RE: Interactive Drama: Why I've lost interest

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

Kenneth Lu wrote:
>
> My own take is: I agree I've never really felt a need to have
> computers
> tell stories for us, when there are so many people wanting to tell
> stories.

Well, I'm coming at it from the producer / pioneer side of the equation,
not the consumer / recipient.  I could say the same thing about books.
Why write books when so many books have already been written?  The need
to write is personal.

> Instead, I see interactive narrative as a new medium FOR authors to
> express their message in ways they could not use before.  In
> particular,
> interactive stories are unique in that they allow the author
> to specify
> the "mechanics" of the world, and it is through these
> mechanics that we
> can express our views in a way that's fundamentally different from
> what's come before.

We can also get lost in those mechanics.  Particularly vexing to me is
I'm writing in the 4X Turn Based Strategy genre.  It is very easy for
the player to become primiarly concerned about the spatial relationships
of squares or hexes.  That's abstract mathematics, not story.  It could
be turned into story if the squares/hexes become iconographic or
pictorial, but that has consequences for subject matter and treatment.
Do I want a story that feels 'realistic' or that feels metaphorical?
What way does one choose to do a space game about colonizing Mars, that
is not intended to be 'goofy' or 'science fantasy' ?  I haven't decided.
I'm aware of my options, I just haven't decided.  When the player starts
angsting about "how many hexes away is that?" there's a problem
delivering story.

Stories would be much easier to tell with First Person Shooters because
the mechanics are much closer to drama.  You have characters, stages,
events from human perspective, etc.  What's the story of a planet with a
God's-eye view?

> One example I keep coming back to is how Balance of Power measures
> social unrest on a scale from terrorism to rebel bands to
> all-out civil
> war.  That in and of itself is a message.  Like it or not, it
> "legitamizes" terrorism to some degree as merely the
> low-budget form of civil war.

Yes, but it's a simulation, not a story.  To be sure, it's very good to
considering having "morals" or "a point" in a game, and to consider how
films and games can go about crafting those.  But we must also realise
what isn't a story.  A 5 minute pop song usually has some kind of
message or point.  Usually it's not a story.

> Likewise, the most interesting thing I learned from playing
> Sim City was
> not whatever message there is in letting Godzilla rampage through my
> town.. But rather budget-balancing.  Oddly, that one game somehow made
> budget-balancing seem more fun to me later in life when I had to do it
> for real.

Again, simulation, not story.

> Often, we tell stories to demonstrate a single example of how some
> system works, and I think interactive storytelling can help that by
> making far more aspects of a system visible (and by aiding
> understanding of that system through interaction).

Spoken like an engineer who wants us to understand complex systems for
their own sake.  Not like a dramatist, who will only produce what makes
for good drama.

What makes good drama?  It is not simply "an understanding of what has
transpired."  We could, maybe should, discuss "what is drama" as it
would be a conveinent way to invigorate this list.  But I don't feel
like dedicating the space to it here.

> Most of the "systems" computer games have tried to
> demonstrate have been
> more abstract, like city or troop management.  I think the
> future is in
> exploring the most interesting system of all: basic human interaction.

I disagree.  We can already do it: you're doing it on blogs, I'm doing
it in SIGs at bars.  "Basic human interaction" is, frankly, often a
PITA.  People escape to dramatic human interaction for a reason, to
relieve the tedium of their daily lives.  A dramatist doesn't want an
open ended system, he wants some kinds of human interactions and not
others.  He wants the interactions to be related in a way that's
psychologically fulfilling.

This is not much different from people who say, "I want games to be more
realistic!  Realism is the best!"  Well, walk outside your front door
and see how exciting it all is.  It's probably boring.  But, very
realistic.

> Look at it this way:  Many of the best movies are about
> ordinary people (though often in extraordinary situations).

Right.  That () is the whole point.  It's not realistic.  It's not basic
human interaction, it's extraordinary human interaction.  At most it's
realistic human interaction that has been time compressed with artistic
license into a 90 minute film.

> They show you one instance
> of how people react and interact in a given interesting
> situation.  How
> neat would it be to be able to more fully explore those situations?

Not neat at all.  You now have the full burden of a research scientist.
Many of those situations are going to be very, very boring.  People
think it would be 'neat' because they don't sit down and actually try to
write the damn thing.  They aren't dramatists.

> The "what if" games we have today tend to be very rigid, and AIs
> generally only respond physically.  What I'm interested in is
> seeing if
> we can have AIs respond with a wider range of "emotional" and
> conversational options.

Do you feel you have a literary background sufficient to describe
"emotional response" in dramatic terms?  If not, why would you kid
yourself that you can get an AI to do something you know little about?
If you do, why do you think "width" of responses is what we all need?
Sounds like 4 million boring stories to nowhere.

> Currently, we can see someone's take on how people in a given
> situation.
>  I want to see their take on how people would act in a variety of
> situations, larger than what a linear story would allow.

Well, here's a chance for you to prove your mettle.  Recently some
Italian guys conjured up a pure hypertext storytelling thingamabob.  It
doesn't do anything, it's just a simple hypertext linkage thingy.
http://www.terradif.net/online/cyoa/interactive/storyland/en/index.php

Go there and write a hypertext story.  Keep expanding all the nonlinear
branches you want.  See how much work it is.  I have a very poor start
of a story there.  Most of my descriptions are 1 sentence, with the
rhythm of the linkages being the 'carrier' of import.  I never intended
it to be good, I was only looking to build the skeleton of a story as
quickly as possible.  Even *that* was a lot of work, and since there's
no $$ in it for me, I quickly returned to other more potentially
profitable things.  I did achieve the goal of giving them feedback about
their system, what a working author would want out of it.

> Yes, each particular path I choose won't have the richness of a fully
> authored linear story, but it can also offer something linear stories
> can't.
>
> So that's the value I see in interactive storytelling, and I
> don't think it's being explored much today.

Have you explored how to write a regular story?


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
                          - anonymous entrepreneur

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