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Interactive Storytelling
First, this is a book that everybody who wants to make compelling games should read. That said, however, it isn't really a book you would read for fun -- it's more of a textbook. The first half of the text is a necessarily rather dry presentation of concepts: for example, nine pages on 'Narrative Devices.' Glassner uses copious examples from movies that you've probably seen and games that you've probably played, and the text is certainly an easy read and well written, but it's still a very step-by-step presentation. You can't hide the fact that you're supposed to be learning something here. The second half of the book does open up a bit as he goes beyond just priming you on story and game theory.
He starts out by assuming you know almost nothing about storytelling. You might think that this is too obvious, but if you've played enough storytelling abominations like 'Sudeki,' you will know that game creators usually don't make very compelling storywriters. So the first quarter of the book is a crash course on the fundamentals of writing stories -- characters, plot, and techniques. The second, slightly shorter, part of the book examines the mechanisms of games in general. Not video games in specific, but all types of games. The five types of games, scoring rules, structure, and theory.
We're now ready to actually tackle merging stories and games, and at this point our cunning vision falls apart. Glassner's strongly held opinion, which he argues quite coherently, is that a great story is the product of one (or a few) expert storytellers presenting a strong, consistent vision to you, the consumer. The fabled holy grail of gaming is letting the player do whatever they want -- full interactivity. And this is to a point fundamentally incompatible with telling a great story. Conflict drives most stories -- what if the player quite reasonably minimizes conflict? But there's a lot to be learned from where they do contradict each other, and some common ground to be found. In my favorite chapter in the book, 'Common Pitfalls,' he uses specific video games that blatantly demonstrate how to not apply even the simplest rules of good storytelling and user immersion.
Many of the fundamental insights in this part are 'obvious,' yet demonstrably unobvious to most video game designers. For example, that people gravitate toward the entertainment that has the highest fun-to-work ratio. Television is hugely popular since the fun is high to very low, but the work is near zero. They will do more work if it offers a lot more fun. Which means you shouldn't force your players to do stupid, boring, unnecessary work like running through a dozen screens again and again to get between important locations. "A game should offer the fastest and easiest possible way to do everything unless there is some entertaining or informative reason to prevent it." Preach on!
The last part of the book finally deals with the 'interactive storytelling,' slowly building up ever more ambitious plans till we're in the realm of the purely experimental. Several reasonably fleshed out examples are given, and some of them seem quite plausible even with today's technology. The balance between future technology (holograms and AI) and the reality of today is considered. Glassner is quite a skeptic about AI and the holodeck from Star Trek, but explores how tricks such as emergent behavior and setting expectations low and then beating them can work for you. For instance, if your AI is driving an animal (rather than a human), the players will be much more forgiving. Or if you give the user attractive, static graphics up front, they will be projected onto the cruder in-game graphics. Because of the conflict between a great story and complete interactivity, he suggests 'participatory storytelling' is a better goal than fully interactive storytelling.
Particularly interesting is the discussion of 'living masks.' Most people don't like to act, because they know it takes skill and that bad acting is very painful. But what if you could be 'in' a character that would take what you were doing at home and then do it in character on stage, so everyone involved could act to the best of their abilities but still 'be' a good actor? You'd have some control over the gross reactions, but the details would be up to the software. Obviously, we're nowhere near that level of sophistication, but there's a lot of time left in the 21st century. It does mean that a large portion of the book deals with techniques that are right now totally impractical.
My biggest disappointment with this part of the book is that it implicitly seems to assume that all games in the future will be multiplayer, as they're the focus of all the examples. And at this point Glassner has pretty much transcended mere 'games' for his vision of the future of entertainment. But it's easy to see how they could be adapted to the single-player games which will hopefully still be available in 2099.
To summarize, I think anyone with a serious interest in telling stories via video games or interactive fiction should read Interactive Storytelling. It's well written and does a good job of teaching concepts that most people making currently making video games could use a lot of help with. Furthermore, Glassner's vision of the future of storytelling is fascinating, even if it doesn't play out that way. However, I would not recommend that you pick this book up as a casual read. If you're looking for that, you might be better off with Creating Emotion in Games by David Freeman or perhaps The Art of Interactive Design by Chris Crawford. Or, though it somewhat destroys the rigorous chain of thought, skip the first half of Interactive Storytelling, then go back and digest it piece-by-piece later.
