Michael Steffen

E3 2005 Pictures

Spent the past two days at E3. Here are some photos!

View of the South Hall Floor From Up High

A Full-Size Stargate!

Some Booth Babes

Prince of Persia 6 (NOT "3" as they call it...)

Nintendo's New Market

Thesis Proposal: Telmahre, An Interactive Character Drama

A few other people have started posting their proposals, so I thought I'd do the same:
Telmahre: An Interactive Character Drama

Enjoy (all 25 pages of it!)

NOTE: The background sketches seen on some of the diagrams are also by Ken Leung.

Concept Art: Telmahre Castle

Thanks to the talented effort of Ken Leung, we now have the first piece of COLOR concept art for the Telmahre Castle Complex! Ken is applying to the Interactive Media Program for the fall. For the love of all that's good, LET THIS GUY INTO THE PROGRAM!

Thesis Rants: A Character Drama About Tobias Rosseau

CHARACTER DRAMA! Why did no one seize on that when I did my pitch? Perhaps I didn't seize on it enough myself. The center of Telmahre is not even so much adapting the screenplay structure. It is the character of Tobias Rosseau. The world of Telmahre is a manifestation of this character's psyche. Guess I forgot to mention that in my pitch. That's core.

Right next to that is the format used in Myst 4...

Myst 4 does some extremely interesting things visually--imagine what would happen if a more dynamic model for character interaction was introduced and the puzzles were downsized or eliminated.

I still believe that a branching version of the Daniel screenplay structure would work best. People get so hung up on branching narrative, but what I tried to point out in my pitch was that most games are lucky if their narrative branches--so many still use a mostly linear one. Oh sure, you may or may not find the machine gun or the extra life, but otherwise the story progresses along a single line.

I am not out there to revolutionize interactive narrative. Evolve it, yes, but beyond that...

I want to push the ART!

I want to use existing technologies & methodologies and combine them in new ways to explore the storytelling potential that already exists.

I want to express myself with Interactive Media!

Using the medium for self-expression is so primitive right now--so much more can be done!