Michael Steffen

Sketch for CTIN 532 - Telmahre

Click on the picture to watch the video trailer I showed in class today. It's a rough sketch of the basic story concept behind Telmahre, which I have been working on a lot over the past year!

My Chat with Mr. Spielberg

I had the opportunity to talk with Steven Spielberg last week at the big EA event, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of interactive entertainment. The conversation went roughly like this:

MIKE: Mr. Spielberg! Hi, I'm Michael Steffen and I'm a 2nd Year Interactive Media Student.
SPIELBERG: Good to meet you. What kinds of things are you working on?
MIKE: Well I'm really interested in interactive narrative and story-driven games.
SPIELBERG: That's great! That's exactly the kind of thing I want to see in the future. I want to see games with a 3-Act structure, that are driven by emotional beats. And I want to see story development & character interaction operating on as many as fifteen different levels.
MIKE: Yeah, I totally agree. In fact, I'm planning on making a character-driven interactive drama for my thesis project.
SPIELBERG: Sounds good. I'd be interested to see that when it's finished.

Adaptations

Some books, games, etc. that I'd someday like to adapt into films:

- Chronotrigger (SNES Game by Squaresoft)
- The Westmark Trilogy (book series by Lloyd Alexander)
- The Merlin Trilogy (book series by Mary Stewart)

More as I think of them...how about you guys?

Thesis Projects

Well I have to say I've been having a lot of fun so far this year, and think the projects we've worked on have definitely been useful in my education as an interactive designer. That said, there is still one thing I've been burning to do, and have recently discovered that I am not the only one: to begin preliminary test/prototype work on my thesis project.

In conversations I've had with several of my 2nd Year colleagues, I've found that at least a few of us already have a general idea where we want to go with our 3rd Year thesis projects. I for one would like to gear my own class projects toward the following:
- Comparing 2D vs. 3D in interactive storytelling, to determine the benefits & trade-offs of each.
- Research into & prototyping of a "Drama Engine"

Now each person's area of focus may be different, but it would be nice to have at least one project in our Interactive Design class whose subject is completely of our own choosing. I'll bring this up next week in our de-briefing session.