(An image from Little Wheel)
What is storytelling?

To discuss this, we first need to first look at what a story is. To me, a story can be a number of things, sometimes with a beginning and ending, which convey a message. They can be fictional or non fictional and can be created by a number of means including, visual media, photography, written word, live performance, and digitally. A story is not just words in a book or spoken aloud, it can be wordless, consisting of concepts and ideas in a visual format.

Storytelling is sharing a story with the world in any of a variety of ways, be it traditionally, through things like print media or performance, or modern like tweeting and using ‘new media.’

“Digital” storytelling encompasses these new modern ways of storytelling. Digital Storytelling involves using technology to tell a story. These digital stories can still take older forms like spoken word and written word but are elevated to digital stories with the use of digital media, like photos, videos, and sounds.

One may not think of games as telling stories, but many digital stories are ‘disguised’ as games, that is that they are seen by most as being a game first and a story second, that is if they even think of them as telling a story. One such game is Little Wheel, a short flash-based game, in which you must guide a tiny one wheeled robot on an adventure to restore power to its home. Though it may not be a “traditional” story, as you play, you see the little robot interact with its surroundings and see the world around the robot change as you progress through the short game. In this case, the story is told through not only words but images and movement  sure the player has some control over what happens in the game, but in the end, the same basic story will be told to all who play it, much like the same basic story is told to all who read things in print.