Ever since computers started falling into the hands of average people there has been a desire to use these new tools to express story. To change how they’re delivered, consumed, or written. When the Internet hit people started experimenting with hypertext fiction. Now it’s Twitter’s turn.
Neil Gaiman, famed author and creator ofThe Sandman comic series, and BBC Audiobooks America have gotten together to produce an interesting creative fiction experiment utilizing the microblogging service. Neil tweeted the first line of the interactive story at noon EST Tuesday, with other Twitter users joining in to continue the tale using the hashtag #bbcawdio.
But unlike what Barb Dybwad’s post on Mashable attests to, Neil Gaiman’s experiment isn’t really like the Choose Your Own Adventure books she loved growing up. Those were more along the lines of interactive story, this is more an experiment in collaborative writing. There’s actually a lot such experiments as you’ll see in the comments on the Mashable article. The problem is they rarely go beyond experiments. It’s difficult to write with one partner and no technology is going to change that, no matter how hip it is. Just take a look at what Neil Gaiman’s experiment has churned out so far and you’ll see the challenge.
Seeing this I’m reminded of the great presentation Dan Hon did on augmented reality games – Everything you know about ARGs is WRONG. He nicely cut through all the hype surrounding ARGs, something that would be nice here as well.
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