You can purchase Interactive Storytelling from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Interactive storytelling in common man's terms is called Grandma.
Free XBox, PS2
"Books for Dummies"
Final Fantasy X immediately springs to mind. Any others?
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Obviously this guy has never played an rpg of any kind b4.
1) tell story
2) interact
Didn't we create these "interactive stories" in the early 80's?
Those Choose Your Own Adventure and Which Way books were pretty darned popular in my grade school library.
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.
I do greatly enjoy graphic novels that combine comic book-like panes and text into a novel length book. Harvey Pekar is my favorite practitioner of this art. For me, an interactive novel is one step beyond what I am comfortable reading. However, I am 46 and maybe those a bit younger will have an easier time trying something like this.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Further reading:
Hypertext 2.0
Writing Space
Eastgate Fiction
Temporality of Hypertext Fiction
Isnt this what Graphic Adventures are? One specifically I have in mind was Phantasmagoria 2. Sure it wasnt that great of a game, but it was a really great interactive movie.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I've always been interested in interactive storytelling. When I was a creative writing major over at San Francisco State University I was exploring such options, I purchased the excellent StorySpace software thinking that perhaps the web or a hypertext environment was the right way to go, only to be disappointed at the limitations. (The software is excellent for what it is capable of, even if it didn't fit the bill in my aspirations).
The conclusions that I drew are financially unreachable at this time. As well as the age-old problem that I think any interactive fiction will ever have: lack of interest. What I've always wanted to do is create locations much like Disneyland rides that tell a story interactively with a participant using computer projections and robotics, possibly with the interaction of psychedelic substances to help prime the "reader" for their experience.
Alas, I will probably never feel fufilled creatively as my ideas have no possibility for ever coming into fruition. (More on these ideas here).
It's a chicken/egg problem. Those of us who are but poor artists can't realize their dreams without heavy investment, and cannot get the heavy investment without an interested public to interact with. And an interest public cannot exist until the artistry is to be seen.
d. Taylor Singletary,
reality technician techra.el
A friend once started an online write your own chapter kind of thing. It started out really funny until someone typed goatse links near the end.
All you have to do to learn this art is play every game that Warren Spector has ever touched. The man is the gaming world's Ridley Scott (I almost said Spielberg but that's more Will Wright).
I question the premise. Although games and stories are both entertainment, that does not imply that they can be successfully merged. On the one hand, what makes a story great is the ability to hear how someone else handled a problem or situation -- learning from another person's life and NOT controlling the story line. Call it lazy, but a passive vicarious experience can be pleasurable.
On the other hand, what makes games great is the ability to take control and run your own life in the game. You get to be someone you are not or try a persona or just compete for the thrill of it. Games are pleasurable for a diametrically different reason than stories. We like stories because they let us be passive and we like games because they let us be active.
I like green olives and I like chocolate and they are both food, but that does not mean they should be merged.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
One of the things we DON'T hear in all the writings about "how to get great stories/writing" into games is a good analysis of "what percentage of games should be story-related and what percentage should be otherwise, and why?" Games like tetris, solitaire, minesweeper, chess, pinball, card games, etc. are certainly quite popular with little or no story elements, and deservedly so. More story-oriented games like Secret of Monkey Island or the Final Fantasy series have their place too - but it seems clear to me that they'll always account for a minority of the overall game market. Discussions or studies of "what should we do within that portion of the market" are fine with me, but overly broad talk of "what should games do" that imply ALL games should be striving for more story and more writing bother me a bit. Games can validly focus just on action, like robotron, asteroids, or quake 3, they can validly focus just on strategy, luck, trivia questions, relaxation, or socializing. (In studies by GameTrust, when asked "what's your main reason for playing this game", 40% answered "to win", 43% answered "to relax", and 17% answered "to socialize".) What to do with storytelling and writing in an interactive setting is an interesting and useful question for the game industry to keep exploring. But it is less central to the question of how to make games than issues like "What role do different kinds of game mechanics play in the social and heirarchical interactions between human beings, and how could they do it better?" Or "What kind of single player games can best develop inductive reasoning skills?" The Super Mario games were huge hits in large part because they develop a young person's inductive reasoning "mental muscles" in a very satisfying and very rapid way. But discussion of these other types of questions is, I feel, sadly lacking in the game industry. -- Dr. Cat
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
Anyone intereseted in writing interactive fiction or non-fiction might be interested in "Writing For Interactive Media" by Jon Samsel and Darryl Wimberely. Here's a link.
