A root in the real world

Recently, the news have grabbed my whole attention. We just underwent an election in Canada that completely changed Canadian politics, by basically throwing out 2 political parties that have been entrenched in Canada’s parliament for decades and centuries, respectively. On an international level, Osama Bin Laden has been killed.

Look at the people who have gone to the streets in New-York to celebrate the American victory in Pakistan. Look at the NDP partisans celebrating the ascension of the party as official opposition, and how they are overjoyed even though they don’t even form the government. Look for similar events in your own local history. Find those events that people have cared about. Especially, find out what made them care!

Once you understand why people love this and that man, why they are overjoyed by this and that event, you will know what to put into your interactive plays to make them care. Look at what made Osama Bin Laden so hated, above and beyond anyone else in the world, by the American people. When you make an antagonist, look at such people whom people truly hate, and incorporate what makes them hate those people into those antagonists. 

How much an event impacts the world is irrelevant. How much people care about it is everything.

The news are a wonderful tool for an author of interactive plays. Look at the way the sensationalist media tug the emotions of people to grab their interest, how they take pains showing how this-and-that major fraud has left a poor widow without the money to keep feeding her young children anymore. If you want your players to care, use the same tricks the media use. Those tricks work.