Who is the storyteller?

[Dan Lyke]

We've got a continuum, from "Star Tours" rides, where the creators attempt
to completely coopt the world of the audience, to movies, to novels where
the authors attempt to help the reader build the world in their
imagination but still drive the plot, to the person telling stories who
will alter how the story is told, if not the plot, to best entertain the
audience, and out the other side to Chris Crawford's attempts to build a
world, drop the audience into it, and hope that the audience can create a
compelling story. 

When I talk to people about what "interactive storytelling" means, this is
one of the big points of disagreement. Note that on both ends of that
spectrum we've got heavy computer involvement. And it's really not a
single dimension, we can probably break it down at least to how much the
story is altered for the audience, and how much the telling of the story
is altered for the audience.

Any thoughts? What do you hope to create?

When Todd and I and Steve sat down over beers and started to talk about
creating an interactive storytelling universe, we thought we'd have little
guardian angels who'd follow the characters around, look for potential
story situations and try to influence the behavior of non-player
characters and camera angles to create a story.

That seems a bit ambitious for a first pass, but I've had trouble finding
an acceptable intermediate. Adjustable camera angles, as are starting to
appear in porn DVDs (I haven't taken the plunge to get a DVD player yet,
so I can't verify this first hand) take away from the telling of the
story. If you reveal everything at the audience's whim you end up with a
story that's flat and preachy (not that porn is well known for the plots
anyway).

And just letting the characters go in a universe isn't any different than
just letting them go in real life, except the graphics aren't as well
anti-aliased.

Dan