Videogame storytelling is evolving, and the past few years have seen some fresh approaches to spinning the interactive yarn. Lewis Denby, on a mission to find out a little more about what stories mean to modern games, spoke to Splash Damage’s Ed Stern, who created the huge backstory for Brink, and script writer Tom Jubert, most famous for his work on Penumbra, to find out how we’re telling tales in this modern gaming age.
Read the rest of this entry »
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Posts Tagged ‘tom jubert’
Narrative Design And 'The Art Of The Possible'
Telling Tales: The Art Of Game Stories In 2011
By Lewis Denby on October 5th, 2011.
Tom Jubert Talks Projects, Plots, Penumbra
By Lewis Denby on July 22nd, 2010.
At the Develop Conference in Brighton last week, I had the opportunity to sit down for a beer and a chat with Tom Jubert, perhaps most famous for writing the excellent horror adventure series Penumbra. They’re dark and sinister games whose writing, and the structure of their storytelling, were often their strongest asset. Read on for Tom’s thoughts on the writing process, tales of game design tribulations, and his involvement in a major new title.
Read the rest of this entry »
ir/rational: Are You Human?
By Alec Meer on December 15th, 2009.
Alternate post title: Conumdra. For this is a short semi-text adventure from Tom Jubert, who’s best known for writing the Penumbra series of heavily bephysicsed action-puzzlers. Apparently ir/rational began life as minigame for inclusion in one of the Penumbras, but now find itself standalone.
It is a free videogame.
Therefore you will play it.
It tests your logic and deductive reasoning.
Therefore you may be too lazy to play it.
But you should.
Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Interview: Penumbra’s Tom Jubert
By John Walker on July 21st, 2008.
Tom Jubert is the lead writer on the Penumbra series of games. After Frictional released the tech demo of their remarkable 3D engine, it became clear that creating a fully-fleshed game was the smart move. To do this well, they’d need to plug a weakness: the narrative. So London-based Jubert was brought on board to work alongside the Swedish developers, and the result was Penumbra: Overture. This was originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, which was then shrunk to a two-parter after difficulties discussed below, with the narrative completed in Penumbra: Black Plague. Now, somewhat confusingly, there is to be a third part – Penumbra Requiem – although we’re told it’s not a sequel, but rather an expansion of Black Plague.
In our chat with Tom Jubert, he explains the collaborative process of taking an amateur tech demo into the professional market, the role of fear in games, which publishers we should be slapping, and some juicy tid-bits about the nature of Penumbra: Requiem’s unique design, further taking advantage of the engine’s stand-out implementation of physics.
Search
Read our finest words
Respond to our gibber
- Kadayi : “"The best comment I’ve read." Alt account ftw.” on Obsidian Want To Know What You Want Them To Make
- bill : “The article on Characters vs Avatars was certainly much better than that similar one last week.” on The Sunday Papers
- Carolina : “Ah, Eurogamer fishing for clicks with controversy yet again. Apart from Digital Foundry, why do you guys keep caring about what they say? That site ...” on The Sunday Papers
- Prime : “@RobF - what a beautifully written and entirely well-observed piece, Rob. What gamers do can be inspiring, and too many seem to forget this for ...” on The Sunday Papers
- mpk : “RE Star Wars Racer: for the launch of Episode 1 on video (back in THE DAY) at the video rental shop I worked in, I ...” on The Sunday Papers