It goes over the various techniques by which one can develop interactive media, and what one should think about when doing so (design techniques, multiple plots, characters, interactive screenwriting, and other issues). I think it provides a good foundation with which to approach most forms of interactive writing.
--Erik
It's very interesting that this is now another book on interactive storytelling. I tough nut to crack, but it will happen. We've got a site up, the story is just unfolding, some online and the rest, developed in group sessions, as it is a musical, and we are just now setting up the blog, needed, to fuel it along it's way. The future of it all, it's out there... somewhere.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
[click click.. damn intros].. slow fade in of a new world.
.. [click]
.. [click]
.. [click]
.. [click]
.. [click]
.. [click]
In the.. [click]
new cut away of astonished faces.. [click]
And.. [Click] "But I n.. [click]
Bashing heads!!! dodge spin duck, combo attack.. crap!!!! wheres that save-portal!! dammit!
[click click.. damn intros].. slow fade in of a new world.
In the.. [click]
new cut away of astonished faces.. [click]
And.. [Click] "But I n.. [click]
Even worse, intros you HAVE to watch EVERY DAMN TIME, no click thru.
meh
www.geocities.com/James_Sager2
I describe that once AI is established, it can play RPG games with you. Basically make a choose your own adventure.
And when AI is first born, it will take books and make it into a 3d semi-interactive movie.
God spoke with me:
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
That's why they call it play. Remember playing cowboys and indians, or hide-and seek? How about adult paintball?
Play is inherently with other people.
"Playing" against the machine (solitaire, chess, solo FPS, whatever) is just a diversion, it's not really "fun" if it isn't shared.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The storyteller is the game master (or whatever he's called in the game), the listeners are the players and they interact with the story.
;o)
This way everyone has his word in the story: the players learn a story (a good one let's hope) and the master must bend his "original" story around the players actions/reactions/decisions.
I have been playing RPG for 23 years and it's still a fascinating storytelling experience!
Just my 2 euro cents
It involves 20 sided die, mountain dew, cheetos, and a bag of holding.
--
"pain is weakness leaving the body."This looks like a very interesting title, I wonder if it's any good for pen and paper RPGs. I always thought that the most interesting adventures are those with good plots and villains, rather than simple dungeon crawls.
so basically what Neil Stephenson wrote about in The Diamond Age
Best FPS gaming site on the net... ok, well maybe not the best
is that until they figure out a way to make games capable of being played out in our own brains, they will never have the quality of a good book.
;)
What makes a book special, beyond character development, sympathetic characters, great story line, plot, drama, and all the rest, is the fact that we live the book in our own minds.
If I watch the movie Timeline based on Crichton's novel, I am seeing that Fast and Furious guy adn some other people on a ride through time. Its a fun movie, I suppose, not the best, but not the worst, but its still vicarious. I am experiencing it through their lives.
When I READ Timeine, I actually got to LIVE the adventure. Since it was all in my own mind, the scenery, people, etc were all up to my own imagination. The lead character looked, in my mind, or at least personified my ideal self in that story.
Reading is a hell of a lot more mentally engaging than watchign a movie or playing a video game. So far the closest anyone has come to a game being close to the book experience is the FPS. The FPS puts YOU in the game. You arent just playing some character, directing his/her/it's life. The character you play in a FPS, esp in somehing like a MMORPG, is an extension of YOU.
When I played Resident Evil, I controlled a character. When I play Battlefield Vietnam, I AM in Vietnam fighting it out.
THAT is the difference between a book experience and a game/movie experience.
Of course, I am just holding out for the chance to jack in to interactive pr0n
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Wasn't this kind of "interactive story telling" very popular in the 70s and 80s, but known as D&D (Dungeons and Dragons)?
