[MUD-Dev] narrative

[John Robert Arras]

On Fri, 9 Aug 2002 "Joe Andrieu" <kestral at dinar.ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

>>> I do not see that a technology can ever resolve these issues.  I
>>> believe if you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself.  If
>>> I gotta do it myself, I don't need an AI technology.

> Just because you cannot see it does not make it impossible. There
> are those who are working hard on these problems and making good
> progress. Don't judge their efforts before you have explored them.

I think Brandon may be right. It may be impossible to make good
interactive narrative. I kept trying to think of why all of the
IF/IN projects that I've been reading about lately just didn't do it
for me. It finally hit me that perhaps it just isn't possible.  A
good starting page with some insightful comments on this subject is:

http://web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/games&narrative.html

But, before I get into why it might be impossible to make good
interactive narrative, let me discuss activities in general. Think
of a bunch of things that you like to do. Think of how compelling
and interesting those things are to you while you're doing them. Now
imagine that you're observing someone else performing the same
activity that you find interesting. In most cases, observing
something is not as compelling as actually doing something.

When you read a book, you are an observer. Therefore, in order to
get you, the reader, interested, the author has to put in a lot of
effort to make the story compelling. This is where the difficulty in
writing comes in. If you give 20 people "plot points" for a story
and ask them to write the story, they will all tell the same story,
but some will do it better than others. The differences will be in
the details about how the story is told.

I think the details are what separate good writing from bad writing.
If you want to have compelling narrative, you have to control the
details.

On the other hand, if you want to have an interactive game, then you
have to lose control of the details. If you want a _really_
interactive game, then the player has to be able to affect more than
just the details. You probably have to let the whole story go and
let the "the story" be created on the fly. I don't see any way to
create a compelling "interactive narrative" since the two ideas seem
to contradict each other.

However, I don't think interactivity is impossible. I think it's
very possible and it's easier than people think. The problem is that
if you want to create something interactive, you have to let go of
"the story".  If you try to get players to follow "the story" then
you're reducing them to observers since their actions don't really
count. That means you've raised the bar from creating something
interesting for participants to creating something interesting for
observers.

That's why I think attempts to create "interactive narrative" are
not very satisfying. People are getting rid of the best parts of
narrative and interactivity:

They lose the power of narrative that lies in the details.

They lose the power of interactivity that lies in the freedom to
affect the world.

They probably have to (substantially) choose one or the other. I
think that's why people always talk past each other on this subject
since the middle ground is mushy.


John



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