Death of three-act structure AGDC08

Andrew Walsh presented the session posed on the question 'Are game writers witnessing the death of three act structure?  Mr. Walsh was alive, full of passionate self-reflexive humor.  His talk was a great postmortem on how layered interactive storytelling can further game experiences while maintaining their classical roots.  Clearly defending the form forged by Aristotle, he went on to explain how he used the form in Prince of Persia and how it lent to creating a next-generation interactive story experience.

In creating his installment in the Prince of Persia series he had set some clear markers for successful storytelling:

• A strong identifiable story.
• A simple playing experience.
• A deep story world.
• Allow the player choice and control.
• Making the characters feel alive.
• Providing a next generation experience.

What is his conceptual tool?  "Ondemend storytelling"  Just what is it?  Andrew went on to explain, "Ondemand storytelling is a story design that allows the player to choose when to access the story and how much of it they want to experience."   It is a layer of interactive depth that is available to the player at the designers discretion to give the story hungry player additional content.  The Ondemand elements are not required to forward gameplay, they exist to provide depth to the player, in that they allow the player to customize their own experiences.  Anyone who has played Gears of War will be familiar with such systems.  By holding a button (Y) on a console controller a player can shift focus, shift control, to the game makers, so they (writers/designers) may direct their focus to story points of interest.