The creative side of the development or production process is a series of creative--technical decisions to be done by the team. These decisions can be divided in 3 groups:
1. - TITLE DESIGN are the specific decisions that make the title different. These are elements such as the specific interactive screenplay and/or storyboard. E.g. which character will be personified, the characters to interact with, dialogues, plots, choices, locations, etc. However this design choices do not include the decision of still illustrations over animation or first person POV over third person. The decision between stills or animation belongs to the Cost Platform Design Model, the last decision belongs to the Root Design Model.
2.- COST-PLATFORM DESIGN MODEL (CPDM). Is a different set of design choices used to execute a title or series of titles for a given development budget and to be delivered through an specific platform. Masq was designed to be delivered in the low bandwidth Web platform and to be developed at the lowest possible cost, therefore choices such as still illustrations, black & white line-drawings, comic balloons and limited animation are part of the CPDM. E.g. this means that with B&W illustrations you can deliver different stories (titles). And also means that you can deliver the same story using other media such as animation.
3. - ROOT DESIGN MODEL (RDM) is comprised of all creative decisions (design principles) that can remain unchanged from title to title, no matter the development budget or the delivery platform. E.g. the use of First Person Point of View, the fact that the time keeps ticking all the time and characters react even if the player doesn't. The fact that there are no traditional puzzles or twitching challenges to stop the user from advancing, etc. All these decisions can reamain constant while the specific plot, locations or characters change from title to title, and these decisions remain constant as well in despite of using or not sound, animation vs stills, etc.
The Root Design Model creates an effective and distinguishable grammar or language between users and authors. In established entertainment forms such as movies or game categories, the design model has been already developed or "decided" through history by previous authors and has become a standard, so users take it for granted and authors use it as the language of the genre they are working on. If the design model is the language, the title design is what you say with that language.
The RDM can be executed with richer media such as 3D animation, audio, video, etc. We already have tested those CPDM.
