[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Nathan F. Yospe]

"Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com> said:

> 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?

> 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.

I think you're showing a bias, possibly a stereotype, possibly an
engineer you knew personally, but that last paragraph was not the
sort of statement I associate with a well thought out position on a
subject on which you were fully informed.  Not that it isn't at
least plausible that the R&D guys can't write as well as writers,
but... this isn't really about that, is it?  What would be a more
fitting challenge is, do these R&D guys have any idea how to spot
good writing, or good stories?  Do they understand the difference
between the two?  What about *desirable* writing and stories?  Is it
possible that an engineering system would produce better sales of
whatever medium the stories were in?  Certainly, the sales for Final
Draft to screenplay writers would give some credence to the
usefulness of non-AI tools... why not extend that?  Final Draft's
authors are not, certainly, better screenwriters than some of the
writers that use the tool.

Just because someone cannot compose a concerto does not mean that he
cannot build a masterpiece of a piano or violin.  And while it is
possible that that is all he can craft, a tool that enables an
artist to take mastery to the next level, perhaps that is not all
that he can do.  What of the man who built the loom?

Which, of course, exposes my personal bias... tools that act as a
sort of assistant/partner, leaving executive control to a person,
perhaps a master artisan, perhaps but a trained technician, while
simplifying, speeding, and sometimes flagging mistakes and giving
possible corrections...  and for a storyteller, this will have to be
at least somewhat adaptive, probably to the point of being the type
of imprintable AI that you get with neural-net feedback.

>> I think that these sorts of things could also be interesting in
>> not-quite-storytelling sorts of ways.

> This is where I think the real potential of "AI" tools is, and to
> the extent that I actually write, I have no interest in them.
> It's not writing and it never will be.  You can't make a silk
> purse out of a sow's ear.

What, pray tell, *is* writing?  I don't approve of "yes, that's a
nice drawing, but is it *art*?" from the lips of the same artists
who will describe a mass of slapped-on paint as art.  If you have
defined "writing" as the Lit department at my University did, you
would elliminate my work, at least if I were being honest, as the
entire body of my work never ceased to try to cater to the public
body in its form, in one sense or another.  You see, I employed a
medium that was compromised by concessions to marketability... to
wit, the standard form of the written English language.  What, if I
may ask again, *is* writing?  I've written software that wrote, such
as it was, better areas, as far as they could be called such a
thing, than the areas included in most generic text muds.  That the
normal areas are not writing is a reasonable enough response, but
that's hardly the point, is it?  The fact is, not many games, online
or other, are *storytelling*.  As much as I love to read a good book
or watch a good movie, games that try to force me to be in a story,
choose-your-own-adventure or (worse) fixed, are worse than games
with no backstory.

--

Nathan F. Yospe -  Programmer, Scientist, Artist, JOAT with a SAK
yospe#kanga.nu   Home: nathanfyospe#mac.com  Work: nyospe#a2i.com



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