Re: How can I make Erasmatron open source?

["B. Fallenstein" <b.fallenstein@gmx.de>]

Hi Chris,

I'll address the questions you posed (about making the Erasmatron open
source) in reverse order, because I think the first is is only
interesting if the second can be answered positively.

Chris Crawford wrote:
> 2. If I did so, would that be enough to kickstart this whole floundering
> interactive storytelling effort? (Assuming, of course, that you agree that
> interactive storytelling is floundering.)

Well, what we ultimately need are people crafting dreams; the fanciest
IS system is nothing if there isn't anybody out there exploring the
artistic possibilities of the medium. On the other hand, I think we can
agree that the current systems aren't good enough; as you have said, a
combination of different approaches will in all likelihood be needed,
and I still hold that we need techniques to archieve combinatorial
explosion, which IMO means higher-order plot elements.

So, no, I do not think making the Erasmatron open source will suffice to
kickstart interactive storytelling (because I cannot see how it could
directly lead to more people crafting dreams). However, I do think it
would be a chance to improve on the available systems. If this is the
aim, and if it is successful, I do think it could serve as a kick starter.

I think what interactive storytelling needs is an *extensible* story
engine, one that is capable of combining different approaches to IS
(through some kind of API). I do *not* think that releasing the
Erasmatron under an open source license will suffice; I presume the
current code is a) tightly tied to a specific design (and approach to
IS), and b) relatively tangled. To kickstart interactive storytelling,
it would need to be untied (defining a set of open interfaces designed
for interoperation of different approaches), and untangled, so that the
code is reasonably easy to understand. This is a lesson to learn from
Netscape's Mozilla efforts: if it's not easy to get into the code, you
won't get a working developer community (for a long time, it was mainly
Netscape's developers working on Mozilla).

Having said all this, of course this can only work if there are a few
people willing to invest some time in the project on a regular basis.
Speaking of myself, if the goals above are where this is going, I would
certainly be interested; on the other hand, if what you want to do is to
continue incremental improvement of Erasmatron's design, I would not
want to spend much time on it-- not because I think it's wrong, but
because I currently don't feel Erasmatron is helping me to advance in my
interactive storytelling efforts.

What about the other members in this group? Could you imagine working on
Erasmatron on a regular basis?

> 1. Is there any way that I can make the Erasmatron technology open source,
> yet still derive some financial benefit?

Well, the precondition would of course be for Eras to be successful; for
example, it would help if there were an interactive storytelling hit and
it was made with the Erasmatron.

If this happens, you could of course not make money from it directly;
your product would have to be something else than the Erasmatron
executables. I currently see two at least potentially promising ways for
you to make money off it anyway.

One possibility would of course be to create Erasmatron distributions
for authors, like Redhat creates Linux distributions. I think this would
have promise if it helped authors actually get into interactive
storytelling, i.e. provide books to learn about how one can approach
crafting dreams. I am imagining a CD with the Erasmatron and examples of
storyworlds, and an interactive storytelling book with an introduction
to interactive storytelling, different opinions in how IS could work, an
Erasmatron manual, and a detailed analysis of the storyworld examples on
the CD, all in a format you can easily read in the bathtub or on a train
(o.k., the latter is probably not a concern in the U.S. :) ). The book
could be written collaboratively as a community effort (i.e., be
available under an open source license); having a nice printout would
likely be enough to make getting your distribution worthwile.

The other possibility I see would be to set up a web hosting, payment
and distribution service for dreams. This seems to be of use because
dream authors would need a web hosting service running the newest
Erasmatron technology (e.g., for demos running in the browser, and for
subscription-based dreams accessed through an HTTP interface). *I* would
not want to find a hoster that allows for this, and then set it up
myself. And if a dream is hosted with you anyway, an author is likely to
also use your distribution and payment services, if available; you could
then make money from each transaction made through your site.

I see the second, or a combination of both approaches, as most
promising. (But again, neither of them will work if Erasmatron does not
gain widespread use in the first place.)

Cheers,
- Benja