[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Nathan F. Yospe]

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

> Ok Bruce, I just spent 2 hours perusing the papers you cited and
> writing this e-mail.  I think you could have saved me the effort
> by simply stating "Yes, all these stories suck," but maybe your
> paradigm and focus precluded that.  Do you know of any writing
> tools along these lines that have acceptable writing of
> non-trivial length associated with them?  Otherwise, I don't see
> the point of discussing any of this stuff from the standpoint of
> "What does a writer need?"  Frankly, a writer doesn't need any of
> it!

I will get redundant here and point out that the film industry (a
little niche market, but what isn't, compared to games?) has used a
tool called Final Draft <http://www.finaldraft.com> for scripts and
screenplays for a good while now.  So what is at question is, how
does the game industry adapt the concept of writing tools, or
story-creation tools, to be more precise, to something beyond the
choose-your-own-adventure format that the Mixon example used?  If
such a tool *could* be produced, and adapted to automate with the
game engine's format for the game itself, we could have something
revolutionary...

Because I don't believe you're *that* good a writer, *and* faster
than all the players trying to consume your writing.  See, games,
especially MPOGs, aren't like novels.  They (currently) don't age
well.

> For all you folks that want automated or semi-automated user
> engagement: what's so hard about having your writing guy sit down
> and spit out a pile of plot summaries?  Then go implement 'em,
> leveraging game objects you've already built.  Why do engineers
> put so much energy into trying to avoid the writing?

> I mean hell, I argued on c.s.i.p.g.rpg until I was blue in the
> face that Morrowind's writing sucked, and why.  A meandering,
> badly written backstory + FedEx quests in the foreground,
> basically.  Plenty of people agreed with my critique, but an
> alarmingly large contingent said "This story is fine!  It's just
> your taste!"

> On this mailing list, what problem are you guys trying to solve?
> Do you care about writing quality, or writing quantity?  Given
> that so many people will defend a pile of crap story like
> Morrowind's, I don't see how the latter can even be an issue.  You
> could write from the entrails of toilet paper, people would still
> buy it!

I'm trying to make an engine that adapts stories to a dynamic and
malleable world, and handles the changes wrought by players, with
free will and all that entails, and an engine that allows complex
and chaotic interactions with nothing but an equilibrium constant to
prevent chaotic breakdown of the entire universe, much less an
inflexible human authored story.

I am no longer worried about text output.  See the archives for a
few examples of what I was doing when I was worried about it.  If
cornered, I will admit that the problem proved a bit more complex
than I was able to justify for the market value of text games.

--

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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