OK, so what has Animal Planet to do with my research project? Or perhaps, rather, how can I legitimize spending time watching tv, since my subject area is stuff on the internet and since it is seems absolutely non-comme-il-faut to some members of the cybertext establishment to look at old media to understand the new? (well, last one is a teaser, as I believe none of us sees things this black-and-whitish in practice...).
Well, most Animal Planet documentaries often tell a story about a certain animal or a certain environment in which various animals live. So rather than having the traditional protagonist - antagonist story (if, it is a subnarrative), these stories are themed around the happenings in a micro-world or a certain species or member of this species. In this sense, they are not that different from "stories" about virtual environments, focusing either on the environment as such or certain "races" (monsters, humans, elves) or types of gamers within them...
But how do you tell an interesting story about a world, where in fact, nothing much, happens? Or at least, dramatic things, happen infrequently (most people just get a pet, live happily ever after, and then it dies). What strikes me as one solution, is the abundant use of the "parallel narratives" editing. You will start one small story (eagle is ill but of what), cut to another small story (whale is being saved), a third (horse in operating theatre) and then back and forth, so suspension last all way through, and all the endings comes in "part 2" of the programme. Another trick is the stricking visuals. You will have a programme on for instance the coral reef and it will be filled with very small stories about amazingly patterned fish and other weird-looking creatures that lives in on the reef - all in breathtaking under-water technicolor. A third device is the antropomorphic framing. The narrator will cue you into imaging that animal z (the wolf) has emotions like a human and you will interpret the pictures you see in this framework (wolf is happy, wolf is scared, wolf cunningly avoids capture by smart thinking etc) and therefore be more engaged in the story, because you project human feelings onto the "human-like" antagonist. A fourth device is the "The passage of time" itself; it seems to be an narrative overlay in several stories. Life at a creek from spring till spring, the coming of age of the lion cubs etc.
I wonder if you can use the Animal Planet techniques as a "story technique" in a virtual world or if some are already using them? Would one be able to construct something akin to a "scenes on a turning wheel" so you as a visitor would be transported back and forth between, say, 4-5 places in the world where micro-events took place. And then (unlike tv) at some point you could decide to take part in one of them and the cycle would stop? Obviously, game world designers already makes stories about races and makes that the part of the overall "world legend" and perhaps enforcing people to explore their own "race" history and to develop it could engage them even more sometimes? Could you imagine a world in which time was designed so as to pass so fast that in one visit you would be able to live a life from beginning to death - or at least, youth, adulthood, old age in big leaps? Could you design a world experience which was not as much about causal chains of events but more about experiencing the world as a "stunning visual", with you being prompted to follow the movements of one of the creatures inhabiting it - or becoming one yourself and communicating with others through shifts in shapes and colours? Or could you imagine, giving people "interpretative glasses" which would make them see all events in a world as being supernatural? evil? wolfish?? Sometime there are lots of inspiration to get from "old media" when thinking about "new world" design - perhaps even more, if we look other places than the traditional. Forget about Hamlet, go watch some documentaries ;)

# posted by Lisbeth at: 16:51