepper the game. Learn what mistakes were made and lessons learned in designing flexible, authored content for a variable protagonist, party, and pirate crew.
Alex Scokel is the lead narrative designer for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire’s DLC and was a writer on Deadfire and Tyranny’s Bastard’s Wound before them. Prior to that they worked in QA on games as varied as The Order 1886, Disney’s Fantasia: Music Evolved, BioShock: Infinite, Go Home Dinosaurs!, and Shoot Many Robots. They’ve been in the videogame industry for 7 years and worked as a writer in tabletop gaming for White Wolf for a few years before that. And now they feel very old.
Excalibur, Disney and Turn-based Tactics! How do I craft this tale?
In an honest postmortem, writer Arthur Protasio presents the lessons learned throughout the narrative design of Sword Legacy: Omen, an indie tactical RPG and grim re-imagining of the King Arthur mythos. How did a Brazilian game studio partner with renowned British publisher, Team 17? How do you organize a story of over 35k words comprised of several scripts? How can you draw from contemporary literature to write modular dialogues? Through answering these questions and more, this talk will show you how aesthetics, mechanics and storytelling were combined to craft an engaging tale of international ambitions.
Arthur Protasio is a storyteller at heart. Screenwriter at TV Globo and creative director at Fableware, an award-winning storytelling studio specialized in writing and developing content for multiple platforms and transmedia projects. Bachelor of Laws and Master in Design, his portfolio includes the Digital Emmy nominated TV series, Now Generation; the collaborative TV show, Lazinho com Você; the VR experiences, Angest and O Rastro VR; and the tactical RPG, Sword Legacy: Omen, finalist at the BIG, Indie Prize, Quo Vadis and awarded Best Storytelling at SB Games.
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