The Gaming Tailgate Video Podcast
From the official NCAA Football 11 website:
Pull up a chair; I want to tell you a story. - Well, E3 is here, and if you haven't downloaded the demo yet, what are you waiting for? Now that we've got that out of the way I want to go in depth on the new Dynasty Wire and StoryBuilder features that were recently announced. We've got another blog in the works to talk about everything you can do on the new Dynasty website (dynasty.easports.com), but there's so much to talk about we wanted to split these up into two parts.
Click Read More to view the entire blog.
Before I get into the details of Dynasty Wire and StoryBuilder I want to start off with why we felt it was so important to the evolution of Online Dynasty to add a feature like this. Since Online Dynasty was first introduced on NCAA Football 09 I've been a member of a lot of different dynasties. Because of this, I have talked to a ton of people about their Online Dynasty experiences and there has been one common theme that separates average Dynasties from the kinds of Dynasties where you cannot wait for the week to advance. That common theme is the communication between the members of the Dynasty. When there's little to no communication, people often feel as if they are basically in a single user dynasty where they can't control the speed of advancing, while those that are in Dynasties where there's a lot of communication going on the line between fantasy and reality has been blurred to the point where people are having conversations about their Dynasty as if it's happening in real life. I've seen emails, heard voice mails, and been involved in enough conversations to know that people want to talk about their Dynasty, but they didn't have the proper tools to do it easily and effectively.
This is the reason we created the Dynasty Wire, and this is why StoryBuilder was so important to us. We were tired of composing mass emails and having to click links to see a highlight; we were sick of having to wade through huge email threads to catch up on what everyone was saying; we wanted it all delivered to us; and we wanted to be able to let everyone know just how good of a time we were having. Even though we were doing all of the legwork, these were the things that immersed us so much in our Dynasties, and these were the things we wanted to provide so that everyone could have the same type of experience.
Now that we've talked about why we created the Dynasty Wire and StoryBuilder, let's get into how it works.
Dynasty Wire
In its most basic terms, the Dynasty Wire is your central source for the stories in your Online Dynasty. The latest story is the first thing you see when you enter the dynasty or access the Dynasty website, which helps keep the Dynasty fresh since that lead story can be different every time you get into your Dynasty. There are three basic types of stories: Weekly Updates, Game Recaps, and User generated stories - and I'll get into each of these in a bit. First I wanted to give a quick example of what you might be greeted with when you access your Dynasty from both the console and the web:
Console:
Web:
The first thing you see when you enter your Dynasty is an image from the story, the headline and caption for the story, and on the web you can see the body of the story and the comments right from the front page. On the console you have the ability to shuffle through the 5 most recent stories from the main Dynasty hub. From here you can access the actual Dynasty Wire, which is the list of available stories from your dynasty, broken up by week (including a list of the latest stories no matter what week they are from), and segmented out by the Dynasty Season. This allows you to quickly and easily find the story you want and get update on what's hit the Dynasty Wire since you last checked:
From here you can select any available story to get all of the details. As I mentioned above, this is a complete archive of the stories from the length of your Dynasty. So if you are in week 7 of year 10 you can go back and see the stories that were created in week 2 of year 3 if you want. I'll get to the best part about what this allows you to do a little later in this blog.
Comments
Each story allows you, the members of the Dynasty, to participate in an active discussion by using the comment system. Members can comment from both the web and the console, so no matter where you are you can be a part of the discussion. Comments are all tied to the story they were created in, and you can see how many comments a story has from the Dynasty Wire view, as well as know when the last comment was posted so you will always be able to find where the hot topic is located. Here's a screenshot of the comments from the console:
So now that you know the basic structure of how stories are viewed, let's dive in to how these stories are created.
Weekly Updates
Every time the week advances, a Weekly Update story will be created that recaps the events from the previous week and sets up the news for the current week for each human controlled team. These recaps show the results of last week's game, who each team is playing in the current week, and for you recruitniks, which prospects from your recruiting board have committed in the past week. The best part of this is that the recap shows anyone from your board that's committed, even if it was to another school. I'm a fan of this because I always want to know when a prospect I was after has made their commitment, even if it wasn't to my school. This same recap is displayed on the web, and is one of the emails alerts you can sign up for to help keep you connected to your dynasty.
