[MUD-Dev] Self-Sufficient Worlds

[Zak Jarvis]

> From: Lee Sheldon [linearno at gte.net]
> Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 7:35 AM

>> From: Zak Jarvis [zak at voidmonster.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 2:29 PM

>> with it in what we'd consider a modern state. We build
>> narrative. Creating narrative is a basic function of our
>> brains. If interactive storytelling were an oxymoron,
>> autobiographies wouldn't exist.

> Creating narrative may be a basic function of everyon'e brain.
> Creating entertaining narrative is not.  If everybody were able to
> contribute to our culture with the significant impact to justify an
> autobiograpy, I think there would be far more of them published.

That's a moot point. The very entertaining lives which created highly
readable autobiographies were quite interactive. I never claimed that
everyone's life was interesting enough for the treatment, only that if some
autobiographies are interesting then narrative must have an ability to be
interactive. Were their lives less interactive because they were more
interesting?

> And finally most autobiographies are actually "told" to real
> writers anyway, so I'm afraid I don't buy the example.

Quality storytelling has been going on for much longer than there have been
'real' writers. It wasn't invented by Sin-Leqi-Unninni when he carved
Gilgamesh, or any of the priests, scribes or accountants who'd done so
before him.

>> The key -- indeed the key to all game design -- is acceptable
>> abstraction. Unfortunately, what's acceptable is highly dependant
>> on individual taste.

> I'm not sure I can really question this last bit, since we're
> headed into the foggy reaches of semantics, but I would use a
> different word.  It is a  writer's word, not a game designer's
> word (when I'm designing, I use  abstraction all the time, when
> writing rarely).  But the two words indicate attempts to approach
> the same ideal I think.  You say "abstraction."  I say "illusion."
> And if you create the proper illusion (with abstraction as but
> one tool), you begin to imply there are mechanisms, however subtle,
> necessary to create story that will reach the audience.  And we
> are one step farther away from abdicating the story-based
> entertainment in our worlds to our players, and one step closer
> to guaranteeing it on our own.

To be fair you hadn't seen much of the idea I was attempting to describe
when you wrote this. My wife (who is also a writer) had a very similarly
hostile reaction to the idea when I first started pondering it. Without
understanding the scale I intended for the system, it can appear
tremendously hubristic and anti-writer.  It isn't.

What I'm saying is that when you have thousands of people in a game
simultaneously, it can become effectively impossible to create narratives
that matter to both the players and the world. So, what I've been trying to
design is a framework which will allow the little stories of players lives
in the game to plug into the real overarching story of the game, and for
that story to be influenced by the players. Influenced in meaningful and
dynamic ways.

In the product I'm working on now, one of my jobs will be writing the
stories the players interact with. That's not a job I want to lose, it's
one of the things I love doing. However, I want to be able to do it at
massive scales too, and it's just not possible to do the kinds of stories I
want to do without building these tools. Unfortunately, we've not gotten to
a stage in development where I get to really do what I'm there for, so
instead you lot get to put up with my ranting. ;)

-Zak Jarvis
 http://www.voidmonster.com





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