Additionally, in the late 90s or so, LARP (Live Ation Role Playing) had a surge in popularity, where instead of rolling dice to see if you whack the Orc, your friend Bob is the Orc, you both have boffer (foam) swords, and you just swing--if you hit, you hit!
Sheesh... after bell bottoms, it seems everything from that time period is coming back around full circle.
--
WWJD? JWRTFM!
"it seems like there would be a lot of money to be made from a successful merger of what makes books and movies compelling with what makes video games compelling,"
:P
(Dunno how to quote it correclty...)
Anyway in my senior year in highschool CIV2 was a new game. I played that game for the whole year every class except during tests for my World History class.
Because it had a Historical story telling element to the game play
So it's been done before and CIV is still around.
It's back. See Escape from Fire Island. "If you ask the lifeguard to bring you to the sheriff's office, turn to page 108. If you ask the lifeguard to warn everyone at the night club, turn to page 32. If you ask the lifeguard if he'd like to work out sometime, turn to page 140."
One of my favorite games is (was) Ico. It told a great story and was tons of fun to play. Getting an entire movie audience interacting with the movie in a sort of story video game would be impressive. That's what I want to see.
... how did this article get posted without a single link in the preview for us to slashdot?
And
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
What makes books compelling is immediately removed when you try to mix them with video games. The automatic use of imagination to convert the words on a paper into an active memory in your head is what books are all about. Any attempt at mixing this with a video medium removes the majority of what makes a book a book.
But when it asserted that all interactive fiction was operated by verb/direct-objects controls, I had to put it down. There are other metaphors for controlling a branching narrative. Midnight Stranger let you control the main character's emotions, allowing him or her to react based on the player choice of emotion. Another game to break the verb/target type of adventure game is The Witch's yarn. Instead of controlling the character, the player controls the environment.
this, this, this, this, this, this, or many others.
Now that players expect, and developers can deliver, a big, free-play world, plot-oriented games are in decline. Those stupid canned cinematics are disappearing.
Progress is now made by figuring out how to make free-play worlds more interesting, not by locking the user down to a plot track.
Let's not forget the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, and the Infocom interactive fiction software (Planetfall, Zork, Leather Goddesses of Phobos). Heck, back in the long ago, a troupe of actors came to my school and performed Treasure Island. At various points in the play, they asked the audience what they would like the characters to do. They then took the story in that direction.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Why didn't Glassner publish this content as a videogame?
--
make install -not war
Yeah, I had this great machine back in the 80's that provided interactive storytelling.
It's name was Teddy Ruxpin.
The medium of Books is a non-interactive one - it is a story that you perceive in your mind.
The medium of the movie is also a non-interactive one - it is one type of perception of a books story visualized on a broader scale, through moving pictures.
Video Games are an interactive way of getting from page 1 to the final page, but at your own pace. You can skip from page 1 to page 20 if you like, or try to find what makes every single page unique, special or just fun to explore.
The difference is pacing and listening to a story rather than pretending that you are a character in a story - i.e., video games.
I'm not sure why you'd want to make books or movies more compelling than what they already are; We already have virtual cinematography where we can make actors do as we please without costly stunts, or we could make a western without really firing a pistol - just render it on the computer.
In conclusion: Don't make movies or books more compelling by using video games as a model. Rather, just make better movies and write better books if you want a better audience.
PS
I guess the author forgot about live theater, music and paintings.
ilovebees and other ARGs come to mind. Maybe not the type of interactive storytelling meant in the article but they are are certainly relevant. Any story that has me and my friends driving around town finding payphones at designated GPS coordinates just to unlock more pieces of the plot is definately interactive. This is not to mention the puzzles, and the latest development, actually interacting with characters via phone conversations.
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
For example, Kingdom of Loathing seems to do very well with a good story and rather poor graphics. On the other hand there are games where you sit there in awe of the visuals and can pretty much forget about why you're there.
Just my .02 worth
Interactive storytelling reach its zenith in the mid 1990s with the graphic adventure games from Sierra(Kings Quest, Space Quest) and LucasArts (Monkey Island). It's been on the decline ever since, but RPGs like FFX have been focusing more on story and less on stat building (contrast FFI, Dragon Warrior, etc). If you like the story telling more than the stat building, you owe it to yourself to check out some of the games I've mentioned.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I think this idea of the role of narration is clearly related to what you've just said.
