Re: How can I make Erasmatron open source?

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

> 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.)

rec.arts.int-fiction is the only Internet community I'm aware of that
produces a lot of IF work.  They have IF contests multiple times a year and
see themselves as advancers of the art and craft of IF.  At this point in
history their tools are free and open source, so it is unlikely that they'll
be interested in tools that aren't.  It wasn't always so, in the past some
of the tools were shareware, but that's ancient history now.  The community
has accepted that nobody's making any money off of text-based IF and
nobody's gonna.  They're a bunch of artistic idealists / hobbyists.  They
are rather effective at continuing to elevate the quality of amateur work,
but strategically speaking, their work will never be relevant to commercial
entertainment.  Text-based IF is a dead art that a few stalwarts are keeping
alive.

The only way the Erasmatron will ever be commercially relevant is if it (1)
ties itself to the production processes of mainstream commercial game
titles - 3D graphics engines, AI, lotsa art, audio, etc. (2) manages to add
value over what all those artists, programmers, writers, and game designers
can sell anyways.  I mean, in the games industry crap clearly sells.  As far
as the corporations are concerned, there's no need for fancy technologies to
move game product.

I think you're better off writing a killer game based on your Erasmatron
code, thereby proving that the Erasmatron isn't theory, it's actually a cool
title you can buy.  But frankly you're never going to survive as a
middleware dealer without first proving to the world that your middleware is
commercially valuable.  All of the other kinds of middleware - like 3D
engines, physics engines, and now lately even AI engines - arose from
features repeated in many games over and over again.  Such middleware meets
a (corporate?) perceived market need to avoid re-inventing the wheel.  In
the case of the Erasmatron you're not re-inventing the wheel, you're still
trying to decide whether the wheel is even a good idea or not.

"King Of Dragon Pass" from www.a-sharp.com is the kind of game that I'd
expect to benefit from an Erasmatron-style authoring engine.  KODP won an
Independent Games Festival award for best artwork and has a small following
on the Usenet groups it seems, but I doubt its author David Dunham would
describe it as a profit runaway.  Rather, as an indie he got the title done
and maybe he's getting some pocketmoney for it.  Note also that KODP didn't
need any particular authoring environment to do what it did, it simply used
an off-the-shelf multimedia authoring environment.  I'd just expect
KODP-style authorship to benefit from the Erasmatron.  There's not a lot of
that kind of authorship out there, most commercial games are pretty shallow.
Which is why KODP was an indie title not a mainstream title.

So... envision the game that the Erasmatron would best implement.  Make it,
sell it, find a way to avoid the Brick & Mortar Retail problem like all us
other indies are trying to do.  Upon financial success proceed to the next
stage.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every