RE: Content

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

> Yet, how many of us, even the
> traditional fiction writers in the crowd, see interactive fiction as a
> replacement for prose or cinema?

Replacement, no.  Nothing ever replaces anything.  Golf doesn't replace
football.

> In my mind it is a stretch to view the
> 'game' medium as a competitor with other forms of storytelling.

Competitor?  Yes.  They're entertainment products.  So many dollars spent
during one's free time and all of that.  But in the storytelling dept., the
competition from games is still weak.  I believe it is possible to do
better, but I don't personally have the budget for it yet.  We're almost to
a sufficient real-time 3D visual quality stage, but production time is still
enormous.  I think we need an easier/cheaper modeling and animation
technology.  Meanwhile I'm attempting to apply all principles of
storytelling that I can.  There's a lot you can do with just 2D and audio in
a 4X wargame.

Why do I not care so much about the automated "solutions?"  My perspective
is that the manual storytelling problem is hard enough, you really have to
stretch yourself as an author to produce work that hasn't all been done
before.  I value novelty and quality over productivity, and it isn't even
productive to worry about storytelling engines.  It's a hard problem, it's
basic research with all the traditional timesinks of basic research.  I
admire people who engage in technological research, but it's not the only
kind of "content frontier" out there.  Just to tell stories that are not
getting told, or to tell them in your own way with your own style, those are
frontiers also.

Maybe when confronting the storytellling problem, there are 2 paths.  One is
"How does this work?"  These people try to write engines, the "how" is more
interesting to them.  The other is "What must I say?"  The story itself is
more interesting to them.  I'm of the latter camp, at present.


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

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.