Increasing Accessibility of NFT Storytelling Projects

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing, some people have entertained angels without knowing.”

There are many barriers into NFT storytelling projects right now. Project leaders, however, can do two things: increase ease of access to the narratives; and decrease costs of entry into narrative projects. In this post, we’ll focus on increasing ease of access. We are not talking about increasing creative participation here; we are simply talking about getting people into the projects in the first place. It is important to note that all of these barriers are working in a complex system together, so to increase ease of access or decrease costs in one area might not have any immediately noticeable effects.

Increasing Ease of Access to the Narrative:

1- Where is the story actually located? I have seen numerous projects hide their narratives in some deep, dark fold of the internet: tucked away in some random Discord channel, buried in a sub-page of their website, a pdf that must be downloaded from some other location, stashed away in a Gitbook like some secret treasure, or split across multiple sources and only by jigsawing it together can you figure out what is actually going on. Projects need to be deliberate about where they put their narratives. They must be front and center in every access point to the project: Discord, website, Gitbooks, etc.

ON1 Force has an excellent website with a great lore page. The screenshot does not do it justice.

2- How easy is it for a participant to enter into the dynamics of the story? I have written some about this before, and it is a big enough topic that I think it needs to be broken out separately. Project narratives need a “landscape” that is accessible for participants. They need to know that they can walk through rolling hills as they first enter the project, not be faced with Mount Kilimanjaro, upon whose vertical face they will likely plummet to the depths of non-engagement. See my post about “narrative landscape” for more info on this.

3- How is the narrative marketed? A related issue here is that the narrative needs two levels of development, each with a specific marketing purpose. There must be a synopsis (a paragraph or two) that hooks the potential community member (the flat narrative landscape). This should be front and center. And then there should be the full narrative, which is much more complex and much more developed, and this should be located somewhere accessible, but not immediately up front. Community members, once they become invested, can take the deeper dive into the fully developed narrative (this is a harsher narrative landscape, but it can be handled once the individual has been immersed in the community).

Space Addicts synopsis/marketing narrative. Short and sweet.

4- What form does the narrative take? Narratives can take many forms. These forms have multiple criteria, specifically:

Medium: Is the narrative a comic, a text-based story, a game, a book? I have seen many different mediums used to write a narrative. Neither is better nor worse, but there are varying levels of accessibility depending on medium. For example, game narratives tend to be context-based, and therefore easier to access in time and effort. Comic books are more accessible than short stories, which are more accessible than novels/long form texts, etc. Ease of access should definitely be a consideration for projects when determining the medium of the story. And if the primary medium is inaccessible, they need to account for a more accessible synopsis for marketing purposes.

The Minthouse has created Generative Illustrated Books (GIBs). Each GIB tells the same story, however its graphics are all uniquely generated.

Centralized or Decentralized Writing: Who is the primary content creator of the narrative? Does the community collaboratively write the narrative through some system? Or is there a small collective, or a single individual, who writes the narrative. This criteria is also often tied to the feeling of a dynamic or static narrative. Community written narratives tend to feel highly dynamic, whereas centrally written narratives, despite the fact that many issues/chapters/episodes may be written, tend to feel static, especially from the view of the community. Of course, this criteria is a continuum. Rarely is a narrative written by a single, insulated individual, nor by a chaotic community as a whole.

The Nuclear Nerds’ core narrative is written by a process of community members responding to prompts created by the core team. These responses are curated down to several options by the core team, and then the community votes upon the curated responses.

Core v. Lore Balance: Is the narrative’s purpose to provide a setting and context for the community to build into (heavy on lore)? Or is the narrative the core of the project, and lore is only supplementary (heavy on core)? Of course, this is a continuum, and you will see many projects whose core narrative is important, but whose peripheral lore may eventually overtake it in terms of significance. When project encourage lore, they open access and participation to the story.

I think evolution toward stories that are decentrally written and lore heavy is the dream of many NFT storytelling projects, and final proof of the web3 ethos of the power of decentralized community with centralized goals. I look forward to seeing what all of these projects do in the future.

Reducing Costs of Participation in NFT Storytelling

This part coming soon.