An idea for a new form of interactive story-telling.

The idea for Everything is Black has probably been with me for fifteen years or so now. An idea that asked the question, what would it take to write a virtual world? The kind of interactive story where you could type any instruction to interact. From this you would get a detailed response, progressing your story as you explore the world.

Wikipedia showed that people working together could create the largest reposatory of human knowledge. So surely an online community could also create the largest fictional written work. The first interactive virtual world!

Developing the Concept

As an English teacher, and small business owner in South East Asia I’ve always been kept pretty busy to say the least. Whilst I originally, and rather naively, thought, the premise for Everything is Black simple enough that it could be programmed by someone with the correct skills in a couple of days. As I met people who had those requisite skills over the years, however they explained the work required. This was not only in producing the web application, but then in successfully launching it.

Undeterred I kept tossing the idea around in my head, first coming up with new ways to make it function. Then on to fund-raising, and how to market it to people that would really care about it.

Making the idea reality

The idea continued to persist, and grow, to a point where I felt I had to use every piece of creativity and ingenuity I, and indeed anyone else I knew, possessed to bring this idea to the world. Friends encouraged me to find a way to make it happen, and when someone came to me looking to make a small business in Cambodia I suggested we divert some of the investment to this not so small project.

In order to create interest, and market the project before launch, whilst giving the project the best chance of success with sufficient financing, we decided to launch a kickstarter that will allow us to grow interest from readers and writers prior to launch.