[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Bruce Mitchener]

Brandon,

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> My own storwriting experience leads me to believe that AI tools
> have no value whatsoever.  Writing stories is hard, it must be
> solved by human talent.  A *lot* of talent.
 
> Well, at least to write stories well.  You can write a lot of
> things that aren't stories, that are just boring mechanical
> gobbledygook, that a lot of silly people will still play with and
> call "entertainment."

You've cut my quotations from the works that I'd been referencing
and that explained that these people were not writing stories, but
producing tools to help human authors write stories for the newer
medium.

> Look, bottom line this.  Can any of these theory R&D guys actually
> write?  Have they ever produced anything remotely resembling a
> good story, let alone a good story with their research tools?
> Attempts at frameworks can be impressive, for instance I have
> respect for what Chris Crawford has attempted to do with the
> Erasmatron.  However, the bottom line is: no product.  Why are we
> listening to researchers who have not proven that they are also
> good writers?

If you'd read those papers, would you still be asking this?  Why not
read the works and then argue based upon the merits of the works,
rather than an abstract family of objections, and relate that back
to the idea of producting better games/muds?  The threads that I
reference below from the MUD-Dev archives may provide a good jumping
off point for what some of the people who are working in the
intersection of stories and gaming professionally are thinking about
the subject matter.

> I think these R&D guys avoid learning how to write because they'd
> rather keep going in a kind of discipline / mentality /
> engineering methodology that is more familiar and tractable to
> them.  I'd love to read the writing of a R&D guy that proves me
> wrong.

Given a larger scale game with a limited staff size (1% or less of
player base), how would you provide the players and the game with
enough content and stories?  This content and stories should include
quests or missions that are suitable for small (1-2) groups of
participants up to larger groups (say, 100 people, possibly in
separate groups, on differing timelines).  You'll not be running
those missions/quests manually in all cases, so some aspects of
running them will either need to be automated, or fall out of some
other process running the world.

I'm guessing from what you'd said that your experience (and
interest) is with the small scale games where you can customize the
experience (and without worrying about the commercial aspects/costs)
for very few players.  My interests are quite different and at the
other end of things.  Your feelings can be fine and non-damaging at
the low-end of the population scale.  But, they simply don't work
for even decent sized MUDs, much less something larger, if we want
to increase the depth of the world and the player's involvement and
interaction with that world.

Looking back in the archives, there was some really good discussion
of the topic of story in games as well:

   Storied Games, by Paul Schwanz
   http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q4/msg00627.php

   with a good response by Lee Sheldon:
   http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q4/msg00645.php

   and another response in the thread by Joe Andrieu:
   http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q4/msg00653.php

   further discussion rooted here:
   http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q4/msg00725.php

   and here:
   http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q4/msg00703.php

and so on ...

Cheers,

   - Bruce


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