Gaiden

[Bob <mantic@brightok.net>]

Good to see the list active again.



	Sadly, most material I find related to IF the last few yeas seems to
have stagnated into something akin to the effete philosophy of literary
analysis and criticism.

	The subject of interactive storytelling is a practical matter as I see
it, not a philosophical one. And few are the literary scholars I've come
across who actually produce fiction. Any fiction writer can define her
craft in a handful of basic methods and rules; because the job's in
hammering it all out on the keyboard, not analyzing the syntax of Poe or
the plots of Shakespear.

	Currently, these machines sitting in front of us have more than enough
power to run some impressive natural language parsing programs without
strain. And it's getting to the point that representation of real-time
three dimensional environments, complete with inhabitants, no longer
requires so much of the machine's processing power (unless you license
Carmack's latest). Looking at the power of modern personal computers
it's a little mystefying to still hear complaints and excuses about the
limits of technology.

	But it's going to take a broad array of talented people rolling up
their sleeves and hammering out the elements to see a resurgence of
interactive fiction as a competitive game-type. The means to the end are
pretty obvious, unless it has to be an easy answer.

	I noticed that Chris Crawford responded to the article on kuro5hin.org
-- pretty cool. Mr Crawford is one of those people with the drive to get
down to the work of it. Although I'm not completely in agreement with
his analyses of storytelling, his implementations have definitely been
inspiring. If only someone like that were working on the Half-Lifes and
Deus-Exs there might actually be something akin to interactive fiction
in the mainstream.




						Sincerely,
						 --Bob