06-28-01: The Name

The Beginning

Gabe and Noel had been kicking around an idea for a Flash project. It was about a guy who finds himself in the middle of corporate intrigue, cyberpunk-style. But they figured they needed someone who write things up with them, since neither of them consider themselves writers. So they came and knocked on Morgan's desk. And it sounded good to him.

The three of them started generating a plot, and Morgan tossed out the idea of putting an interface on the thing. Because otherwise it was just making videos. Other people do a fine job of it, but that's the Web as delivery mechanism, not medium.

So the idea of a jury network for people assigned to judge the action seen in the animation shorts was begun. People log in, they see some action, they try to judge who's the good guys and bad guys, and what the very crime is.

So, to get some feedback, we took the idea to Phil Siegert, one of the guys in the Rich Media group at Leapnet. Phil's basic response was "Why are you thinking so small?", though not in so many words.

From Phil's POV, it wasn't just an immersiove interface tossed on a colleciton of shorts, it added up to a very interesting idea for for interactive gaming. The "jury" could not only judge the action, but influence aspects of what they saw. If they wanted to see more of one bit, from a different POV, then that would drive a future chapter of the story.

The world of Exquisite Corpse certainly shows its influences on its sleeves. But the influences include not just 80s style cyberpunk, but also aspects of 30s and 40s science fiction -- seen in some of the design as well as plot ideas. And that type of science fiction is maybe best known for movie serials, like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers.

Serial

With community collaboration.

Collaborative Serial.

But what about a good name? At that point, we were still roughly calling the project "Betrayal", or "that thing we're working on."

And then Noel was listening to NPR while driving his lovely new minivan (bought for his lovely children) and he heard someone on NPR use the term "Exquisite Corpse".

"Corpse" has got that lurid pulp novel feel for a title. And "exquisite" had a lot of nice letters to design with, like Xs and Qs. Noel called up and left an enthusiastic voicemail announcing he had the perfect title.

Nicely, the original Exquisite Corpse concept created by the Paris Surrealists fits in with the idea of a narrative influenced by its audience. We have something approaching a manifesto about this, if you want to read more background thinkin'.

But you get the basic idea of where the name came from, hopefully.