Re: Content

[Bob <mantic@mbo.net>]

As much as we have in common our motives for approaching interactive
fiction are likely quite diverse. So I should not generalize, especially
based upon my own motives and experience. Yet, how many of us, even the
traditional fiction writers in the crowd, see interactive fiction as a
replacement for prose or cinema? In my mind it is a stretch to view the
'game' medium as a competitor with other forms of storytelling.

	Computer-driven IF is attractive to me as a new medium. Much as the
comic stip/book and cinema were new territory in the last century. There
was stigma attached to those forms compared to prose and traditional
art; even now those arguments continue. But after a century of
refinement these have been validated. So much so that names like Frank
Miller and Stephen Spielburg are cited alongside Edgar Allen Poe in our
discussions of drama and storytelling. But note that we have all
encountered Tolstoy and Dickens, Shakespear and Chekov, Akira Kurosawa
and Orson Welles, Will Eisner and Charles Schultz, despite the variety
of forms they employed.

	All we are really about is defining the new medium. No doubt it will
come to pass with or without us, but no less doubt will creations such
as the Erazmatron, Dramaton, and even the scripted machinima systems in
Half Life and Thief, serve to shape the future of the format.


								--Bob





Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> 
> Passive stories:
> > they all have in common that
> > their authors remain firmly in control of the nature and sequence of all
> > significant events.
> 
> Interactive stuff:
> > I suggest that the opposite end of that continuum is defined by "dumb"
> > simulators at its extreme,
> 
> I just finished "Thief II: The Metal Age," which is a game that allows one
> to simulate being a thief.  There are pockets to pick, ropes to climb up,
> people to whack on the back of the head with a blackjack, arrows to put
> through people's throats, and most importantly, an extensive shadow model to
> lurk in.  But as in all games, one eventually runs out of things to do.  I
> could perfect my arrow shooting abilities to the degree the UI allows, but
> at some point the feeling of "been there, done that" sets in.
> 
> How is this any different than reading a static piece of fiction several
> times, like a book or a movie, then finally getting sick of it?  Content is
> content, it doesn't matter if it's passive or active content.  It's a nugget
> of something an author thought up for you to see or do, and when you've
> seen/done it enough, you move on.  You buy another title to replenish your
> stream of content, to get different content.
> 
> Philosophically, Yin and Yang are two sides of the same coin and this
> atheist thinks it's our lot to simply be born and then die.  If this
> framework has the remotest explanatory appeal to you, if you aren't on a
> religious quest for magical transcendance, then I have to ask: why look at
> entertainment as anything other than the delivery of "content?"  Passive vs.
> Active is a red herring, a detour.  It doesn't matter.  What's important is
> how "content" is produced.
> 
> The old fashioned, manual approach is a human author thinks of something
> cool and sweats a lot to make it a production reality.  You can ask all
> sorts of deep questions about how the human brain and creativity works, but
> strategically, it's just authors slogging out content.  And it works.  We
> know it works because we aren't bored to tears, we hunger for content, and
> we have a slew of industries to provide it for us.  We can be sure that
> content exists and we don't really need to put it in quotes.
> 
> What is the point of automated, engine-based approaches to content?  To do
> it because it's there, like climbing Mt. Everest?  To speed up the
> production of content, even though the end product will be similar to
> manually created content?  To create works that have far more content than
> what we manually produce?  How much more can there be?  As I said above, the
> human attention span is limited.  When we are tired of the content, we move
> on to something else.
> 
> In the current marketplace quantity certainly isn't a problem.  Variety may
> be a problem, depending on taste.  Is an engine going to provide more
> variety to the consumer?  Will it be easier to know you'll like something,
> without actually having to try it first, because the engine is so smart it
> knows exactly what kind of originality and creativity you most want to have?
> Heck, will it know how to write your own screenplay better than you would!
> Maybe it takes over the job of having life experience for you.  A
> complicated perceptual drug, a Happiness button that is always pressed.
> 
> You can pursue quantitative improvements to content production.  You can
> pursue qualitative improvements.  Why, as opposed to manual authoring, I
> don't know, but whatever floats your boat.  Explain it to me, as you pursue
> your storytelling engines: what do you think you're achieving?  I am
> inclined to look at it as artistico-scientific self indulgence.  The best
> content of all, entertaining yourself!  We don't have to write stories to
> keep ourselves amused, we can write meta-stories, engines about stories.
> The same brain cells get used whether you're making a far out engine or a
> more "traditional" story, so why not?
> 
> Heh, maybe it's not self-indulgence, maybe you have an Orwellian social
> purpose.  Replace Hollywood with something far more automated.  Soon
> governments will run this software!  :-)
> 
> Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
> Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA


______________________________________________________________________


Kenneth Lu wrote:
> 
> Brandon,
> 
> I basically agree with what you said about how it's all about
> "content", but it can be about different KINDS of content.  In the
> case of interactive works, the mechanism is part of the "content".
> "Look!  If I build fewer factories, there's less polution and more
> happy citizens!"  That makes an effective political statement.  By
> playing simulator games, we can better understand how things work,
> WITH THE AUTHOR'S BIAS IN FULL EFFECT within the rules of the
> simulation.  This is content.  Think of the author not as
> Michelangelo, but as the Newtonian "watchmaker God" who creates a
> Universe for us to explore in.
> 
> I guess this is my personal bent in terms of interactive fiction..
> Imagine an automated story-telling system that tells, say,
> stereotypical private-eye stories.  Can a human author write a linear
> story on the same topic better than a computer?  Sure.  Will a reader
> absorb more from reading a few human-authored detective stories than
> they will from playing through such a game a few times?  Not
> necessarily..
> 
> What the game can do that the book cannot is to allow the user to
> explore the consequences of various actions in the directions they
> find interesting..  The "author" of the simulation codes in rules for
> human behavior, and the player explores those rules within the
> various stories that the simulation generates.
> 
> A human author can write a single plot that focuses on a few issues
> (trust and betrayal, law-abiding and law-bending, etc.), but a
> simulation can be coded to simulate a larger variety of such social
> phenomena, and the reader/player might explore those phenomena with
> greater efficiency..
> 
> Still, note how it is the author who is in control, despite the
> individual runs of the game, or individual "stories", being written
> by the simulator.  The author places in their bias of the rules of
> the Universe.. the author biases the simulation to focus, still, on
> the interactions and concepts they find important.
> 
> What I'm saying is that interactive fiction of the kind I'm thinking
> (which is very simulation-oriented) is very suited for "content" that
> is focused on the mechanics of an issue.  It's still "content", but
> it's a somewhat different kind of content from what can easily be
> expressed in a static work.
> 
> -ToastyKen
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> | Kenneth Lu - kenlu@mit.edu - http://www.mit.edu/~kenlu/ |
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> | "Life is far too important to be taken seriously."      |
> |                                                         |
> |                                          -- Oscar Wilde |
> -----------------------------------------------------------