Re:

["Jason Joel Thompson" <jason@wildghost.com>]

> From: Chris Crawford <chriscrawford@wave.net>
> Sender: owner-idrama@flutterby.com

> > So, for instance, you might interact with a storyteller, causing that
> > storyteller to tell a different story.. but since that story doesn't
> > exist until it's told, you can't really interact with it.. you're
> > really just aiding in its creation/authorship.
> >
> > Is that it?
>
> Exactly! I'm sorry if I've been sounding like some sort of puzzlemaster;
> sometimes I get so deeply into my own work that when I explain it to
others,
> and awful lot of "It's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer"
> comes out...
>
> Chris


While this might be a traditional definition of story (essentially a
recounting of events) I find it to be arbitrarily limiting.  You've
essentially turned story into the description of past events-- and clearly
using this definition, one is not able to interact with story, any more than
one is able to interact with the past.  Interactivity is a process that
must, as of necessity, exist in the present-- obviously any use of the term
"story" that defines it as a description of the past will be immune from
input.

The reason why I pursue this point as tenaciously is because the distinction
you draw here is the one that I'm most interested in erasing.  The paradigm
shift is to move from defining story as a description of past events, to a
description of -current- events.  In this regard my life, for instance, is a
story at the moment at which I experience it-- it also happens to be a story
when I tell you about it, but the first instance is the interesting one:
that's when it was interactive.  Interactive story is just that-- a story
that is formed in the present-- ongoing events over which you have an
influence.

I've been a part of real-time experiences like this and it doesn't really
make sense to me to not call them "story," although I would be open to other
terms if I felt they had discretionary purpose.  My use of the term does not
require an intermediary either (a "storyteller",) except insofar as
individual actors may fulfill that role.

An example from real life for clarity:


I designed a murder mystery game to be played by 20 actors, with an
arbitrary number of audience members.  Each actor was provided with a
character package before hand that described their motivations, their role,
their relationship to the other characters and their knowledge of previous
events.  Each individual had certain goals over the course of the night.
Certain characters were instructed to engage in certain actions at
particular times.  It was a game: individuals received points for achieving
goals.  It was also a story: my talented friends had the freedom to create
and manipulate their shared reality within the constraints of the
environment-- to build a rich reality for themselves on the fly.

Now, there are two instances of the story here, if you will.  If one were,
for instance, to have followed the actors around with a video camera for
later viewing, one would have captured the story.  Watching it later on the
television would clearly be non-interactive: a re-counting of past events--
very enjoyable I'm sure.

It would be more interesting however to have been a part of the story as it
was hatched-- to live and experience these events as they unfolded and to
take part in creating them.

Now, if you want to call those actors storytellers, I'll agree with you.
But in the same way that my game of Quake is altered at the moment that I
press a button to destroy a bad guy, so too were the events of that evening
(the story!) altered at the moment I chose to open my mouth to speak.  THAT
is interactive story, and THAT is what I'm interested in.



(P.S.: Although we pulled off several miniature versions, we never did get
to do the full event as described above.  Very fun I might add.)



---

::jason.joel.thompson
::founder


::wild.ghost.studios |  www.wildghost.com
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