Gadgetory

something that's always interested me is the cross-section of storytelling and game mechanics and the designer that's done a lot of fun ideas but this is Sam Barlow who's actually got a new web series called wargames a show that not only gives you choices over how it develops but also gives you the chance at winning up to three thousand dollars in Walmart gift cards thanks to today's sponsor echo so what exactly is wargames and how does it work well like a lot of Barlow's other work it's very heavily focused on the idea of viewer perception how it changes the way the story evolved in the case wargames it's an interactive TV show that you watch and unlike a traditional TV show where it's just the one screen everything's happening on there it's instead told through multiple screens done through different web cameras people's phones so on so forth and as you're watching you choose which of these cameras you want to focus on and based on which ones you focus on the story's going to change it's not something where you're being handed clear obvious choices and seeing how they play out like a choose-your-own-adventure it's all the more subtle and interesting that it's focusing on what cameras you seem to care about as a viewer which characters that you're interested in and tilting all the events to favor those situations where you're learning more about certain people's backstories maybe someone gets the upper hand in an argument because you're focusing on them or you learn more tidbits about the history of what's going on in this setting simply put the show focuses on what you care about as a viewer and shifts everything to match that perception now if you're wanting about those prizes I'm ingenuity that you could have a chance to win there's actually another game tied indoor games called hash coin which gives you the chance to win up to three thousand dollars in Walmart gift cards now I actually got the chance to play hash coin early and it is super simple to pick up all you have to do is sign up it's totally free and we actually have a link down below if you want to check that out and you just start watching war games on desktop now while you're watching war games hash coin is gonna be going on at the same time on the side asking you all different kinds of trivia tied in to what's happening in the show and every time you get a question right you score points at the end of the contest period the top 15,000 scores are going to split a 250 thousand dollar prize with the top spot getting three thousand dollars in Walmart gift cards by the way if you're worried that you're not the best at trivia spatula final answer you still have the chance to win big because you can also score points by sharing hash coin with your friends and inviting them to play too plus it doesn't hurt that all the trivia is still tied directly into what's going on in the show so you'd have to be any kind of trivia mastermind to get through it all once again this is totally free to play all you have to do is sign up we've got the link down below in description make sure to check that out you have your chance to win a piece of that $250,000 prize often times when games missed the idea of narrative it's usually just a choose-your-own-adventure approach where yeah there's a sort of a basic storyline but you make decisions and events play out a little differently depending on what you do which is fine that's fun but Barlow's work is a bit more interesting unique and plays a lot more with the idea of how players actually interact with the fiction and kind of messing with their perceptions of everything a really good example this is actually one of his oldest works from way back in 1999 which was this text-based game called Isle now Isle was interesting because while it's a text-based game where you enter a command you actually will answer one command and that's the entire game but what happens is every time you do a different command you get a different ending and that different ending can give you an idea of some other command to try and see what happens instead and had all these different storylines where there were different main characters depending on commands you do different life situations different histories all kinds of stuff that was really weird in a great way now this idea was explored a lot more in the game that he's probably most famous for which is her story now in her story the entire game is built around a series of FMV sequences that are all just little bits of an interrogation and it's a said storyline no matter what way you watch it however the way it works is that players are given some scenes and then they've to figure out keywords to use to search for more scenes and piece the whole story together so while two separate players can watch all the exact same scenes they're not necessarily going to experience them in the same order in the order that you watch them in cann heavily change how you interact with the fiction and kind of what order different plot revelations occur to you more games is another step in the development of interactive storytelling and I cannot wait to see where that genre goes and don't forget if you want a chance to win a part of that two and fifty thousand dollars in Walmart gift cards make sure check out the link down below and sign up for hash Colleen