Published in the Barrie Examiner April 23, 2015. Written by Moush Sara John.
~ ~ ~
If you have a story to tell, Blair and Jean Leggett are ready to help you share it.
The couple, through their business One More Story Games in Barrie, have developed a new software which allows writers, artists, and creative minds to become a part of the game world, and share their creativity with the tech-savvy gamers.
“What we have created is a software that allows the writer, amateur, professional, wannabe, to actually put a visual representation of all those of things in an electronic format. So you actually have a map of your world,” said Jean, the company’s chief operating officer.
“So here’s your world and you can actually go and click on all the locations and have conversations with characters in the story.”
It’s a fascinating concept which brought the husband-wife duo from Dallas in a heartbeart to pursue this dream, which Jean says allows writers to get their work out there in a more visual and interactive way.
“What we are really trying to do with the concept, with the technology is to completely change the way people read stories and also to challenge the games industry,” she said. “Imagine a traditional book with you as the reader. You’re reading about Toronto and you’re reading about the city, the streets, and locations. And then you’re reading passively the dialogue between two characters.” ((Whereas OMSG is about READER ENGAGEMENT AND INTERACTIVITY!))
Born and raised in Barrie, Blair is no novice to the games industry. Having worked at Electronic Arts, the largest game publisher for console games at the time in Vancouver for eight years and then for Zynga in San Francisco, it was easy for him to come up with a concept, bold and novel.
While working for Zynga Dallas, Blair, said health complications forced the couple to leave Dallas and move back to Barrie, giving him a chance to relive his boyhood dream of building and owning an independent gaming studio.