[MUD-Dev] fwd: Erasmatron Revs up Interactive Fiction

Tue Nov 25 21:57:02 CET 1997

This link was mailed to me and I thought it might be of interest to
the list.  I think it might be an interesting _model_ for an
interactive system, if you can get past the happy Wired hype.

---

http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/8721.html

Erasmatron Revs up Interactive Fiction
by Michael Stutz 

4:58am  24.Nov.97.PST
A new story engine - a software program that
creates works of fiction - has been developed for
authors of interactive fiction that takes plotting the
story out of the composition process and puts it
entirely in the control of the reader. 

Noted videogame designer Chris Crawford spent
the past six years analyzing the basic elements of
storytelling and turned it into his patented story
engine, the Erasmatron. What he believes this
invention will do to the world of interactive fiction
might be deduced from his naming of it - as well
as his company, Erasmatazz - after Dutch writer
Desiderius Erasmus, father of the Reformation. 

The Erasmatron is not intended for simulating
virtual worlds, but for creating fiction. "The laws of
dramatics are very different from the laws of the
real world," said Crawford. "In the real world,
people have to go to the bathroom. In the dramatic
world, that never happens." 

What makes the Erasmatron different from other
interactive-fiction engines is its handling of plot -
the author has no direct control of it. Instead, an
author uses the Erasmatron to create a
"storyworld," which Crawford explained as the
dynamics of the story, the set of freeze-dried rules
that are eventually used to reconstitute any
number of stories in direct interaction with a
reader. 

"It's only in the last ten years or so that it's even
become an idea in the realm of AI to try to do this,
to try to boil down story structures into something
that's computer-programmable," said Jorn Barger,
a software designer who has had preliminary
access to the engine. He believes its importance
is "the fact that it takes storytelling and boils it
down to a finite number of dimensions. Nobody
has really done that with any level of seriousness."

While all storytellers use abstract constructs -
such as protagonist, antagonist, and plot -
Crawford said that one has to carry the abstraction
further if you want to create a truly interactive
computer fiction. 

"Storytellers have one level of abstraction that has
served them well for several thousand years, so
they have refined and polished that level of
abstraction to near perfection," said Crawford. "But
interactivity requires us to move to another level of
abstraction, which is nowhere near as well
developed." 

An author can define abstractions as densely as
possible, which will form the basis of all stories in
that world. Personality is modeled with 21 traits -
Timidity, Dutifulness, Magnanimity, Gullibility,
Loyalty, Enviousness, Pride, Love, Hunger,
Insecurity, Integrity, Lovability, Dominance,
Competence, Loquacity, Initiative, Greed, Libido,
Sexiness, Nurturance, Temper, and Joviality.
There are also four moods - Anger, Arousal, Joy,
and Fear - and eight dimensions of relationship, as
well as other definable attributes. 

Using these factors, "actors" for the storyworld are
created. Two non-human actors, Fate and
Nobody, can also be defined. Then, stages are set
and populated with objects. Everything is brought
to life with perhaps the most fundamental aspect
of the engine - the creation of a large web of verbs,
different actions and their causes that are to be
part of the storyworld. Once all this has been
completed - and early trials have shown that this
can take a year of work - the author is ready to
turn the storyworld loose. 

The interactive story itself includes text as well as
high-resolution facial images of the actors in the
story, putting it somewhere between text-based
fiction and comic books. Visual cues denoting the
expressions of the actors are central to its
working. 

The facial algorithms generate expressions
utilizing such things as the shapes of the lips and
chin and skin color, said Barger. "What it does is
it has an algorithm that sets the eyebrow position
and the twist of the lips, and it just does an
incredible job of capturing a very wide range of
facial expressions," he said. "It's like an interactive
comic book, although all you see is the faces." 

And "interactive" is the key point, as far as
Crawford is concerned. 

"Interactivity is far more important than most
people realize," said Crawford. "It will do more for
artistic expression than printing did. It will work
profound changes in the way we think, allowing us
to see the universe in more operational terms.
We're at the nativity of a profound intellectual
revolution - what a privilege! A century from now,
they'll look back on us and laugh at our
misconceptions even as they mythologize our
achievements." 

Research scientist Dr. Ashwin Ram - whose
research has included AI and story understanding
- warned that while the Erasmatron may in fact be
good, such a work must first be published in the
AI community before it can attain credibility as a
valid piece of scientific research. "The reason I am
saying this is that, as you know, AI is a field that
has been riddled with hype since the 1970s, and it
is important to separate the wheat from the chaff,"
he said. 

"It is not a general-purpose storytelling machine.
It's geared toward character-based fiction," said
Dr. Phil Goetz, a computer scientist who has
written about interactive fiction. "If the Erasmatron
is a complete success, it will still leave interactive
fiction with a lot of unexplored territory." 

---------
- Brandon Rickman - ashes at zennet.com -
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