Most novels and short stories are written from the literary perspective of a third person omniscient narrator and this is part of their charm.
I think the seduction of interactive fiction partly stems from this desire to transcend the role of the reader and ascend to the role of the omniscient narrator --to become god-like.
But this is a lot like the story in Fantasia. You may dream of incredible powers, but when you really try them on you may easily find they give you more choices than you're comfortable with.
They are, at their extremes, mutually exclusive, but in the middle, they are not. It is possible to add more story and more interactivity to a game, and neither will impinge on the other -- for a while. But there is a certain threshhold one passes where, if more story is to be told, then one must constrain the player's freedom of choice. Conversely, if one gives the player ever greater scope for interactivity, story will become more marginalized. Taken to extremes, they are completely exclusive of one another: complete freedom means no real narrative, and complete story can only be received passively.
A blend of some story with a player's interactivity can enhance the interaction by providing greater context, but the storyteller must realize that they relinquish a good amount of narrative control over the outcome.
Isnt that what RPGs are these days? Storytelling gone one step further? You start off in one situation, and can basically tell the tale (within certain constraints) of our young hero: of how he slays the dragon and marries the princess. Or, if your not feeling so goody goody, slay the princess and enslave the dragon. Im sure there are hundreds of good examples, but planescape torment nicely managed to merge an exceptional tale with the computer medium, imho.
Yes - of course I never had any REAL fun reading a book, watching a movie, solo climibing a mountain, doing archery in the back woods, doing lego as a small kid (sadly no more), torturing my linux boxes, reading slashdot, learning to juggle, doing martial arts training, tracking animals, etc. etc.
You have a pretty limited life if you can't find fun when alone...
Cause if there are I want to doooo them!
But in terms beyond that, it will either be the game industry's beeyotch, or the fertile ground for some pointless PhD project. What this kind of thing does is it transgresses basic performance issues of human to media rituals. there's nothing wrong with that in this pomo a-go-go world, but in terms of How People Actually Operate, the bardic tradition (which is largely cross cultural) is a long and revered activity in human activity, and this requires a StoryTELLER and a an Audience, who is swept into a world of imagination by the eloquence and power of the storyteller.
Interactivity is pointless in that case, and will remain so.
Long ago, we sat before gently flickering lights and told each other stories. Now we sit in front of a rapidly flickering light and expect the light to tell us a story. It's still the flickering light and the story told that matters...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If you're referring to D&D, I thought they got secured a patent or copyright covering turn-based games. Hopefully, though, they didn't. Actually, RPG/FPS probably trumped that-- unless they're paying royalties we haven't been told of.
Imagine a tablet-based, MySQL-arbitrated RPG game that has a huge scenario engine, a character attributes engine, and the other stuff you need. You pick from canned scripts for a book, then create a complementary or supra-set or super-set framework. AI and a number of other rules would deal with the single or multi-player aspects.
The NEAT trick would be to have the character demographics engine look at the world and then on-the fly, maybe by random numbers, generate stories page after page, compatible with the previous chapters. For a twist, the reader could pause the story, insert real-world URLs that have AI cross-connects, then recompile the story based on what the RWNAICC download says. Imagine if the XML or RSS feeds could carry meta or other information to be compatible with interactive, ad-hoc story pads. You turn a page and a neat-looking, believable character or set of them appears on a page. It could be foldable so that the read text stays on the left (if the reader base is L-R/T-B) and the images on the right.
I don't know if anyone has filed for a patent on this, but it's something I've been thinking about. Hopefully this is not patentable such that some asshole of a company tries to preclude me or others from doing it when the MySQL database supports forms and graphics. It, to me, should be a "let the best product compete or win ON ITS MERITS", not based on how deep are the pockets of the studio or its lobbyists.
As I see it, to my benefit and that of others, this is just a new form of book printing, except paper could be swapped out for an LCD or film sheet, and each book is, as with e-books, downloadable, storable, and in my case, fairly sharable.
