If you’re a game designer, visual novelist, or filmmaker interested in interactive storytelling and diversity, this may be the opportunity for you. Games for Change and Interlude, makers of the Treehouse authoring platform, are teaming up to sponsor an interactive storytelling competition called The Challenge of Diversity. Competitors will create an interactive video series to discuss “the opportunities, difficulties, and complexities of living in the most diverse country on Earth.”
Entries will consist of a 3-minute pilot and the treatment for two additional episodes. The winning submission will be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. The winners will get $10,000 toward the production of episodes two and three of their series.
Anyone can sign up on the Interlude website and create interactive video projects for free. Treehouse looks pretty simple to use. Interlude, the company behind Treehouse, was founded by an Israeli musician named Yoni Bloch. He started the company when he wanted to create an interactive music video and couldn’t find the technology to do it.
Guidelines say that the contest entries have to be filmed at a maximum of two locations. They also have to be created with Treehouse and be “inherently interactive.” And they must discuss the challenges of diversity. The films can be fiction, documentaries, or anything in between.
What exactly is the “challenge of diversity?” According to the challenge guidelines, “… with diversity come complex questions and challenges around race relations, sexual rights, economic disparity. We live in a place where millions of seemingly incompatible people live together, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in discord, and usually somewhere in between … How can you employ interactive storytelling … to explore these important and difficult choices?”
The Games for Change Festival is held every year in New York City in conjunction with the Tribeca Film Festival. This year the Games and Media Summit is April 18 at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s followed by the 13th Annual Games for Change Festival June 23-24 at the Parson’s New School for Design.
Submissions for The Challenge of Diversity competition opened February 15. The deadline is April 1, 2016.
