This year my spec project Mogul Recon was chosen as one of the eight winners.

Our prize was a workshop with guru-level writer, script editor and digital barnstormer, Mike Jones. Over a weekend in June, the winning writers clambered aboard the storytelling equivalent of a private jet to learn about multiplatform writing craft.

As we mapped the digital storytelling landscape, we used Mike’s storyworld frameworks as a lens to discuss and examine our own stories.

We also stopped and examined sights along the way, including the symbolism of The Unfinished Swan, the empathy of Limbo, and the nuttiness of Double Happy vs. The Infinite Sadness. Many games and interactive stories we viewed had an advertising component: Asylum Exit Australia for Go Back To Where You Came From; Five Minutes for Casio G-Shock; Hotel 626 for Doritos; and Precinct 13 for 13^th Street.

After coming in to land, we went away to tune up our projects for a couple of weeks, before gathering again for a pitch-fest. With Esther Harding guiding the group (ex-Stormsurfers producer and StoryCode Sydney co-founder), we rehearsed our pitches before diving into the real thing in front of a roomful of people at a StoryCode Sydney Meetup.

With my new reading glasses hanging awkwardly on my nose, in fact I pitched my project to a roomful of blurry shapes. To show how Mogul Recon could come to life as an iOS game, I showed an electronic proof-of-concept video to close my pitch. The room erupted in applause, and my left ventricle almost blew a gasket.

I’ve now been inducted into the Guild’s Pathways program, so my tuned up synopsis is online if you want to have squiz – and here’s the logline:

Mogul Recon is a sci-fi stealth game about technology moguls creating a two-tier society by cheating death. In it, citizen investigators struggle to stop an ailing technology mogul who is about to upload his mind, robotise his body, and put himself beyond any social or political control.

My next step is to have concept art sketched up, and then to shop it around game production companies.  My sincere thanks to Mike, Esther, and the Guild’s Annabel Davies for embracing and nurturing Mogul Recon.

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Rig the show with VERY LOUD speakers. Wrangle 3m-high robot dancers. Fire lasers to explode fireworks from a flying DJ pod. Do it all to max-out fan numbers as Problem-Solver-in-Chief in DJ Decibel Stadium F(x).

This game explores volume, spatial reasoning, problem solving, pi and the Cartesian plane. It’s available online and on iOS.

Credits:

Concept Development and Scriptwriting: Sam Hackett

Director: James Hackett

Producer: Sarah Harris

Developers: Tom Stewart, Alexander Cetinski, Brian Su

ABC Credits: Annabel Astbury, Monique Potts, Susan Shi

Education Expert: Dr Chris Tisdell

Education Services Australia: Martin Richards, Meg Mappin

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