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A New Stab at Interactive Fiction
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."
Quite a creative venture, but who knows how it'll end.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Here's the question though. Is fiction really ment to be interactive? Or is fiction the journey the author leads you on?
I'm a little confused, what exactly is Interactive storytelling? The interview gives very little information, at least skimming it (perhaps it's buries somewhere, but I skimmed and didn't find it) and from what little I've seen it sounds just like an RPG. Am I missing some crucial step or is this guy just building GURPS on a computer?
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
.. will still be not allowing the player to think out of the box. You're still going to have a finite number of solutions to a problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_vandal ized_pages
tidokoro
what turns a man's karma neutral? lust for gold? power? or just a heart born full of neutrality?
if you would like to reply with a common internet phrase turn to page 206 if you think you should close the browser window turn to page 142
It's called The Movies.
If they can get around the old problem Zork had.. ie, if you did anything other than specifically required - it failed. "attack troll with sword" would get you killed - while "swing sword at troll" worked just fine. Still .. I wonder if I still have some of my Infocom toys around (glow in the dark heart from wishbringer, catalog from Enchanter series, Joo Janta Peril sensistive sunglasses.. I think the Infocom packaging was almost as fun as the games.
meh
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.
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.
So in what type of game is there an infinite number of solutions?
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This doesn't compete with Inform, TADS, or any of the narrative languages, at least in a meaningful way. As best I can tell, this approach doesn't even allow for a traditional guided narrative at all.
You have an initial setup (there's your bit of narrative). You have Stages, Verbs, Actors with Inclinations (personality), and Roles (which are sets of reactions).
You, the player, and the Actors can all perform Verbs. Performing a Verb on an Actor causes a reaction, defined by a Role assigned to the Actor. Actors semi-autonomously react, within their Roles, by performing Verbs on you and the other Actors. The Verbs they pick are constrained by the Role, and weighted by the Actor's Inclinations. Actors also choose to wander between Stages according to Inclinations, which increases or decreases the possibility that two actors meet. The important bit is that all of this is cyclic. If I do something to Actor A, Actor A may react by doing something to Actor B, who in turn reacts...etc. Or Actor B may just have -witnessed- what I did to Actor A, and then goes off and gossips to Actor C, who...etc.
So, basically, any story is emergent. You define Actors, Stages, Verbs, Inclinations, and Roles, so as to guide the Storyworld towards a particular type of theme, but from there, you (the architect) don't have very granular control. I suppose you could program an Actor as the MoverAndShaker, whose agenda (through some pretty absolute Inclinations and Roles) is basically to wander through the Storyworld and provoke people in the direction you want.
In any case, note that this type of storytelling can be very successful. Facade works much this way.
It's a really interesting setup. In its current form, I'm not sure how successful it be for game-authoring, if only because the game interface seems to be Actors' talking heads plus a diagrammed language. It's pretty obscure for any sort of casual player. But as a core technology and an authoring system, I think there are terrific possibilities for this. I'd be especially interested in a hybrid between this and traditional guided narrative.
Front-page news: yet another pretentious, masturbatory work-product from Chris Crawford, founder and charter member of the "Yeah, but what have you done since 1989?" school of game design.
Buried in Games section: news of the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition, where real games are available for downloading, playing, and scoring, with a $400 first prize at stake.
Assuming the 2006 Competition follows the usual pattern, many of these IF games will suck. Some will be OK. One or two will be extremely well-done. And one or two may, in the Infocom tradition, be the kind you remember for the rest of your life. What they will all have in common is that they're actual games, not just Crawfordian theoretical sequels to earlier theories.
Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!
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:-)
If the box is big enough, then you don't need to think outside it to have truly interesting experiences. Chris is building a bigger box...
Isn't an interactive story basically a 1 player RPG? I mean interactive fiction is basically an RPG but with more depth to the written narrative. Isn't it?
And the thing that keeps tabletop RPGs alive is the games master. or DM or whatever the particular set of rules call him or her. That's your storytron right there: a human mind that can generate new narrative on the fly in response to the 'reader's initiative.
Unless storytron is an AI that can take the best from human GMs, human authors and Game Engines, then it's nothing to write home about. Otherwise, the key to interactive fiction lies in using the existing techniques available ('foldback') in the best way. The same way a good game designer will make the player feel that he's using his initiative when really he's being subtly guided, or in giving the player short bursts of freedom while the overarching story is on rails.
1. First, there are always skeptics and naysayers who have disparaging things to say about the Storytron technology. Some of this is due to the fact that my often harsh criticisms of the games biz have antagonized many people. That's OK -- but I just want to advise other readers that some portion of the negative comments are a response to my comments about the games industry, not a response to the Storytron technology itself.
2. Second, I remind everybody that Storytron technology is exceedingly complex, largely because narrative is exceedingly complex. I have spent years trying to trim it down to the absolute minimum required to do the job, but that absolute minimum is still overwhelming to beginners.
