[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Brandon J. Van Every]

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

>>> 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.

You wanna talk screenplays?  We can talk screenplays.  None of my
points change, in fact they are amplified.  It is *more* difficult
to write a good screenplay because you have to say so much about
character with so few words.  You have no access to a character's
internal mental state, you can only show.  I can't apologize for the
fact that 99.999% of NPC character writing in games is absolutely
atrocious.

> 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.

Drop the 2000 out of the equation.  People are way, way, *WAY* too
hung up on this idea that the story has to be about all 2000 people.
I figure that's the simulationism of the engineer popping through.
What you really want to tell is the same story to 2000 people.
Many-to-one.  At best you might pool players into collections of 5
people with 3 independent possibilities of action.  So now you are
telling the same story to 400 groups of people.  If you think you're
going to manage a storyline with more than 3 independent elements at
any time, you are suicidal.  Character differentiation does *not*
work, the point of the plot is *not* made, nobody knows what's going
on, nothing is followable.

A story about 2000 people is not a story.  It is a war.  Go design a
war if that's the number of people you want to have interact.

> 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.

It is a foolish goal.  You can do this job much better and much
quicker manually. Provided you're not trying to jump over the moon
thinking you're supposed to be writing about 2000 protagonists at
once.


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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