Kobo Writing Life Podcast

Kobo Writing Life Podcast

by | Jun 2, 2016 | Interview, Press | 0 comments

Kobo Writing Life interviewed Jean Leggett about the next frontier for storytellers – interactive fiction and interactive story games.

To listen to the podcast, visit http://kobowritinglife.com/2016/03/02/kobo-writing-life-podcast-episode-052-one-more-story-games/.

There have never been more opportunities for writers and storytellers than ever in the history of publishing, and Episode 052 of the Kobo Writing Life Podcast demonstrates yet another amazing opportunity that exists for writers.

KWL Director Mark Lefebvre interviews Jean Leggett co-founder of One More Story Games, a company from Barrie, Ontario that has developed a storytelling platform with a team of gamers, geeks, storytellers and programmers that creates a community for collaborative story game opportunities.

In the interview, Mark and Jean discuss:

  • Jean’s background as a recovering Haiku addict and recovering stand-up comedian
  • How Jean’s love of storytelling combined with her husband’s similar love and a computer science background and background working in the games industry led to the formation of One More Story Games
  • The underlying concept of bringing more reading into the game space
  • How the experience of these games is similar to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” branching narrative experiences
  • StoryStylus – the story creation platform that helps creators break down the elements of story (such as people, places, things, relationships, conversation and dialogue, etc) that publishes to an interactive games marketplace
  • The fact that you don’t need to be a programmer to be part of creating an interactive story game and how virtually any writer could participate in this process. (With a reminder that “Beta” means “patient, early adopters”)
  • A writer, photographer and graphic designer in Tillsonburg, Ontario (Dan Wilkens) who is writing an 8 part series for One More Story Games and involving real people, such as the town’s mayor as characters in the story
  • The manner by which a platform like this seems ideal for mystery stories, but the manner by which science fiction and adventure stories have already been built for it
  • The exciting announcement that One More Story Games will be working with New York Times bestselling authorCharlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sookie_Stackhouse – novels which have been adapted into the True Blue television series) to adapt her novel Shakespeare’s Landlord
  • How the Charlaine Harris project will include a “behind the scenes” look at breaking the book itself into various plot points and how it was developed into the interactive storytelling experience (https://onemorestorygames.com/2016/02/16/lily-bard-online/)
  • The idea of making smarter more casual games available to the growing demographic of women consumers in their mid 30’s who are interested in and playing these types of games
  • The concept of how a game like this demonstrates the progression of writer to narrative designer for a storyteller
  • Recommendations on how authors who are interested in exploring these opportunities might get started

To listen to the podcast, visit http://kobowritinglife.com/2016/03/02/kobo-writing-life-podcast-episode-052-one-more-story-games/.

SubQ & Interactive Storytelling

SubQ & Interactive Storytelling

by | Mar 14, 2016 | Interview | 0 comments

Kerstin Hall interviews Jean Leggett for sub-Q.

Jean Leggett is co-founder and director of One More Story Games. She is situated in Canada and makes a lot of jokes about dumplings.

This interview took place over Skype.

Kerstin Hall: Let’s start with the basics. When was One More Story Games founded?

Jean Leggett: OMSG was founded in July 2013, incorporated in Dec 2013.

Kerstin: How have things been going so far?

Jean: Good. We’ve been bootstrapping the development of our engine this whole time – and we’re now in beta. The engine is only available for PC at the moment, but published games play in browsers, on Facebook, and on Android.

Kerstin: According to your website, at OMSG, story comes first. How do you make this a reality in practical terms?

Jean: Because we’re less focused on the graphics in the game, the focus naturally falls on the story. We’re not about building a platformer or puzzle game like Candy Crush. When you play one of our stories, you’ll see that narrative is central. We work with writers and game devs from all over the world to create story-driven games.

Kerstin: All over the world? Which countries have come up thus far?

Jean: France, USA, Germany, India, Thailand. They’re in various stages of development.

Kerstin: That must add such interesting dimensions to the work you publish.

Jean: We’re exceptionally passionate about diversity in games—we want people from many different cultures to share their stories on our platform. For example, I’m hard of hearing and my whole family is deaf. There’s never been a game with deaf characters as the central figures. We’re working to develop a game that is delivered entirely in ASL—American Sign Language. That’s a perspective in games that has never been available to date, but our engine makes it possible.

