AGS presence at Narrascope 2023 (June 9 - 11) - video recordings now available!

[edmundito]

Hello, I just wanted to quickly announce that there are a few talks related to AGS at Narrascope.

What's Narrascope?
Narrascope is a small North American conference for interactive narrative, adventure games, and interactive fiction, similar to LudoNarraCon. It started in 2019, and this year is being held in Pittsburgh, USA, and online.

https://narrascope.org/

Do I need to attend in person? Can I watch online?

Not at all. In fact, most of the conference attendees will be online. Register on their website (https://narrascope.org/) and watch the conference now or on different streaming channels. Online registration is free, but donations are welcome. The last day to Register is June 8.

What talks are related to AGS?

I will be giving an ambitious talk about the history of AGS! I can't include everything but will try to highlight as many of the milestones and games as I can.

The Little Engine That Could: The History of the Adventure Game Studio Engine, Games, and Community

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is one of the most popular point-and-click adventure game engines. Originally released to the public in 1997, it has a long history of updates, community, creators, and games. The engine has democratized the creation of adventure games. But nobody outside the community knows its history. How many of these games were not merely created by individuals working solo, but by a community who helped each other along the way?

Edit: Recording of the talk:

Jess Haskins (co-writer for Rosewater, AGS game fan, but not a forum member) will discuss worldbuilding in Rosewater.

How the West Was Many: Crafting a Culturally Diverse Western Adventure with Rosewater

At Narrascope and AdventureX, I've spoken about the importance of creating with cultural awareness, and why small teams and solo indies shouldn't be afraid of going "out of bounds" to write outside their own personal backgrounds. In this talk I will discuss how our team of two put this theory into practice in making our forthcoming point-and-click adventure. Rosewater is set in an alternate-history world inspired by the American Old West, but aiming to thoughtfully depict a diverse range of people and experiences often left out of traditional Westerns. I'll talk about what approaches worked, what didn't, the gap between theory and practice — and how we can do better next time.

Update: Recording of the talk (Warning: There may be a minor spoiler about Rosewater...)

As Jess mentioned, this is the followup to a previous talk:

Grundislav will talk about Rosewater's voice overs.

Going Union: How A Basement Indie Hired AAA Talent (And How You Can, Too!)

Plenty of narrative games feature voice acting. Smaller and indie teams tend to cast non-union actors. While this is a perfectly acceptable approach, the quality and professionalism that union actors offer is undeniable. In this talk, I want to dispel the assumption that working with union actors is prohibitively expensive, as well as clear up some common misconceptions.

Update: Recording of the talk:

[Kini Games]

Thanks for the reminder. I've just registered to attend online. Looking forward to all three of these talks

[eri0o]

hey, are the talks going to be archived for watching? I could not watch the event in realtime. 

[Stupot]

I saw something about this on Twitter. I echo eriOo's question about whether or not there will be any recordings to watch.

[Grundislav]

Yes, we were told all the talks would be posted on the Narrascope YouTube channel. As to when that would be, who knows? Maybe in the next few weeks?

[edmundito]

The talks are finally online! I updated the first post on the thread with the links. Please do hit that like button on YouTube! Note that some of the audio is not great, and I've notified the staff to see if they can improve it.

Comments about my talk: There was so much to cover about the history of AGS! It was challenging, and I tried to cover as much as possible! (There is so much time to put these presentations together...)