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A New Stab at Interactive Fiction

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the could-also-use-wrench-in-parlour dept.

pamar writes "Dr Dobbs Journal interviews Chris Crawford, the noted game designer, about a new direction for interactive fiction. In the interview, he talks of his new stab at Interactive Fiction, and mentions Storytron, his new company which he hopes will make interactive fiction easier to write, not only for games, but for complex social interactions in general."

6 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Pilot's seat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's the question though. Is fiction really ment to be interactive? Or is fiction the journey the author leads you on?

    1. Re:Pilot's seat? by Merovign · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Fiction is always interactive.

      No matter how precise and demanding an author is, the reader always brings understanding, misunderstanding, interpretation, and their own preconceptions to a work.

      There are several schools of literary interpretation, which argue and debate and grapple incessantly, and some of which are almost violently hostile to each other, but if you were to ask them WHETHER the written word is interpreted (rather than just received), they would pretty much all look at you like you had three heads.

  2. stimulus-response too limited. by headkase · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is still the problem of brittleness which this verb based approach WILL suffer from. Each verb represents a concept and unless you allow concepts to overlap (probably using fuzzy logic) you will end up with situations where the mapping of the user input does not match the preprogrammed verbs properly. Basically he's programming points on a line where the computer knows what to do instead of creating a smooth continuum where the computer can compute the probability of what you meant. Then as the number of verbs grow the complexity of the system increases exponentially so you need some sort of culling algorithm (maybe as simple as a list of synonyms) to reduce the choices to something that more closely fits the preprogrammed responses.
    People smarter than you and I have been working on open-ended AI for a long time and there's still no solution yet so I wouldn't get my hopes up too high for this program.

    --
    Shh.
  3. How is this different? by paintswithcolour · · Score: 4, Insightful
    How is this different from the Interactive Fiction programming languages that are already out there?

    The limitations of these languages have generally always been with the developer not in the chosen language, so I'm a little unclear how this will make inherently more immersive games. I'm not even sure it looks easier to use (this is a little unfair as I'm judging on screenshots), but the language 'Inform' has made leaps forward in this area with a natrual language system. Or designers can use 3rd party GUI tools to assist with construction in many of the IF languages. I'm skeptical of how this will compete with the games developed with other languages and made freely accessiable in the IF archive.

  4. Interaction is the Enemy of Narrative by dforsey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The basic problem with interactive fiction is the interactive part... :-)

    A player is extremely unlikely to make the choices and take the actions that lead to a compelling story.

    They won't make the mistakes that lead to King Lear or Hamlet to their tragic ends.

    They won't make the choices that take Luke Skywalker to defeating the death star (not if they have real choices that affect the storyline)

    A good story takes the reader through a series of psychological stages resulting from the characters making choices a player is unlikely to make. (they just look up the "right" answer on the net...)

    I would be more convinced if Crawford had a single example: mockup, text, an animated video - anything - that demonstrated how a working game would play in a (even a 15-minute) gaming session.

    I don't even want a working system at this point - show me a walkthrough so we can get an idea of what game play would be. (it would be nice it that doesn't require the strong AI problem to be solved first as well:-)

    1. Re:Interaction is the Enemy of Narrative by Chris+Crawford · · Score: 3, Insightful
      OK, here's a mockup screenshot of one turn in a game:

      http://www.storytron.com/overview/ov_storytron.htm l

      and here's a more detailed explanation of verb-based interaction:

      http://www.storytron.com/overview/storyworld/verb_ based_dramatic_interaction.html

      here's a very thorough discussion of the nature of the interface:

      http://storytron.com/smf/index.php?topic=21.0

      We don't have to solve any AI problem because this is not an AI problem; it's an artistic problem and is solved by each storybuilder as per their own artistic sensibilities as expressed in their scripts and verbs.