Re: Film Noir Simulation (Kyle's message)

[WFreitag@aol.com]

Kyle, your message set off certain alarms in my mind that I usually interpret 
as meaning "someone has just told me something very important, but I haven't 
understood it properly."

Could you explain further the nature of the paradox you refer to?

Meanwhile, let me see if I can pick at a few threads...

>This is not quite the same thing as what you described, about giving game
>players explicit subgoals that accomplish, through their interactions, an
>overarching goal - but these approaches have a lot in common, and they share
>a common limitation, one not too hard to point to.   They make sense within
>a restricted reality, one in which we are likely to miss the messy richness
>of the real world.

I was referring to current styles of computer game design, not because we 
should emulate them but because I wanted to point out that some progress 
_has_ been made in game narrative since the days when coin slot video arcade 
games set the pace for game design.

I'm not sure that losing some of the messy richness of the real world is a 
bad thing. I think this is a quality of almost all narrative; indeed, perhaps 
of all craft. "Simplification:" it takes fewer bits of data to codify the 
movements of the dancers in a ballet than to codify the movements of the 
shoppers in a supermarket; fewer bits to codify the notes of a symphony than 
the sounds of a city street. In literature high and low, the snow always 
melts promptly on the first day of spring. Would adding a more realistic 
weather model be an improvement?

>It seems that there is something not so straightforward about the
>ingredients of a lifelike story experience.  As in real life, things are
>seldom what they appear to be.  People know themselves to be something
>other
>than what they show to the world, for a multitude of reasons, not simply
>cosmetic ones.  If they know each other well, this sort of illusion does
>not
>really fool them, and yet covertly, they continually strive to confound
>one
>another's expectations.  They are not simply expressing irony; they
>sometimes seem almost paradox-driven.  "I am more than I can possibly show
>you, but I can at least surprise you with glimpses."

This would appear to tie into, in ways I can't yet define, some thoughts I've 
had recently concerning the nature of metaphor. Specifically, why is a 
metaphor presented in great detail, such as over the course of a novel, more 
evocative than a brief and vague one? One might think that a vague metaphor 
would express broad ideas by allowing the reader's mind to use its 
associative powers to the fullest, while a metaphor with all the details 
already filled in could express only a narrow specific idea. Yet if anything, 
the opposite appears to be true. It's as though the more detail we receive, 
the more those details seem to be only glimpses of an even larger truth. The 
same could certainly be true of characters: the more we know about them, the 
more about them appears to be hidden, and the larger the totality, seen and 
unseen, of the character becomes.

But is "real-world messiness" a good source of such detail? It certainly is 
for real-world people. But I wonder if fictional characters are similarly 
deepened by real-world messiness, or whether the detail that broadens them 
must come from narrative artifice, as it does for metaphor.

>Maybe it is simply a matter of the author's skill and artfulness that takes
>an interaction beyond the realm of mere ambiguity and presents the audience
>with true paradox.  If that's what it comes down to, then this paradoxical
>character is a mark of excellence...

>So my sense of this problem is that if we are hoping to tell a lifelike
>story, or to enable others to take part in telling or acting out anything
>lifelike, we cannot approach excellence without a strong sense of that
>paradoxical nature at the heart of what truly grabs us.

"Lifelike" is not the adjective I'd use here since I think narrative is often 
not lifelike, but I _think_ we're close to agreeing on some key points here.

- Walt

In a message dated 2/12/01 8:12:01 PM, kyle.pierce@pcisys.net writes:

>>...but I'm skeptical on whether uncovering
>> relationships without some sort of overriding goal would generate
>>sufficient interest. What do others think about this question?
>>
>> - Walt
>
>I have given some thought to questions that are very much along the same
>lines as this one.  I have long been inclined to think of a story or drama
>as having at least something in common with a legal argument, or even a
>mathematical proof.  The author's task is to present a compelling sequence
>of actions, one that leads to a particular conclusion.  But what compels
>the
>audience to accept that conclusion?  I suppose it is due largely to the
>author's skill in showing how these actions emerge naturally (if not
>inevitably) from the motivations that have been ascribed to the characters.
>
>This is not quite the same thing as what you described, about giving game
>players explicit subgoals that accomplish, through their interactions,
>an
>overarching goal - but these approaches have a lot in common, and they
>share
>a common limitation, one not too hard to point to.   They make sense within
>a restricted reality, one in which we are likely to miss the messy richness
>of the real world; what is maybe less obvious but more striking is the
>total
>absence of anything resembling paradox.  While this may not be a real
>problem for game developers, we would no doubt strive to meet other
>standards.
>
>It seems that there is something not so straightforward about the
>ingredients of a lifelike story experience.  As in real life, things are
>seldom what they appear to be.  People know themselves to be something
>other
>than what they show to the world, for a multitude of reasons, not simply
>cosmetic ones.  If they know each other well, this sort of illusion does
>not
>really fool them, and yet covertly, they continually strive to confound
>one
>another's expectations.  They are not simply expressing irony; they
>sometimes seem almost paradox-driven.  "I am more than I can possibly show
>you, but I can at least surprise you with glimpses."
>
>I could be overstating it somewhat, but real people seem to have a rather
>perverse habit of subverting any attempt to pin them down as objective
>entities in a factual world.  Why do people object to being objectified?
>Perhaps because each of us is, in our heart of hearts, an ideal entity
>in an
>"imaginary" world.  It is a rather interesting paradox in itself, that
>what
>is most directly experienced as real is what we mostly agree to regard
>as
>imaginary and the stuff of fantasy; meanwhile, what we loosely refer to
>as
>the "real world" is by and large a construction that could never be directly
>experienced by anyone as actual.
>
>I have hardly begun to explore motivation and interaction.  When people
>express an intention, are they really setting a goal for themselves, or
>satisfying some immediate compulsion, or perhaps doing both at once?  And
>when that intention is directed toward another person, do they give any
>consideration to that intention, or does it fall on deaf ears?  What seems
>to be an interaction may in fact have only a single participant.  But this
>sounds more like simple ambiguity than paradox.  Is something still missing
>here?
>
>Maybe it is simply a matter of the author's skill and artfulness that takes
>an interaction beyond the realm of mere ambiguity and presents the audience
>with true paradox.  If that's what it comes down to, then this paradoxical
>character is a mark of excellence.  This is true, I would hope, not only
>of
>traditional dramatic writing but of any imaginable kind of authoring,
>including those we have been exploring on this list.
>
>So my sense of this problem is that if we are hoping to tell a lifelike
>story, or to enable others to take part in telling or acting out anything
>lifelike, we cannot approach excellence without a strong sense of that
>paradoxical nature at the heart of what truly grabs us.  I agree that it
>would also be a mistake to do without goals.  At some point maybe it will
>become more clear how these distinct approaches could be integrated.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Kyle Pierce
>