Innovations in Story Telling

David Cage TED Talk

The Ted talk I chose to watch was called How Video Games Turn Players Into Storytellers. The talk was given by David Cage, the story writer for the popular video game, Detroit: Becoming Human. In the talk, Cage explains how he wants to revolutionize the way stories are told. He explains that modern storytelling, which consists of novels, films, television, etc., is very linear. The writers determine what is going to happen and there is nothing that people can do about it. The audience of this form of storytelling are simply spectators who react to what is predetermined to occur. Cage wants to revolutionize story telling by putting the audience in the novel. He wants to allow the audience to make the decisions and control the story. By doing this, the audience becomes more immersed.They are no longer watching the story unfold before them, they are creating the story. Decisions and actions that they perform dictate the end game therefore the audience is able to feel the consequences for their actions. This is Cages goal with his interactive storytelling; putting the audience in the shoes of the writer.

In order to sell the idea of interactive storytelling to the audience, he allows them to experience it first hand. In the talk, he gets an assistant to play a small part of Detroit: Becoming Human, but allows the audience to make the decisions. When there is a decision to be made, he prompts the audience for a choice and allows them to experience the result of this decision. Aside from this, Cage has a lot of credibility on the subject considering that he was the story writer for many other successful interactive games; such as Beyond: Two Souls and Heavy Rain. Both of these games have over a 90% "liked" rating from their players and they have been recognized by their phenomenal story elements. In order to create all these fascinating interactive stories, Cage has been working for more than 20+ years in the industry; the man knows what he is doing.

If you know me, the reason why I chose this TED talk is obvious. I love playing video games so naturally I gravitate to anything dealing with videogames. More importantly, the talk was about the storytelling in video games which is super important to me. One of the determining factors, when I am deciding if I like a game or not, is the story within it. On my free time, I typically find myself watching videos of people explaining aspects of the game's lore (story) or connecting segments of it to create the full story behind the game's world. I consider being able to control how the world developes or its back story to be a privilege and I always try out new games that allow this to happen. I enjoy having control over my personal story and I enjoy feeling the consequences for bad decisions. Everything in the game becomes more entertaining and can cause serious thought, which is amazing. Some of my favorite games apply aspect of interactive story so it makes sense that one of the most renowned interactive story writer's Ted talk intrigued me.