Our group decided on our idea for assignment 4 and that is to create a mini escape room based on a murder mystery. We had a group call and came up with some ideas together and what ‘deliverables’ we are planning on submitting. Our primary focus this week was getting our slides ready for our pitch and doing some initial research surrounding our topic. This included putting some keywords/buzzwords such as ‘storytelling’, ‘genre’, ‘murder mystery’, ‘escape room’ and ‘storytelling via game’.
We want to challenge this quote by Kelly and Parisis (1997) “Movies are storytelling; you tell somebody a story. A game is interactive; you participate in some kind of an event with a lot of other people or with yourself, or with a machine. Those are two different things….” “You don’t think that those two are going to cross over at all?” “No! Because by definition they are different – storytelling and games are two different mediums.” (Scolari 2013)
We believe that although storytelling and games are two separate things, they definitely crossover and I would argue that it is essential for games to have aspects of storytelling. Our murder mystery should feel like the perfect blend of a story told through the interactive, engaging nature of a game.
We will take inspiration from games such as Cluedo, whodunnit style plays/movies such as Mousetrap, Knives Out, Glass Onion, Murder on the Orient Express and See How They Run as well as drawing on knowledge from escape rooms we have participated in ourselves.
References
Scolari CA (2013) ‘Lostology: Transmedia storytelling and expansion/compression strategies’, Semiotica, 2013(195):45–68, doi:https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2013-0038.