insoluability

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@3DProgrammer.com>]

> Um, a little license for hyperbole here. Do you really think I'd
> have spent
> 20 years on both theory and practice of interactive storytelling if I
> actually thought both were useless?

I honestly don't know you well enough to take "frapping useless" at
something other than face value.

> My point was directed at the
> put-up-or-shut-up sentiment against theorizing. I'm trying to achieve
> interactive plot and narrative quality simultaneously without the runtime
> involvement of a human storyteller. No one has done this.

I don't agree with this.  I do think there are specific works in the RAIF
community that do a decent interactive plot and narrative for a particular
audience, or at least particular kinds of readers.  The difficulty is trying
to please many types of readers.  It's a losing gamble, because you can't
really predict how the reader is going to react to your work.

> No one has come close to doing this.

I disagree moreso.  I have seen a number of IF works that are proximiate to
an interactive yet literary experience.  Sure, there's much to learn, but
proximities have been achieved nonetheless.

> No one has more than a bare inkling of how to do this.

I really don't agree with this point of yours at all.

> The interactive fiction community has different goals.
> Interactive fiction is
> predominantly used as a medium for the interactive telling of
> fixed stories
> (or at best fixed story trees). This is an artistically worthy
> endeavor. I'll
> even grant that it's proper to call it "interactive storytelling"
> with the
> understanding that in this case "interactive" is a modifier for
> "telling" and
> not for "story." A lot of creative and innovative work is done.
> But it sheds
> no new light on plot interactivity. Which is nothing against it,
> because it
> rarely intends to.

Are you sure you're not setting yourself up for a goal that is beyond human
life experience?  Just how interactive do you think the story of human life
is anyways?  IMO human life is pretty random, so I fail to see the merit in
looking for spontaneous story constructions that are vastly better than our
frail human existences.  Rather, I think a story is necessarily a
structuralization, condensation, and idealization of life processes.  By
losing the freedom, that's where the Art comes from.  With complete freedom,
all you have is boredom.

I hate to disappoint you, but the problem you are defining doesn't have to
be soluable.  The universe isn't necessarily rewarding.  Material existence
may have its limits.

> If there's specific recent work that offers new insight into
> balancing plot
> interactivity and narrative quality, tell me and I'll go look at it.

I rather liked "Photopia" by Adam Cadre. http://www.adamcadre.ac/games.html
But be advised, my method for playing "Photopia" was to play it absolutely
as quickly as possible, doing the first darned thing that came to mind.  It
worked for me the particular reader, with a particular impulse, and my own
particular mental patterns and baggage that I brought to the table.  What
worked for me may not work for you.

The advantage that a Gamemaster brings is customization.  Just because we
cannot offer the same level of customization in the absence of a GM, does
not invalidate IF as somehow less compelling or less theoretically complete
than live GMing.  After all, what if the GM sucks?  What if he's just not
coming up with good improvisational material right now?  When observing
theater improv, I notice that usually the actors are not spontaneously
inventing wonderful stories.  Rather, they are holding their skits together
with the glue of physical comedy.  At least, that's how one local improv
troupe gets away with it.  It is funny, people laugh, sometimes it
approaches narrative coherence if the phases of the moon and the audience
align in the right way.

> Well, this brings us full circle back to the data versus process issue. I
> agree with you that (at present) any interactive storytelling
> system needs an author to supply the "heart."

Until we have strong AI that's always how it's going to be.  Humans may
ascribe / project / personify emotional experiences, but to make narrative
coherence out of that, it takes a human being to get it right.

> (And the "beauty," as I was saying weeks ago.)

I don't think so.  Humans see beauty in inkblots, it's easy for our visual
systems.  Coherence of beauty is way easier than coherence of heart.

> You mention
> Erasmatron: Is it not obvious that creating the Erasmatron
> required Chris to
> analyze the nature of character interaction in stories with far
> more clarity
> and detail than any academic literature course would ever
> attempt?

I'll have to get back to you on that.  I'll hazard a prescient guess: no,
not really.  I think there are many ways to have emotional experience.
Codification, whether academic or computronic, is a subset.  I'd defend the
usage of a subset to produce a particular kind of work, but I still
recognize it as a subset.  The human author is really what matters.

> If we get
> to the point where an author can successfully reposit heart into an
> interactive storyworld using an authoring tool, then we'll have
> succeeded. But we're not there yet.

Your judgement.  I sense a lot of pessimism from you.  You seem to dwell on
the IF glass being half empty.

> Telling us to stop analyzing at this stage is
> equivalent to telling us to stop working on the problem.

Or it might be equivalent to telling you to start writing, so as to properly
work on the problem.  That screenplay, novel, improvisation, or whatever
else it was that you said you hadn't done yet.  Maybe that's your personal
path to discovery.

It may be that you actually have all the materials in front of you, but your
particular way of arranging them is not proving successful.  Maybe it is
your perspective which needs to change, not the problem itself.


Cheers,                                     www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every                           Seattle, WA

For plot and pace, writers use words; game designers use numbers.
Anything understood over time has plot and pace.