[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Joe Andrieu]

From: Brandon J. Van Every
> Joe Andrieu wrote:

>> If fictional examples will work better for you, check out the
>> Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Data asks the
>> holodeck for a Sherlock-Holmesian story where Moriarity is
>> capable of defeating data. The results is a fabulously structured
>> interactive narrative where everyone is doing what comes
>> naturally and the story arc is synthesized in result.

> Aren't you forgetting that some guy sat down and wrote the
> teleplay for that?

No. I made it clear in my post that I believe human writers will be
at the core of any story development process. The illustrates the
ideal of a computer which generates interactive stories. I don't
care who wrote the teleplay; I care about the concept presented.

>> My point is, it aint about the text. It's about the experience.

> It's about the text.  That's the problem with all the
> engineer-heads.  They think the experience is all about something
> else other than... what you write.

It's not about the text. How much text is there in a non-text MPOG?
Oh... NPC dialogue! Sure, if you want to say that language
generation is an unsolved problem, I would agree with you.  But the
essence of a visual story need not be dependent on text.

>>> Why do engineers put so much energy into trying to avoid the
>>> writing?

>> Cost. Plain and simple.

> And so therefore they chase down all these R&D blind alleys.  In
> that time, they could have written enough material manually for
> many successful products.  Are you honestly going to claim that 6
> months of writing for a TV series isn't enough product to satiate
> a MUD consumer?  Make 'em pay more money for the next 6 months of
> content.  Unlike TV, there's no maturity or sophistication of
> writing release cycle among MUDders because (1) text MUDs don't
> actually sell, so (2) all the engineers work on story generation
> problems because they're entertained by that, and (3) the real
> writers go get real writing jobs.

I think you are underestimating the "explosion of endings"
problem. If I had writers write all the possible endings to all the
possible storylines in a MUD for a mere 2000 players playing over 40
hours of gameplay, it would very quickly take more talent and time
than is available in any reasonable budget.

The goal here is to get a writer to distill the essence of a good
story and use AI to interpret it given the context and actions of
the player so that the resulting experience is a coherent dramatic
arc built around the natural self-motivated actions of the player.

-j

--
Joe Andrieu  
Realtime Drama
joe at andrieu.net


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