[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Brandon J. Van Every]

John Robert Arras:

> 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.

Yes!  As the writers say, the tale is in the telling.

To be more mathematically rigorous about it, good writing is a
global problem with tremendous complexity of elements.
Engineer-heads try to treat it like it's a collection of local
problems, something you can just chop up into constituent and
interchangeable components.  As you chop up the writing into
components, you lose information.  Because the writing contains
little information, it is not terribly compelling, it feels generic.
Some players are highly imaginative and will impose their own vision
upon the components, but the vast majority of consumers will say
"This is boring, this sucks."  A real writer integrates his
components.  The integration is what you still need a human being
for, and we will have that need until the advent of Strong AI.

> 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.

Here, I think you're recreating the commonly received mythology.
Storyline and interactivity, oil and water, blah blah blah.  An
alternate thesis: interactivity is a psychological illusion.  You do
not interact, you go exactly wherever the game designer already
envisioned you could go.  What about Diablo II disproves this?  Yet,
people say Diablo II is interactive.  What about Donkey Kong
disproves this?  Nothing.

When you pursue interactive writing as techniques of illusion,
possibilities open up.  You do not have to shunt a player down a
path.  You can restrict him to an area, knowing that he will wander
around probably for T time before running into the next item of
interest.  You can control the size of area A and time variables T.
You can summon events E to push / pull / prod the player along.  Yet
the player believes he has interactivity, because he has some
freedom of movement.  People make the mistake of thinking they must
grant players *all* freedom of movement.  It is only important to
grant *some* freedom of movement, that is how the illusion of
interactivity is maintained.

Also, you maintain the illusion by capturing the player's focus.  If
he very much wants to read and follow up on some particular thing,
then he won't notice that he's *willingly* following the storyline.
When you randomize storylines, you throw out the writer's best tool,
his ability to be fascinating.  Random events are fascinating only
on occasion.  It's the luck of the draw.  Much is made of emergent
behavior's potential; little is confessed of how fun these abortion
experiments are in practice.  If you really wanted the experiment,
you'd be happy as a research scientist.  You wouldn't need
entertainment!  Entertainment is prepackaging, it's compressed
experience.  Not the occasional exciting discovery in a sea of
boring unknowns.

> 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.

You can create elaborate theoretical edifices to try to solve these
conundrums.  It will lead you nowhere.  If you want solutions, you
have to sit down and write.  As you write, you take your
opportunities for illusion as they come.  Writing is a process that
leads you to a product.  You solve problems as you write.  The
problems are *not* black and white.  There is *not* some mutual
exclusivity between storywriting and interactivity.  But you do have
to be smart and focused about how you write, each step of the way.


Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.


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