3. I'm always surprised by the comments along the lines of "How does this differ from Technology X?" All I can say in answer to such questions is "read the documentation". Storytron technology is so utterly different from role-playing, MUDs, interactive fiction, and other technologies that it's difficult to know how to begin to answer such a question. It's rather like somebody asking you the difference between a spreadsheet and a word processor. Well, yes, they do both allow you to set fonts. They both allow you to create tables. They both allow you to print out documents. But they are so completely different in form and purpose that it's a waste of time trying to come up with a list of differences. The easiest way to differentiate Storytron from the other stuff is to cite its purpose: to provide genuine, honest-to-gum interactive storytelling. (See next point)
4. A common question (already offered here) is, "What is interactive storytelling, anyway?" If you attempt to answer this question by comparing it to other forms, you get confusion. Interactive storytelling cannot be described as "just like a game, only..." or "kinda like interactive fiction, except..." This approach always yields even more confusion. I haven't spent 14 years re-inventing the wheel -- this thing really is profoundly different from other stuff out there. The closest to it is Facade -- and Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas will be quick to point out the many, many differences between Storytron and Facade.
It's not a story, it's storytelling, and the difference between the two is profound -- and confusing. A story is noun or data; storytelling is verb or process. That's why there's not a plot in it; only stories can have plots. Storytelling does not intrinsically include plot. Think of it this way: the difference between story and storytelling is analogous to the difference between a cake and cooking. A cake can have texture, but cooking doesn't have texture. Texture is a consequence of cooking, but not a component of cooking. In the same way, plot is a consequence of storytelling, but not a component of storytelling.
So what is it? As we have built it, interactive storytelling puts the player in the role of protagonist in a dramatically rich environment, and then permits the player to interact with other actors in a dramatically rich fashion. The size of the verb vocabulary is what makes it so different; Storytron can provide thousands of verbs. No more just picking things up, using them, destroying them, and so forth. Most of the verbs provide interaction with PEOPLE, not THINGS. We already have about 80 verbs (few of which are fleshed out, though) and intend to have hundreds by the time we release the technology.
Anyway, if you want to learn more, go to the website.
He's been going on and on about how `things better change` in game design for years now, without actually coming up with anything new. If it's linear, then once it's done it's done - no suprises. If it's not, then it'll probably end up being aimless and unexciting. Got any solutions yet, Chris?
I wonder if you could use this technology to simulate and predict the responses of small groups in real-life.
Imagine an office-politics simulator. You create Actors for the influential people on your, above your, and immediately adjacent to your team. You probably have some observations about those persons' reactions to different situations and ideas, as well as existing personal dynamics, so translate those into Inclinations and Roles.
Obviously, you wouldn't be able to pitch a completely fleshed out idea or situation against it, but you could probably generalize. For example, for ideas and proposals, an idea could have properties as to whether it's highly technical or not, fully developed or still under review, who thought of it, who participated, stuff like that. Then you toss the idea into the group of Actors, let them Role it out, and see what the end responses are.
Being able to observe that sort of thing in play-by-play, over a series of tests, might actually reveal some interesting things and demystify the whole group influence/leadership process to an extent.
At the core this strikes me as a great idea: create actors and let them wander around interacting with the player and each other. Like a verbal "The Sims." There is a lot of potential here. How do you as the player know what the others are doing when you aren't watching? Can you have a character that sings to himself when alone but when anyone shows up he's quiet?
What bothered me is that it isn't done and they want people to "try it out." Not even the tutorials were finished, and even if they were, there isn't anything to play the game on. Crawford said "look at the board" but there aren't that many comments, spread out every few weeks or so.
It reminds me of another great Dr. Dobbs interactive fiction letdown I had. An article written by David Betz about his new "Drool" adventure writing language that looked fantastic. Oh, it wasn't done yet, but he's working on it. That was back in '93...
Computer games are a tiny subset of computer applications. What was his point again?
He's into something, though, with his ideas in general. I play games for about 30 years now and am still looking for that kind of game he's talking about.
The point he'll fail at is that there is no practical balance between the capabilities of his architecture and the usability for non-programmers. You can make something like this powerful or easy to use. But I'll sure as hell take a closer look at his stuff. Getting involved might prove interesting, even if it doesn't pan out in the end.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
He rambles on about how modern games are just copies of old games, and that everything being done in game design today is irrelevant. No one in the game industry respects him anymore. He's alienated himself from the entire industry by going a different direction and insulting those not on his path. I have no problem with him persuing interactive storytelling, but I have a big problem with him calling all games that aren't interactive stories worthless, or "irrelevant." He did a great thing by creating the GDC, but got kicked out when he started to redefine games as limited to "interactive stories."
