Re: toning down some

[thom@indiana.edu]

Quoting Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>:

>   WHAT USEFUL INFORMATION ARE YOU SHARING?

Mark, when I talk about Shakespeare, Picasso, etc I'm talking about ART in 
caps. the big stuff most of which was considered little stuff in its time.

The list is called iDrama. If you use the word drama you get Shakespeare et al 
because he is the bar. All I am saying is anyone doing anything which invokes 
art or drama has to aim for the bar. You can't go low.

When the NY Times article on Facade came out last week they immediately put the 
unreleased Facade with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe" which is Albee someone 
who has spent his life aiming and reaching the bar. 

"This is the future of video games. In their modern riff on "Who's Afraid of 
Virginia Woolf?" Walter was the only human. Grace and Trip were virtual 
characters powered by advanced artificial intelligence techniques, which 
allowed them to change their emotional state in fairly complicated ways in 
response to the conversational English being typed in by the human player. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/07/arts/07arti.html?

It wasn't by accident that Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern aimed at the bar. 
They aimed, they shoot and if they didn't hit it they came close enough for the 
obvious to be recognized.  All art begins with imitation. McLuhan said the 
content of every new medium is an old medium. They are just following history 
and it will lead them to the promised land. When Chris Crawford did the 
Erazzmatron he immediately got Laura Mixon, a published writer into the mix. 
When Laura isn't in the mix Chris constantly goes back to Morte d'Arthur. Same 
deal.

I originally objected when it was suggested that randomly generated art could 
be in the mix as eye candy. I objected because real ART has never worked this 
way. It is always intentional even when it has a computational probabilistic 
base - the gun is always on stage for a reason. Do I think interactive 
storytelling is possible? My answer is no because it has always existed in the 
game. Actually, at Chris Crawford's very first Phrontesterion (sp?) Ron Gilbert 
started the discussion off by saying that games are interactive storytelling 
and that dividing the discussion was wrong. He used Freddy Fish and Pajama Sam 
as examples. The entire discussion literally and figuratively divided. Chris 
likes to say that is was the old art/science split but I always thought it was 
that Ron Gilbert was right and Chris was wrong.  In my beginning classes I 
always begin with Pajama Sam, Rockett and Ludtke's 'Bad Days' as the best early 
examples of interactive sorytelling thru games, I consider these the equivalent 
of early film but in games. I think all of these have aimed high and hit their 
marks even if some of them weren't financially successful.

I'm just looking for the ART. I apologize for mentioning other names but 
unfortunately I have read, seen, played and listened to them and they continue 
to roll around my head.

-Thom