Kerstin: With the previous answer somewhat pre-empting this, what do you think is lacking in gaming currently, both in the mainstream and more generally?

Jean: Games are the most pervasive they’ve ever been—half of Canadians have played a game in the last four weeks, according to reports—and what’s missing is the diversity and focus on storytelling.

I think that waiting on big studios to deliver diverse stories is a mistake. Look at Hollywood. They’ve been around forever and it’s still very white, very male. Diversity is an issue.

Kerstin: As evidenced by the Oscars. I think there’s more pushback against normative frameworks in general. A productive environment?

Jean: Indeed. And games are an art form. People still think games are exclusively for 17-year-old boys, but the largest segment of consumers are women over 18. Plus, women over 30 are fast becoming the largest consumer base. So we think, based on reports and our own feedback, that women love stories and deserve better than Candy Crush (I’m on level 1494 or something).

I think that when we make tools available to storytellers with diverse backgrounds, we’ll start to see more diverse stories. I watched this great TEDtalk by a woman from the Nigeria. She talked about how, growing up, she read children’s books that were imported from the USA. She never saw Nigerian storybooks and thus never saw her culture represented in books. How tragic is that?

Kerstin: Was that “The Danger of a Single Story?” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?

Jean: YES!

 

To read the whole article here: https://sub-q.com/interview-jean/

Talking Comics Interview

Talking Comics Interview

by | Mar 14, 2016 | Interview, Press | 0 comments

Talking Comics

Talking Comics talks it up with Jean Leggett about storytelling in games, how One More Story Games came to be and the upcoming project with Charlaine Harris.

Listen to the whole podcast here: http://talkingcomicbooks.com/2016/03/14/special-edition-talking-charlaine-harris-story-driven-game-software-jean-leggett/

~ ~

Are you a creative individual who loves video games and has a story to tell? Well, you’re definitely going to want to listen to this interview featuring Jean Leggett of One More Story Games. As a interactive entertainment publisher on the rise, One More Story Games is the creator of StoryStylus – an intuitive text and visual-based games-developing engine. In addition to having already released several titles using the StoryStylus software, it’s recently been announced that this bold new company has partnered with #1 New York Times Best Selling Author Charlaine Harris to bring her Shakespeare’s Landlord book series to gamers everywhere!

Learn more about the Shakespeare’s Landlord project and how you can get the Storystylus software here at One More Story Games!

During the interview, you’ll learn about the origin of One More Story Games, the projects they’ve recently published, how they came to be partners with Charlaine Harris, and even how you too can create games using the StoryStylus games engine!

Nerdy But Flirty Interview

by | Feb 14, 2016 | Interview, Press | 0 comments

Kelsey from Nerdy but Flirty interviews our COO Jean Leggett

I recently had the opportunity to interview Jean Leggett, COO of One More Story Games, about the company and an exciting new development! They’ll be adapting Charlaine Harris’s novel Shakespeare’s Landlord into an interactive story game using their StoryStylus tool.

“Shakespeare’s Landlord is the first novel in a five-part series featuring Lily Bard, a tough and complicated woman who is determined to hide her nightmarish past from her small town neighbors. After stumbling across a body being dumped in a park late at night, Lily embarks on a journey to find the killer, as well as the reason they’re trying to frame her for the murder.”

Kelsey: How did the idea for One More Story Games come about?
Jean: The idea for One More Story Games (OMSG) came from my husband Blair Leggett, our CEO. He’d been in the games industry for over 15 years with companies like Electronic Arts and Zynga as a software engineer. In that time, he noticed quite a few games where story was not the priority and wanted to create something lasting that would bring characters to life and focus on storytelling.

The #1 reason people buy games is for the story/concept (Entertainment Software Association, Essential Facts 2015). At OMSG, we’re passionate about storytelling in games, and most importantly, we’re passionate about writers getting paid for their craft. This lead to building our game creation and publishing engine StoryStylus. It was built for new and veteran writers to create and publish story games.

Kelsey: What’s your favorite game that’s been made through OMSG?
Jean: I really love Hard Vacuum Lullaby. It’s our most recent release and uses a lot of the features we added to the engine this past fall. I love the soundtrack and sound effects. I love exploring the ship. I love that it’s a great story game that can be played in 30 minutes.

Click here for the full interview.