Feeding the player backstory

[Adrianis]

Good question, I struggled with this as well.

I would vouch for your second point, though perhaps not to start with the journal. Too many games these days place random tidbits of journals in completely rediculous and arbitrary locations, with tiny excerts.
Trying to figure out how and why someone went around ahead of you placing single ripped out pages at random locations... hurts the mind, not to mention the immersion and belief in the world. If that is something you are trying to achieve, just make sure that the placing is done well.
To be honest, I found the placing of entries in Amnesia felt far too arbitrary, too unnatural to be believable (sorry FG!). It made sense for Daniel, because he left entries for himself to find, to help himself, but not for the other characters.

The problem with working too heavily on the pacing of the pages is that often it ends up being too 'video gamey' in terms of it being more about feeding the player info when appropriate to the gameplay, rather than where it is an appropriate part of the story.
In this way, my opinion totally differs to Andyrockin123 (no disrespect my friend). For a game like this, gameplay should be shaped by the story, so pace the story right and the gameplay pace will fall into place, including the players info-drip. Content however is the most important part, doesnt matter where or when its placed, a badly written pointless journal entry will suck no matter when you get it.

For my game, I plan to have several pieces of good, long solid reading for the players, its not for everyone but its a good change from the above. The way to incentivise this is to have what is written in those entries tie directly into the environment the player is exploring, have things referenced that if the player looks for, they can find, clues to extra story content.
Rewarding exploration in this way, by tieing in references from different sources, really adds depth to the world. Problem is, the ways it can tie in have to be very specific, so it won't necessarily work for any given story, which is why I had to go back over reworking plans.

To be honest, the main reason I'm of the opinion that this is superior is purely based off how often the other technique is used. I look at the Elder Scrolls games, and I know that very long pieces of writing CAN be totally valid for video game players. Not all will enjoy the experience, but for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the world, there is no better way to do it. It just has to be done very well, be relevant to the world, to be very well written. Apply other factors like tie in-s to the local environment, and you have a recipe for excellent exploration enjoyment if thats what you want.

TLDR = ERROR: EXCEPTION IN SUMMARY: CANNOT BE PROVIDED FOR TEXT OF THIS LENGTH: DEAL WITH IT