Papercut has designs on a new storytelling genre

Papercut has designs on a new storytelling genre

Papercut looks to create an experience that falls somewhere between text and a movie.

by Jenn Webb | @JennWebb | +Jenn Webb | Comment | 21 September 2011

This post is part of the TOC podcast series, which we'll be featuring here on Radar in the coming months. You can also subscribe to the free TOC podcast through iTunes.

Papercut, a new iPad publishing platform developed by ustwo, is scheduled for release in late September. Jonas Lennermo, head of publishing at ustwo, recently sat down with O'Reilly's Joe Wikert to talk about the new platform. Highlights from their interview include:

A Papercut overview — "You could say Papercut is three things: it's a publishing platform; it could work as a storefront; and first and foremost, it's a new genre — it's a storytelling experiment." [Discussed at the 0:53 mark]
It's also a multi-sensory experience — "The concept is quite straightforward: you have a small, scrollable reading window, and because of the reading window, we know where the reader is in the story and we can trigger events based on what's happening in the story." Readers can hear doors close, the wind blowing, and visuals can be included as well. [Discussed at 1:33]
The issue of development scalability — "I think it's a hard balance because we are really keen on creating a platform so we can create these stories quite cheap and quite fast, but we don't want to be locked in to only do one thing. We still want to experiment, but mainly we want to experiment with storytelling. It's a fine balance between creating a one-off — to explore and do something brand new — but also at the same time be strategic and create a platform that you can reuse." [Discussed at 7:23]

The full discussion is available in the following video. Lennermo will talk more about ustwo and PaperCut at next month's TOC Frankfurt.

TOC Frankfurt 2011 — Being held on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011, TOC Frankfurt will feature a full day of cutting-edge keynotes and panel discussions by key figures in the worlds of publishing and technology.

Save 100€ off the regular admission price with code TOC2011OR

Papercut has designs on a new storytelling genre

Papercut looks to create an experience that falls somewhere between text and a movie.

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