Since these updates are a central point for all members of the Dynasty, this is a great place to try and coordinate a game time for a head to head game. Use the comments to tell your opponent when you want to play to help move the scheduling along. Or if you are controlling Oklahoma in the scenario above, you can taunt Texas about how you are absolutely crushing it in recruiting.
Game Recaps
After every human controlled game is played, the recap of that game is created and posted to the Dynasty Wire for everyone to see. This recap contains the stats from your game (Scoring Summary, Team Stats, and Player Stats) as well as the highlights from your game. Five photos from your game are automatically created and uploaded, and you have the ability to create up to five additional photos and save off up to five video highlights from your game that will be uploaded for you. In total, each game played can have up to 15 highlights showing off the action from your game. Since we automatically create and upload those photos, even if you don't feel like adding additional highlights to your recap, every game will have some media attached to it for everyone to view. Each recap has a headline and caption automatically generated for you, which you can then edit from the web to say exactly what you want. The cherry on top of all of this is the ability to go to the web and write up your own text recap of what happened in the game. This is your blank slate to tell everyone just what happened in your game. Since it's never fun to type using a controller, the headline, caption, and story body are editable on the web instead of the console. Here's a look at what the full story details look like on the console:
All of the highlights are inside of this screen, so you can shuffle through highlights, read the story, check out the stats, and view/add a comment all from this one screen. The web is structured in the same way so that all of the contents of that story are located in one spot.
User Generated Stories
Where the stories really take on a life of their own are in the User Generated stories. Here, Dynasty members can create a story about anything they want. Absolutely anything (as long as it passes the profanity filters) can be a subject for your story. Sign the top prospect in the nation? Let them hear all about it. Win the Heisman? What better way to rub it in than to create a story with that player's greatest highlights. About to play your biggest rival? Create a preview story filled with highlights from previous contests. The beauty of these stories is that you have every highlight that's ever been uploaded in your dynasty available for use when creating a new story. Did the greatest player in your dynasty just graduate? Create a story about their career where you pull in highlights from their freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years. As I said earlier, Dynasty Wire is your archive for every human game played in the Dynasty. If you have a 12 man Dynasty, with a 13 game a year schedule, and every game has 15 highlights saved, for all 60 years of a Dynasty you would have 140,400 highlights at your fingertips when going to create a story. While this is the absolute extreme scenario, the fact still remains, if you want to write a story, there's a great shot that you will have the visuals to support that story.
The user generated stories are laid out exactly like the game recaps in the same, easy to digest format. Here's an example of a user generated story from the web:
On the left side you will see that the stories about USC are all grouped together for quick access so you can jump from story to story about the same school.
StoryBuilder
Now that we've shown you what the stories look like as finished pieces, let's go into the actual creation process using the StoryBuilder. When you want to create a story from scratch, or edit your game recap you will need to head to the website to utilize the StoryBuilder feature. Here you will be able to edit all of your text and add/remove highlights as well as update the order that those highlights are displayed.
Here's a screenshot of the StoryBuilder:
And let's take a look at that same story once it hits the Dynasty Wire:
Facebook and Twitter
If it's not enough for you to share your stories with the other members of your Dynasty, you can publish stories out to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The world is your audience, and you can let them in on all the fun you are having. If you beat a good friend in your Dynasty, why should the other members be the only ones that can enjoy your ridicule? You've got to embarrass them in a true public forum. Since each story has its own unique URL, people outside of your Dynasty will be able to directly link to the story you want them to see. What's the point of telling your story if everyone can't listen?
Well, that about wraps up this blog entry. Everyone on the NCAA team is very excited about the Dynasty Wire and StoryBuilder and can't wait until July 13th so that we can start writing our stories for real.
Before I end this blog I wanted to let everyone know, even though the Dynasty Wire and StoryBuilder are only applicable to Online Dynasties, that does not mean you are forced to play in a Dynasty with other people if you don't want to. You can create a single user Online Dynasty which will allow you to continue playing the Dynasty at your own pace, while still enjoying all of the benefits of the Dynasty Wire, StoryBuilder and Dynasty Website. Don't think of Online Dynasty as just a Multiplayer Dynasty, think of it as a Connected Dynasty.
Until next time.
-Ben
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