The dreaded phrase in design circles is 'show and tell.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Show, don't tell, is a mantra repeated by tutors of creative writing courses the world over. As advice for amateurs, it is sound and helps avoid character profiling, unactivated scenes, and broken narrative frames.
Sometimes it's easier to show than it is to tell.
At writing workshops, they taught us to show, not tell - well, showing takes time.
The magic happens when you take facts and figures, features and benefits, decks and PowerPoints - relatively soulless information - and embed them in the telling of a purposeful story. Your 'tell' renders an experience to your audience, making the information inside the story memorable, resonant and actionable.
What writing does is to reveal.
Players like to know that they've discovered things that even the designers didn't know were in the game.
I showed people that it's not about guessing what people can do. It's about saying, 'Here, show me what you can do.'
There's nothing I find quite as annoying as the phrase 'I told you so.'
That was always my frustration with so many of these shows, because design is not an ambush... it's a relationship. You have to know how people move and live and work to be able to design for them.
The basic rule of storytelling is 'show, don't tell.'