On Friday 1 March Writer, creator and Professor of Creative Writing & Digital Media at Bath Spa Kate Pullinger joined us to talk about her interactive story Inanimate Alice. 'Inanimate Alice' is a multimedia, interactive narrative following the life of Alice, a developing video game designer. Through text, sound, images, music and games, the story of Alice unfolds, beginning in a remote area of China when Alice is eight years old. Each of the episodes become increasingly interactive and game-like, reflecting Alice's own developing skills as a game designer and animator.

Written and directed by the award-winning novelist Kate Pullinger and pioneering digital artist Chris Joseph, Inanimate Alice emerges from a movie screenplay and embedded game concept devised by series producer Ian Harper. In 2006 Kate and Chris were commissioned to create a series of interactive stories for a marketing campaign for a feature film that didn’t exist. Six years later and the interactive story of Inanimate Alice has become one of the most popular digital stories for educators around the world, from primary to doctoral level.

Kate spoke about the unexpected, but wonderful community that has grown around Inanimate Alice. Kate explained that she first realised how engaged people had become with the story was when a google alert led her to a classroom project in Australia where students had continued the story and created their own episodes of Inanimate Alice (you can view them here.) Kate explained that the community that has grown around Inanimate Alice is unlike anything she has experienced with her own novels, and spoke about the enjoyment of engaging with and moderating the community that has formed around the project.

Kate explained that she believes the success of Inanimate Alice is due to a number of factors;

•    The fact it was easily translated into various languages – this helped the reach of the story and made it accessible worldwide.
•    Accompanying education resources and notes developed by Dr. Jess Laccetti.
•    Two game play modes; one where you had to complete the games to continue and a read only version – this enabled teachers to skip through the game play mode, and access the story easily.
•    The lack of actors used within the story. The faces of the characters are not pictured at any point during the story, meaning your own imagination is necessary to picture characters, making the experience closer to reading of a book, than watching a film or TV.

Kate then opened the floor to questions:     

What was the marketing strategy?
We didn’t have a marketing strategy; it was entirely through word of mouth. After about two years our audience started talking back to us - admittedly it’s now much easier to talk back than it was in 2008, so that probably would have happened quicker if we’d launched it now.

What’s been the most surprising thing that’s come from creating Inanimate Alice?
I think one of the interesting things for us has been with the pedagogical side; we’ve discovered there’s still a massive lack of stuff that’s appropriate for classrooms. We personally didn’t intend for Inanimate Alice to be used in the classrooms, but it works, and really highlights the gap in the market for anyone interested in Digital Storytelling.

What’s it made in?
All the episodes are currently in flash. That’s a sign of the time it was made, and a slight disadvantage now due to flash not working on iPhones and iPads. We are looking at ways to develop it when we get some funding, and our new episode that is half constructed is HTML5.

Have you written all the stories already?
When I first started I wrote a story bible, which is the basis for every episode I write. I’ve written episode five now but not any further yet.

What’s involved in a story bible?
Well the bible takes her from the age of eight to twenty four...at which point the movie starts! It’s the story of her life. That’s something that as the project progresses we’ll have to think very carefully about, because what happens with a story that’s really popular with children and children’s educators once the main character gets married, starts taking drugs or has sex? It’s definitely a set of questions for the future.

Why did you decide to include games?
We were just interested in seeing what would happen if we incorporated the games into the story, to us that was an integral part of what interactively meant in 2006. It’s interesting because what’s been fed back from teachers is that boys who usually wouldn’t be interested in reading, were enjoying Inanimate Alice because of the gaming element.

When you’re writing the bible you’re obviously creating many different side stories and interesting things that don’t go into the main story, have you used any of the extra content, other than in the main episodes?
We did create some Australian mini episodes, which I used my story bible to develop. I think the years in-between the episodes and the story of the family in-between the episodes are all really ripe for other types of development. There’s a really interesting model for thinking about spreadability when it comes to projects of this nature. What can you do in the in-between bits, the gaps? That’s absolutely something we’re hoping to explore further.  

You can find out more about Inanimate Alice, and the first four episodes on the website here.