Re: Interactive storytelling and me; and a challenge

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

Benja Fallenstein wrote:

> > What about great engineering, or great production companies?  I see a
> > helluva lot less of that!
> >    
>
> Open source has a lot of great engineering in my opinion,
Not in mine.  Only the really large open source projects are any good.  
And my opinion is based on 2 years of trying to use open source High 
Level Languages.  There's a reason industry doesn't touch a lot of these 
things.

> > I should have spoken more precisely.  Who will *take authorial
> > responsibility* for the main character?  The author, or the player?  Or
> > even, a technology?  There's a spectrum of possibilities here.  They
> > result in very different stories and technologies.  Your job as an
> > author becomes very different.  That's why I said "dunno," because it's
> > all within the realm of your authorial intent.  It's not a good guiding
> > principle for how to construct choice points.
> >    
>
> As I said in my e-mail, what the rule is trying to prevent is that all
> but one of the options offered are options that the player will
> presumably not want to take, because that means that the player does,
> in fact, have no choice at all. Perhaps I'm missing the point, but
> nothing you said in the paragraph above seems to be related to that?
>  
It reads as irrelevant because I'm not interested in focusing on your 
very specific choice for who controls the authorial voice.  It's one 
thing to make rules about choice points that have some objective 
validity in all cases.  It's another to say that we should make them for 
this or that reason of subjective merit.  Actually, even my "High 
Concept" point tends towards the subjective.  Whereas, "the player needs 
to know what's going on" (Perception) is objective.

> > Whereas "make sure the player knows what's going on" (Perceivability)
> > and "make sure it's interesting enough to bother to write" (High
> > Concept) are good guiding principles.
> >    
>
> For you :-)
>  
The first is good for anyone.

> > > Most people seem to feel that the main character shouldn't have a
> > > character other than what the player gives them;
> > >      
> > Most people are self-centered morons with no writing skills. 
> >    
>
> I was talking about most people in this community (for example, in
> recent discussions on this list, or Chris in his book). I don't think
> that there's anything wrong with that style of interactive
> storytelling, either. It's just different from what I'm aiming for.
>
>  
I don't agree that most people on this list hold to the "You are You" 
philosophy of character development.

> > Obeying
> > the above principle to the limit, you give the kiddies a pot, a spoon,
> > and a cardboard box to bang upon. 
> >    
>
> The principle that the main character shouldn't have a character other
> than what the player gives them? What's the relationship to pots,
> spoons, and boxes?
>  
That it doesn't matter much what you give them.  They'll play with it 
and call it "their story."


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

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