I think it's called life... [not the boardgame]
Gravity Sucks
There's no need to solve the strong AI problem, because this is not the real world we're simulating. This is a story. It is populated not with people but with characters. Characters aren't supposed to act realistically, they are supposed to act dramatically. What would happen if we solved the strong AI problem for Captain Kirk and one of his crewmen was trapped on a hostile planet? Kirk would say "Screw him, I'm not going to risk the ship for one crewman." Very realistic. Very undramatic. In a real story, Kirk would say, "Even though the odds against saving him are hundreds to one, and even though attempting to save him will put the ship at a very high risk of disaster, I'm going to attempt to save him." And then, by the absolute, inexorable laws of dramatic physics, he'll pull it off. It HAS to be that way -- this is drama, not the real world!
I confess I didn't bother reading the entire article. There are just too many fatal problems:
Point-and-click programming has failed catastrophically every time it's been tried. My experience (e.g., iShell) taught me that it's too slow and cumbersome for programmers, and still useless for the non-programmers (defined as that vast majority who can't design program logic by any means, graphical or otherwise.) Inform 7 is a recent attempt by IF authors to help others, NOT by making programming unnecessary, but by attempting to impedance match the Author mindset. (I wish them luck, but recognize that most prospective users (the existing IF community) are competent programmers.)
Storytron's basic idea ("thinking, feeling virtual characters" ) is very similar to a system that died several years ago. I can't remember the name, but IIRC it used facial expressions on talking heads as a clue to computed emotional state; "embarrassingly bad" was one of the kinder descriptions I saw. I suspect it hasn't been forgotten by the rest of the IF community either.
Admittedly a lot of IF, with its "guess the magic phrase" problem, can be very frustrating. Their new interaction language, though, has "excruciating user experience" written all over it. If interaction actually requires reverse-diagramming a sentence by point and click (as the article seemed to suggest), I for one wouldn't bother to even try it.
The required commitment (both of time and intellect) for IF works for the small, passionate and closeknit IF community where no money changes hands; since the initial novelty wore off with Infocom, it hasn't ever worked as a commercial product. This is a fundamental disconnect that no imaginable development system or user UI even starts to address. I see zero hope for their business model.
Interactive fiction is NOT interactive storytelling. Also present in TFA, which apparently, as usual, noone bothers reading before posting headlines. :=) This is ./ as usual. For the difference, just ask anyone who's played both a computer RPG like any of the Elder Scrolls series or sat by a table late night, playing Vampire the Masquerade, Paranoia, Cyberpunk, Fallen, Kult or Call of Cthulhu. Those people will be able to tell you the difference.
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
So far I havn't seen anything in his interactive storytelling that would reassemble a AI game master or something similar that manages the overall happenings of the world and thus ensures that the happenings as a whole connect to a larger story, instead of just meaningless random stuff.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Yes, the Storytron technology presents only a first-level approximation of drama, and as such does not address many of the finer points. But for now, we don't need to address the finer points to produce entertaining and commercially successful works.
Yep, there's no demo. People have been screaming for a demo for years. And we nearly started working on a "dead demo" -- a fake representation of what would happen. We decided that our time would be better spent on building the real thing.
Moreover, I have been building this thing from the ground up to be viable as the foundation for an industry. This has required months and months of effort to build in capabilities that won't even show up for years. It's easy to slap together something that works once and can't be revised, but building something that many different people can mess with, that is extensible and malleable -- this takes a lot more work. That's why it has taken so much time to get the pieces together. But we already have a demo on our laptops -- it's not very good but it gets the basic idea across. Please see Cory Doctorow's observations on it a BoingBoing: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/15/storytron_int eractiv.html
We're now in the process of improving the demo. However, it will be some months before we can release a downloadable demo.
Lastly, a higher-level point: all that theoretical stuff may be difficult to digest, but ultimately it is the true basis of understanding. If you see a demo, you get just one glimpse of one manifestation of the possibilities. If you understand the theory, you can see all the possibilities. It takes a lot more effort to understand the theory, but it yields a correspondingly greater return.
Once upon a time...
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Yes, some of the ideas in Storytron were relatively new when they first came out ten years ago, but have since been anticipated. And some of the ideas are just re-invented wheels. I mention them to emphasize just how far we've gone to make this easier for storybuilders. Our latest wierd idea: bounded numbers. These are numbers that are constrained to fall between -1.00 and +1.00. (All it does is map the number line onto the line from -1.00 to +1.00.) We have all the basic operators for them in bounded form: bounded sum, bounded difference, bounded product, bounded quotient, and so forth. It's a really weird mathematical system but it has the nice property that the user never needs to worry about scaling factors.
But again, the whole point is to make it accessible to non-technical storytellers. We don't expect a lot of people to understand it at first, but once we get some demos out there, and people start to realize what the technology can do, I think we'll get a good mass of talent materializing.
And yes, there are serious applications of the technology as well, although we have shaped it with narrative as the primary application.
Cool. This won't be amazing news for, dare I say it, 'mainstream' gamers. But I on the other hand would pick Zork against World of Warcraft anyday.
Jeff K. is my homeboy.
Cool!