Jamie Antonisse

A few very close friends of mine, co-conspirators from the East Coast, have spent the past nine months working on a very interesting documentary project called Second Skin. It's about the ways MMORPG worlds are being "colonized", i.e. how they are culturally and socially defining themselves. Or, in their own far-superior words:

"Second Skin asks, how does a burgeoning society deal with crime, sex, government, economy, power and identity? Especially in a world that doesn't quite exist?"

Right now they have HBO films and (randomly) A&E interested in funding and distribution... they have about half of the material they need to finish this as a full-length documentary, but there are certain things they're still missing. So does anyone want to be in a movie?

I KNOW we have some people in our department studying this and related issues. Between us, we probably hav connections to most of the experts in the field. I thought it would be good for you to be aware of this project, and if possible to make this project aware of you. If you're at all interested, check out their website:

http://www.purewestdocs.com/secondskin/index.html

or leave a comment with me.

Additionally, and maybe more importantly:

"Our documentary hopes to focus on three gamers who will be our protagonists: the addict, the couple, and the entrepreneur."

If you know anyone that has a good MMORPG story to tell (and who wouldn't mind telling a camera about it) then, once again, let me know.

One of my main interests (besides good mexican food, wild egrets and that side-scroller I'm always talking about) is the development of creative tools through the medium of games. I'm especially interested in anything that actually helps people generate original ideas in an entertaining way. To this end I've been developing a project since my junior year in college, currently called Tales.

Tales is (in blurb form) a competitive improv storytelling game. More specifically, its a game where players use prompts to advance a story of their own creation, sentence by sentence, through a graphical landscape that represents narrative possibility. You move an avatar representing your story's central character across this landscape, from "the beginning" of their story through multiple islands representing plot, structure and tone elements ("Accidents and Misfortunes", "Diatribes and Rambles", etc.), towards "the end". At each of these islands you are offered choices of writing prompts, which can be used in a literal or fugurative fashion to advance your story. Every time you write a new sentence, you engage the competitive aspect of the game... you play a game with the other players. If you managed to creatively use a prompt, you are able to keep your sentence and advance... however if you used a prompt which was too obvious, the players can send your story in a different direction, or even change words around to alter your story's meaning.

In it's current form Tales is a board game, made of wood, with about 1000 index-card prompts (5 options each) and 34 possible avatars. I've played it with 30 or so different friends, enemies and acquaintances... and gotten about 50 different stories out of it (the short story my grandmother wrote from the perspective of a monkey was enough to make the whole thing worthwhile). This prototype is over 4 years old... and its about time for a revision.

In the next few months I'm going to be holding some games of Tales which will hopefully result in some major rule changes. In terms of long-term plans, I'd like to turn this into something that could be played with a word processor and bring it online.

If anyone's interested in playing this game in current form and/or helping on its development, let me know. Every play session I've gone through has been thoroughly ridiculous and a lot of fun. And my favorite part: at the end of the game you will have made an original, albeit four-a.m.-strange, short story.