CYOA Precendents

The Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) genre is a kind of interactive fiction which has existed in many forms. Some of these include:

Text Adventures
This was an early for of story based gaming from back in the 70s and 80s. Players were introduced with a small paragraph of text then could type in simple commands to control the character and interact with the environment (e.g. 'pull lever' 'go west')

From Wikipedia: "Zork I is one of the first interactive fiction games, as well as being one of the first commercially sold. It is one of the most famous interactive fiction games. Here it is portrayed running on Gargoyle, a modern interpreter." 

Relating to our market, this form is probably not visual enough to hold great amounts of interest, and also not simple enough to be picked up and played immediately by visitors, who may not have played this kind of game before.

Gamebook

 

[source]

Gamebooks are the book form of CYOAs, wherein the reader is given choices at the end of a passage, and page numbers of where to read next. This was popular in the kids horror series, Give Yourself Goosebumps. These books are often written in second person (e.g. "you open the door..." and may incorporate luck or chance by telling the reader to flip a coin or roll a dice to discover what path they should take.

This is a bit long and boring for a market stall, but it's a precursor to many later role playing games.

Modern RPGs
Role Playing Games are games where the player assumes the role of a character within a story. The importance of your choices can vary wildly between games. Some games use a morality based system, where how you behave affects how you are seen in the world.

 [Dragon Age: Inquisition]

Examples:
Dragon Age: The story is relatively set, though you may affect small parts of the plot, and possibly make a large choice at the climax of the story. Your choices also affect your relationship with the other characters, making the player feel more attached to them.
Dishonoured: Certain choices can lower or raise "chaos" levels, which affect the environment of the game (e.g. high chaos means more guards will be present in the area.)

MMORPGS
Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs are characterised by the fact you play on a server and interact with other real people also playing, often teaming up with them to complete missions. These games are  open world and the plot is often shown from the context, not through a story you are the main character of. Examples include World of Warcraft, Runescape, and Star Wars: the Old Republic.

 

[World of Warcraft; image source]

This isn't feasible for a market situation, but it's interesting to think of how we might make our story interactive between players.

CYOA webcomics

[Rubyquest]

Webcomics have also begun to use the CYOA format, wherein they start off a scenario, then open reader suggestions for what the characters do next. This is often done on forums where readers can easily chime in easily and see what other people are suggesting.
Examples include Homestuck and Rubyquest.

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For our market there are a couple of things are key in choosing and altering what format we present our story in:

• Players must be able to intuitively understand how to operate the story, with little to no instruction. This keeps the flow of players moving quickly and doesn't break immersion by having players confused by the interface.
• As we are an art and design school, the game should be visually appealing. This will also attract people to our stall and provide better immersion.
• The game shouldn't rely too heavily on sound, as the market place will likely be crowded and full of talking.