Come to think of it, if XML and RSS and other protocols or tools are used, the news studios could save a bundle on news anchors -- provided the viewers go for it and advertising revenues don't drop after the anchor lobby or unions go flying off the handle...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
This book sounds alot like what the infamous Chris Crawford has been preaching for the last 8-10 years. I see alot of good things in this outlook: basically that interactivity should be the primary tenet of good game design. However, I don't really agree that the storytelling/"live your own movie" pragma is the best approach to garnering true interactivity. Its certainly a good platform for creating an interactive environment, but if interactivity and is the key, it must be the basis on which the design is built, not the stage on which it is played. Understanding drama concepts is crucial to creating believable and coherent storylines, but without believable actors, it pretty much falls apart.
My ideal game would have an interesting, richly-simulated world, so that basically you can do almost anything. On that point I agree with you---it's really irritating when you can basically follow one track, and if you do manage to get off it, the game sucks because the designers never implemented anything they didn't expect you to do.
I do think story has a place in games though. It would be nice if you could do anything, but things sort of developed: the game reacted to what you did. This is how traditional "live-action" RPGs work, with a gamemaster making up the plot as things progress to react to what the players do. Of course, a computer is not sentient, but there's people working on the issue of how to make games reactive so that there is plot but plot that doesn't shoehorn the user into following a strictly scripted storyline.
Of course, I may be biased, as one of the projects I'm working on is a baby step in that direction. =]
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A lot of the best games now tend to try to accomplish both. Grand Theft Auto 3 is obviously going to be the immortal example of this.
Spiderman 2 for the consoles is a pretty amazing example of pulling it off while in a movie license because it manages a significant amount of freeform exploration story-less play, follows the storyline of the movie well enough, but also intertwines unexpected comic book stuff as filler to flush out an otherwise short and overly predictable story element.
Some games can thrive off of an almost totally linear story by having the means by which you travel through the story very nonlinear, such as in the case of most RPGs. While you usually can't stray far from the main linear plot, or there might be one or two major branches, the means by which you get through the combat is wildly diverse.
I don't think plot oriented games are in any kind of decline whatsoever, if anything more emphasis then ever is on having good plots that people can actually get into. Good voice acting is making or breaking games more then ever as the standards for story telling are going up dramatically.
Even classic staples in nonlinear progression are integrating storylines, Tony Hawk Pro Skater's progression to Tony Hawk Underground is probably the biggest selling example of this.
(posting Anon so as not to be a karma whore)
Ed: You see a well-groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill you see a gazebo.
Eric: A gazebo? What color is it?
Ed: (Pause) It's white, Eric.
Eric: How far away is it?
Ed: About 50 yards.
Eric: How big is it?
Ed: (Pause) It's about 30 ft. across, 15 ft. high with a pointed top.
Eric: I use my sword to detect good on it.
Ed: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo.
Eric: (Pause) I call out to it.
Ed: It won't answer. It's a gazebo.
Eric: (Pause.) I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any way?
Ed: No, Eric, it's a gazebo!
Eric: I shoot it with my bow {rolls to hit}. What happened?
Ed: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
Eric: (Pause.) Was it wounded?
Ed: Of course not, Eric! It's a GAZEBO!!
Eric: (Whimper.) But that was a +3 arrow.
Ed: It's a gazebo, Eric, a GAZEBO! If you really want to try to destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would try. It's a @#$%!!* gazebo!
Eric: (Long pause. He has no axe or fire spells.) I run away.
Ed: (Thoroughly frustrated.) It's too late. You've awakened the gazebo. It catches and eats you.
Eric: (Reaching for his dice.) Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so I can avenge my paladin.
It sounds like you should try reading a book once in a while, it might help you with your grammar.
Gah, should've used preview, of course. How about this link: fixed link.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That was back in the day when people were also taught how to construct coherent sentences.
Interactive Storytelling is just another word for role-playing folks. You know that evil stuff (D&D) that all the adults thought would turn children into devil worshippers, mass murderers, and the lowest of the low in society. Well it is 20+ years later and they now have a kindler gentler name for it.
Check out Eric, The Power-Mad DM a text adventure about playing home-rules D&D back in 1981 with that know-it-all kid with all the Gygax books but no actual knowledge of the game. It's got a combat engine and an unreliable narrator.
It's based on ">N You Can't Go That Way"
...people used read a lot of things...
