[MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

[Brandon J. Rickman]

On Wed, 3 May 2000 rob at cs.nwu.edu wrote (personal message):
> > - Demos of new work being done at Zoesis (www.zoesis.com), which was
> > founded by Joseph Bates.
> 
> the oz project was definitely very cool. i'm curious in what directions
> zoesis will take that work. unfortunately, their web page won't say...

[sending to the list because it might be of general interest]
I would describe Zoesis as a high-fidelity project.  Really nice graphics,
an emotionally compelling soundtrack, a very serious cartoon.  Still, in
the end this and other projects (Improv) are driven by computer agents
with fixed behavior sets.  And in my opinion a behavior is too large of a
grain.
 
> > - A very strange performance of something called Dr. K---, which had
> > something to do with simulation versus fabrication.
> 
> looks cool. i found the paper at the site above - would you happen to have
> any other ones (or online demos) available?

Alas no.  The whole thing is in java now (used to use a Cold server, but I
lost the db) so I could and should put a demo version up some day.
 
> > In general this "narrative intelligence" research doesn't deal well with
> > multiple participants, which is clearly a critical issue for a mud.  And
> > personally I'm not too crazy about the agent-based approach.
> 
> i agree. they're coming from a different tradition, though - they seem to
> want something more along 'interactive books', fundamentally solitary
> (rather than 'literary games'), and agent-based approach was the first step
> towards it. but it's becoming clear that some sort of higher-level ai, not
> just on agent level, will be necessary to make the stories actually
> interesting.

One of the major concerns of AI researchers is that, if and when they are
able to create AI, they want to understand _how it works_.  The narrative
intelligence community is maybe less than half AI reseachers, but they
pull their goals from the AI folks.  And they really are interested in
stories, but they have a hard time putting interactivity into the process.  
Interactivity breaks simulation.

- B!




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