Jump to content

Unprintable Ebooks


Darklord Rooke

Recommended Posts

Quote

 

While Amazon may be taking over the e-reader category, and others may prefer the smell of the printed page, Google is experimenting with "books that can't be printed."

Editions at Play is an experiment coming out of Google Australia. These books are made specifically for smartphones and incorporate interactive elements as part of the story.

This might me exploring story locations in Street View, switching between two different characters' perspectives, or even including games.

"Simply put, we wanted to see if we could keep the integrity of reading, but play with the book's digital form," Google Australia wrote in a blog post.

Playing with storytelling

The concept of interactive books isn't new - JK Rowling's Pottermore originally presented similar interactive "story telling" for the Harry Potter series, and there are online literary journals, like The NonBinary Review from Zoetic Press, that offer interactive elements as well.

But Google's Editions at Play brings a much bigger platform for authors interested in writing and developing interactive books.

Currently, there are two books up for exploring: Reif Larsen's Entrances & Exits, which has you exploring the story through Street View, and The Truth About Cats & Dogs, which lets you check out the story from different perspectives and encourages you to take notes.

There are two more Editions at Play books scheduled to come out in April, and Google is asking people to tweet ideas for future interactive books.

 

http://www.techradar.com/au/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/google-experiments-with-books-that-can-t-be-printed--1314340

Interactivity is the future of fiction, what an exciting time to be alive :) 

...

*A tumbleweed rolls languidly across the silent landscape*

I said what an exciting time to be alive!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heh. I'm sure I'm not the only one who realizes that Google just reinvented the visual novel quite literally.  I thought I would just spell it out for the less wise.

Seriously though Google?  You have literally just added the possibility of augmented reality into the space of visual novels, and everything else given as an example is already considered part of the visual novel sphere.

*slow clap*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I came here expecting a rant about how google ruins everything and things were better when we used marble tablets. I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed.

 

Google isn't really reinventing the visual novel though, first because hypertextual/hypermedia fiction existed before visual novels (they don't pretend they're inventing anything new) and second because this goes a bit beyond what visual novels do, adding layers of transmedia and non-fiction into the fiction (street view etc). I think the interactive books media as described here differs from the visual novel media, although as writers get more and more inventive the limits are gonna blur.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly though, if this grows popular it might be to VNs what the West's cartoons is to anime, in a way.

However, given the extra effort needed to create works in this form of media, I doubt we'll see it expand significantly anytime soon.

It might be the genesis of mainstream interactive text-based fiction though, and I'm all for that!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Okami said:

Isn't this the exact same thing as this:

https://www.choiceofgames.com/

No. Choice of Games is classic 'Interactive Fiction' in the 'choose your own adventure, and maybe a smidge of RPGness' vein. What's been talking about is making books interactive, which is more encompassing. It's giving the reader options on how they want to experience the story where classic IF only gives options for how the story develops. Like, being able to check each character's social media status (twitter, facebook) during the story, like being able to change which POV you want to experience the story in, like being able to wander through the settings of the story (streetview is just an incredibly underdeveloped example of this.) It CAN also mean presenting choices to show how a story develops, but it's not limited to that. 

Books are an old fashioned format. The digital medium allows the reader to take a much more active role in the storytelling process, and I expect fiction to take more and more advantage of that as time goes on (of course that means more work involved ...)

11 hours ago, solidbatman said:

Sounds to me like its just video games with more words and less game overs

Booo! Stop ruining my beautiful dreams of the future :( 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Rooke said:

No. Choice of Games is classic 'Interactive Fiction' in the 'choose your own adventure, and maybe a smidge of RPGness' vein. What's been talking about is making books interactive, which is more encompassing. It's giving the reader options on how they want to experience the story where classic IF only gives options for how the story develops. Like, being able to check each character's social media status (twitter, facebook) during the story, like being able to change which POV you want to experience the story in, like being able to wander through the settings of the story (streetview is just an incredibly underdeveloped example of this.) It CAN also mean presenting choices to show how a story develops, but it's not limited to that. 

Books are an old fashioned format. The digital medium allows the reader to take a much more active role in the storytelling process, and I expect fiction to take more and more advantage of that as time goes on (of course that means more work involved ...)

This is the ideal.  VNs can also fulfill this ideal too.  Games do it too.  The problem is that developing that much is way too much in terms of ROI, and is currently impossible with current technology. You are basically asking them to create Cardinal from SAO.  The only difference between this and the currently established games are the scale.  Everything must be programmed and written.  There is no such thing as procedurally generated stories; if there were, writers would lose their jobs. There are a bunch of "interactive books".  They're called adventure games.  Google literally just took the definition of adventure game, ran it through a thesaurus, and then regurgitated it.  The ideas they are presenting have been done before, just in parts.  The streetview can be simplified down to the combination of the date selection and photo backgrounds.  Contradiction is basically exactly this.  Checking the social media of a character is literally a gimmick. Expanded upon, it is like I said in a previous post: augmented reality.  They are just integrating this 'maybe' into the medium.

If I were to be extremely concise, they basically created archived augmented reality games. Just another adventure game.

Again, Google isn't doing anything new. They are just aggregating pieces and pawning it off as something new.  Unless Google managed to create an amazing great writer panacea of a program, you are never going to get a truly interactive story that you can "give the reader options on how they want to experience the story".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...