Short recalled a brief conversation she had with Chris Crawford at GDC in which he critiqued her and others interactive narrative games. “Youre not giving the player enough of a chance to respond; the game is doing all the talking and the player is doing all of the listening.”Said Short, “I assume what he wanted me to do was give the player more of a chance to respond, but being slightly ornery I wanted to embrace that, and create a game that is all about letting the player listen.” Since she was at GDC when she had the idea, she immediately thought of having the player control an audience. The player would input a reaction on two axes — bored vs interested and confused vs comprehending. “What I wanted to explore with this is the experience that the speaker has as reflected through the audience,” she said.

via Gamasutra — Emily Short Talks Building Interesting Gameplay Around Dialogue.