interactive story issues

[apstern@ix.netcom.com]

----- Original Message -----
From: <WFreitag@aol.com>
To: <idrama@flutterby.com>
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 8:04 PM
Subject: Follow up


Walt,

I meant to reply earlier to your post, sorry for the delay, I've been
travelling

> After the recent round of increasingly interesting discussion followed by
> sudden profound silence, a pattern that appears to recur, I'm beginning to
> think it may be worthwhile to inquire into why that happens.  Does the
> inevitable emergence of the same old fundamental and so far
> irresolvable issues cause frustration?
> Does the discussion get so complex that it becomes
> too difficult to go on? Do people feel that their comments are not being
> understood or appreciated?

I think it's difficult to discuss this because, like Chris suggested, we
each have our own definitions / visions of interactive story, it's often
hard to find common ground on what the issues are.  For me it's difficult to
talk too abstractly about this, because until you get grounded in the
concrete reality of implementation, it's kind of all wishful thinking.  (Or
maybe I'm just not the most adept theorist.)  And even once you're talking
concretely, there are a many ways to go about implementation.

If you're interested, another way to frame the discussion is to propose a
concrete example of an interactive story to build, so we can start from a
common place.  We could talk about issues of conflict, goals, metaphor, etc.
within the context of this concrete idea.  For example, just to pick
something, let's say we wanted to make an interactive story set at a beach
town in summer, and you play a character who is a single young person
vacationing there.  (I'm thinking of the setting of Eric Rohmer's A Summer
Tale.)  There could be a whole cast of computer-controlled characters whom
you could meet, form relationships with, allowing for a multitude of
different stories.

Based on this example, in terms of design (without worrying about those
annoying implementation details :-), we could start with the question:  What
kinds of stories would we theoretically want to happen?  Do we want this to
be very open ended, where the conflict arises out of my actions -- I could
become friends with one person, have a romantic relationship with another,
causing feelings of jealousy or anger in another, etc?
Or do we want there to already be some sort of conflict from the start, a
goal you are given -- for example, there is a popular person who everyone
(including yourself) "wants" to go out with, and you are supposed to compete
everyone else for them?  Or turn the tables, perhaps the situation is that
everyone wants to go out with *you*, and your conflict is somehow managing
all these peoples affections, without turning the situation into a big
fight?

Other questions could be, do we want the story to be dramatic, where there
is an inciting incident, crisis, climax, with a final ending?  Or do we want
it to be more meandering, episodic, never-ending?  Should this be
replayable?

Is the interaction continuous, or am I given only occasional decisions to
make?  In either case, what is the range of expression I am given?  Can I
say or do anything I want within a given language or set of
gestures/actions, or am I given only a few predetermined menu choices at any
one point?  Or is this story purely action-based, with no dialog?  (ie, I
interact by picking fights or following people with flowers in my hand and
trying to kiss them?)

There seems to be so many ways to go about it, even within one specific
story context.  Depending on which kind of story you choose, you may want to
implement these characters as strongly autonomous, independent goal-directed
agents, versus more centrally controlled by a single story-manager (an issue
we're dealing with on our Facade project)...


> Bit by bit, I've been working on an interactive storytelling glossary.
> Game (n) An activity or process, involving at least one human participant
or
> "player," that meets three criteria:
> 1. The player has a goal to accomplish.
> 2. The decisions of the player affect whether or not the player's goal is
accomplished.
> 3. The determination of whether or not, or how effectively, the goal is
accomplished is more important to the player than the direct consequences of
pursuing or accomplishing the goal.


I have thought a lot about what is it that a player should actually "do"
when playing an interactive story.  Generally what we've decided on for our
current story is that your actions are constantly affecting the status of
your relationship to the other characters -- affinity, trust, etc. -- for at
least how the computer characters think of you, since we can't enforce what
you, the human, think of them.  As you play this story, on an abstract level
I suppose you are playing a "game" where you are trying to get your
relationships with the other characters to be how you want them (much like
we do in real life with friends and lovers).  Where we want to differ
strongly from traditional interactive entertainment is that the *way* you
play this game is through "natural" interaction, like dialog and gesture
(what you say and do, how and when you say and do it), not by way of
manipulating weapons, navigating hallways or operating some sort of
dials/sliders/buttons user interface.

Even if an interactive story is goal-oriented and like a game in some ways,
the term "game" has lots of other baggage that goes along with it, like
unambiguous scoring / points, levels, etc.  Stories (about human
relationships) are much more ambiguous, it can be hard to tell if you are
"winning" or "losing" or what your "score" is (even if technically speaking,
your state is discretely represented within the system).

Andrew
andrew@interactivestory.net