Well, obviously!
Isn't this post a dupe? I thought the presidential debate was yesterday.
-jc
The movie business is not really that big: it's only as big as the pr0n business.
(I'm not kidding, check the sales of all the regular movies and that of pr0n movies / rentals and they are about the same.)
Glassner's strongly held opinion, which he argues quite coherently, is that a great story is the product of one (or a few) expert storytellers presenting a strong, consistent vision to you, the consumer. The fabled holy grail of gaming is letting the player do whatever they want -- full interactivity. And this is to a point fundamentally incompatible with telling a great story.
A decent LARP can demonstrate the folly of this statement. IL LARPers are a notoriously creative group of players. Games that allow the players to push the boundaries of the writers' story ideas and plots can turn into amazing events. Conjunction (at Intercon 11.5) and Tabula Rasa II are prime examples of games that just blew everybody away when they were done, including the authors.
I would love to get Mr. Glassner to an Intercon just to see what kinds of experiences are already out there. Interactive storytelling could learn a lot of lessons from the art of LARP writing.
For those who want to learn the secrets, there are occasionally Build Your Own Game seminars at Intercons and elsewhere. LARP authors get together to teach others how to write a good LARP by doing so collaboratively in 24 hours. (Intercon MidAtlantic is the next example I know of.) These games are not necessarily trivial, either. There have been some pretty amazing games as a result.
The Vortex of Chaos
My business is currently involved in this now, except we are mixing it up a bit by working w/ authors and turning their novels into online games...
MultiUser RolePlay Entertainment (MURPE) is a total game development and publishing enterprise that was designed to be the next stage in a real-time, immersive game evolution. Working with multi-genre authors and their publishing vendors, we intend to turn these novels into living works of art, but applying a totally dynamic story-like atmosphere through online gaming.
Website: http://www.murpe.com/
-- Michael
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Not to push the Neal Stephenson thing again on the heels of the recent link between WorldWind and the Earth program in "Snow Crash", but I believe he had some great ideas with respect to the future of storytelling in "The Diamond Age"... Anyone?
Schizm: Mysterious Journey and Syberia along with the entire Zork series.
(C) 1973 Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson.
I don't necessarily have to play with other people, and I'm sure everyone here is the same way. Sometimes I have plenty of fun when I play with myself.
Wait, that didn't sound right...
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
text adventures?
Basketball is big business. Baseball is big business. I hear that people used watch a lot of things called comedies: it seems like there would be a lot of money to be made from a successful merger of what makes basketball and baseball compelling with what makes comedies compelling, though we've been trying that for decades with little success.
Flout 'em and scout 'em,
and scout 'em and flout 'em;
Thought is free. - Shakespeare [The Tempest]
But, would Ico be as good a game if you could just jump down into the waterworks, survive (the plot related jump later is longer, and not even into water) when you're there with Yorda, steal the sword early and thereby sidestep 50% or so of the "track ride" ?
No-one doubts that of the two huge award winners released on the PS2 in that period GTA3 has the better replay value (Ico can really only be played through once or twice, for maybe 8-10 hours if you stop to look at the scenery), and of course GTA3 was a bigger financial success, but ultimately the "reward" in GTA3 is hollow. You kill everyone that there is to be killed, steal everything that can be stolen, jump off everything that can be jumped, and there isn't (can't be really, due to the freeform nature of the game) any big payoff. Ico achieves the payoff because you are forced to bond with the Yorda AI, so that when the end finally comes, it means something to you as the player.
[If you haven't played Ico, consider Prince of Persia Sands of Time. Similar idea, except for the admittedly clever time-rewind gimick ]
I don't think these things can be combined effectively. Some steps have been taken (in engine cut scenes help achieve continuity) but even GTA3's very thin plot still falls apart towards the end if you behave in unexpected ways. If the player can do anything, and at any time you have to explain or ignore various conflicts. A failed bank job in Vice City can be retried over and over, not with a reload but by simply walking out of jail. Why aren't the cops waiting for your 5th attempt? How come your dead colleagues are revived?
