Ben McKenzie was our guest lecturer this week, sadly not Ryan from The O.C. However he was a charismatic man with a great logo I was jealous of. He was one of the originators of Pop Up Playground. I guess a games/production company specialising in live games – anything from roleplaying to schoolyard games to something more akin to Sleep No More. He was very well versed in the kind of storytelling we are developing now – layered, transmedia content with a lot of audience agency. I’m jealous because I know a lot of good storytellers, much like him, who come from a world of Dungeons and Dragons and that really informs their ability to give their audience power within the story, something I find challenging. Building a world is a hard basket task.

McKenzie also spoke about emergent stories, the ones that unexpectedly come out of the story, that aren’t originally built into it by the creators. How to leave room for that in a narrative seems far from my grasp right now but it’s also incredibly exciting and I would like to learn better how to be inclusive of these possibilities. On the other hand, sometimes I find games like some that he spoke of quite trite, for example, a bunch of school kids walking around the city wearing monster tails. To be quite honest that image makes me cringe a little. I did learn what a “ludic marker” was though – something that shows you’re playing a game, people feel special and the people around them know they are in a game. Still much more to learn but felt curious about a new and innovative company like McKenzies’.