Re: Interactive storytelling and me; and a challenge

[Benja Fallenstein <benja.fallenstein@gmail.com>]

On 6/1/05, Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@indiegamedesign.com> wrote:
> Benja Fallenstein wrote:
> >Artists don't need that musical instrument stuff. They'd go sing a
> >song rather than tinker with the sounds a piece of metal makes when
> >you mount it on a wooden box.
>
> I don't know why you snipped the bit about the difficulties of being an
> artist *and* a technologist. 

*re-reads*

Because I misunderstood you. Sorry.

> Also, if you spend all your time building
> violins rather than playing them, you're a craftsman, not an artist.

True. Well, I don't; I'm not working on generic engines, but
particular stories/storyworlds.

> >>From my experience with reading that kind of work (and Erasmatronic
> >storyworlds, too), I believe that the answer is simple: A reader with
> >at least a bit of experience in the medium will take a very short time
> >for each choice point, choosing what seems right at the moment
> >practically instantly after having read the main text (or skimmed over
> >it).
>
> Yes, but you're smart, and trained in the navigational methods of such
> storyworlds.  Can you get a *general audience* to make those choices and
> stick with it? 

Hm. I think what we need here is "audience engineering" -- Chris and
others have thought about this; Chris has made the point that
conventions in movies have evolved a lot, teaching the audience new
things to understand (e.g., the sound cutting to a different scene
before the image does is usual now, but would have been nonsensical a
couple of decades ago).

I also don't find it worthwhile for myself to think too deeply about
approaches to audience engineering before I'm close to having
something an audience may want to appreciate. For the moment, I'll
work on a storyworld rather than on how to sell it.

So for the moment, I'm following the approach of creating something I
want to play myself. You don't seem to have a lot of faith in that
approach; I think it's fundamentally the right thing to do: The best
stories, in mass-market or in minority markets, are written by people
who love that kind of story. If it turns out that as a result, readers
find it hard to approach the resulting piece of interactive
storytelling, I'll have to think about audience engineering, but not
yet.

However,

> The adventure game industry died for a reason.
> Computers got more popular, people got dumber.  Meanwhile, production
> values increased.  So we got more and more expensive adventure games
> chasing a smaller and smaller percentage of smart people.

I should say that I *do* believe that a mass audience can be capable
of and interested in doing what a piece of interactive storytelling
asks from its reader (i.e., making choices). I accept that there may
(or may not) be a problem now, but I do think that if so, we can get
people to change. I'm not going try to support this thesis with
polysyllabic arguments -- I just believe it's true.

> >I think that's a crapload of nonsense, but I don't think there's any
> >point in discussing it. :-) Let's just agree to disagree here,
> >discussing this won't move interactive whatever forward.
> >
> You seriously don't understand the issue that money tracks talent?

I understand that a lot of great art gets made without artists being
paid for it.

> No money, then talented people are going to go find other ways to get paid.

They will find other ways to get paid, and continue to do the
non-paying thing in their free time (speaking as a statistical trend,
not a universal rule, of course).

If the opposite were true, there would be no great fan-fiction. But there is.

If the opposite were true, painters wouldn't accept the downright
idiotic deal they are dealt: selling their works for pennies, knowing
that *right after their death* prices for they work (if they're good)
will go through the roof.

If the opposite were true, Hollywood wouldn't need to make books into
films; the really talented authors would submit to Hollywood first,
since it can pay better. (If it wants to, anyway.)

> >I don't think I agree. Of course you can trivially reduce it further,
> >in the sense that you can reduce the whole endeavor to the single
> >rule: "Make it a *good* choice point, dammit!" But I feel, for myself,
> >that the above list is more helpful in pointing out *what exactly* is
> >wrong with a "bad" choice point,
> >
> You feel this way because it is your list.  :-)

True.

> >>I'm not interested in what the main character or player
> >>"might" want to do.  I'm interested in the High Concept of what I want
> >>him to do, and getting the player to swallow that.
> >
> >I think what you disagree here is Chris' notion that the perfect
> >storyworld/game offers the player all reasonable options, not my
> >notion that a good choice point doesn't offer the player unreasonable
> >options.
> 
> I don't think you've defined who's in charge of the "main character."

No, but I was assuming the style where the reader "plays" the main
character, i.e. makes choices for them.

I'm not simply saying "the player is in charge of the main character,"
because that is not true in my work to the degree it is in others',
but that probably has little relevance on the question above. Hmm,
perhaps it does.

Most people seem to feel that the main character shouldn't have a
character other than what the player gives them; so if the player
wants to kill a civilian and the game tells them "you have qualms
about this," they would consider that to be the game blocking the
player's choices. In my work, the player enters the mind of a
character who already has a personality, and the player is not offered
any choices to do things that wouldn't occur to this character to do;
they merely choose between options that the character considers
options, and so if it wouldn't occur to the character to slay the
civilian, the player will never see the option. (The effect of this
isn't merely to limit choices, though: You can have internal dialog,
for example.) This is an essential element of the interactive
storytelling I want to create, just as it is an essential component of
the stories I enjoy most (where I identify with the main character(s),
and enjoy the story from their perspective).

Cheers,
- Benja