Both genres have a future, but I think the big money is, perhaps rightly, with freeform games. Unfortunately they're also hellishly expensive to make, because everything has to be "really there" in case the player wanders over for a look. Expect smaller outfits with less money to concentrate on stronger plots, better characterisation while the big companies do huge sprawling action fests... just like in the movie industry really.
I remember the Final Fantasy series used to be more interactive and involved more gameplay, but it seems that many game companies doing 3d rpg games at this point have made a shift in the direction of "interactive movies" I know the article is about interactive story telling, but the youth today are for some reason not interested in anything unless it is spoon fed to them. I know this from personal experience, my younger brothers and sister operate along this paradigm. When asked why they don't read something instead of watch TV or video games, their response (as well as their friends) usually reply because its boring. Kids are growing up with no imagination these days and hence we have flourashing markets which deaden their senses in an unprecedented way. How about the next wave of ideas? Interactive life(tm)? It will be this awesome concept where you do stuff in the real world like reading and making things with your hands, maybe as you get older you can encounter some "adult" activities and "interact" with it. Note to people developing dumb concepts: STOP. (J/K about the (tm), it'll be OS!)
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Remember the old "Colossal cave adventure"? Text games, also known as *HINT* Interactive Fiction (hello...) which then led to Roleplaying games.
:P ) Still, it was a wonderful game. Why? It allowed me to become part of the story.
People want to get involved in a story and BECOME PART of it. That's the real success of games. I remember playing more and more of FF6 just to see Celes kiss Locke... or Terra find her first love. (But they didn't, bummer
That's the secret. But people have become more focused on special effects, adding "realism" that they forget what realism is about: Getting you inside the story.
If by repetition (travel thru here, fight N monsters until you've advanced 100 levels or else you won't be able to defeat the wyrm or whatever), unrealistic lipsync, or an extremely difficult gameplay, the game reminds you that it's a game... it loses its magic.
As simple as that.
No.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
The reason why graphical environments (such as TV video games, movies, etc) do this well is the easiness of absorbing them. Brain does not need to do a lot of processing because it is already thinking visually and graphical environments provide visual information.
On the other hand text based environments or rather non graphical environments, force the brain to come up on its own with visual representations for the story or concepts it is trying to understand. There in lies the reason why watching TV/movies is not as effective as consuming the same information through different media or means. Basically if bombarded constantly with easy to process visual information the brain will dull out and will have a lot harder time being imaginative or creative when there is a need.
But there is also another aspect - interactive part. Telling your child stories and let him 'choose the way' is the most primitive way of interactive story telling and most beneficial for the child. Things being interactive make things more fun and are appealing to us since we get to control and have input.
In the world of computers a different way to have an interactive story would be a MUD type of environment. This world would be predetermined but if done well could still be fun and very beneficial for the brain. I think that MUDs are at this moment underestimated for their value.
Even though the computers have now enough processing power to create visual environments does not mean our brains have no need to do this processing anymore. I think our creativeness and our very ability to think well could be at stake.
I play Iclod.
Just checked: it is still available, and very reasonably, but I am not meaning to advertise for their sake, it's just a good game worth having, and a good alternative to charades or the TV.
Everything I need to know about gaming I learned from Pac Man.
Actually, if you get into game making on some of the more primitive platforms out there, like SSI's Unlimited Adventures, or Inform, you'll see that the basic formula of just about all games, and most fiction is what I've distilled down to "Goal + Obstacle." You want something, but something prevents you from getting it.
Whether that something is all the pellets, and the obstacle is some floating ghosts, or that something is to destroy the ring of power and the obstacles are anything Sauron throws in your way, including orcs, Saruman, and The Mines of Moria, and even the weather, the basic idea is the same.
Also, the more you can obfuscate the simplistic nature of the formula, the better. Getting back to Tolkien, he did it by reversing the traditional goal - instead of getting something, you're destroying it. Even your most basic Three's Company plot had these basic elements, and the longer you can keep the goal away from the player/main character, the more satisfying it is once you finally get it.
I think any discussion of plot beyond this, unless it's an expansion of Goal + Obstacle, is overkill, or it shows that the author doesn't really understand what plotting is all about.
We'll call it ROLEPLAYING!
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
please have a dekko at my ideas on this at www.swimtwobirds.org/eBooks.html http://swimtwobirds.org/eBooks.html