A New Stab at Interactive Fiction 141
pamar writes "Dr Dobbs Journal interviews Chris Crawford, the noted game designer, about a new direction for interactive fiction. In the interview, he talks of his new stab at Interactive Fiction, and mentions Storytron, his new company which he hopes will make interactive fiction easier to write, not only for games, but for complex social interactions in general."
Quite a... (Score:5, Funny)
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Pilot's seat? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would say that fiction is the journey that the author takes you on, but at the same time there is nothing saying that it can not be interactive. I'm not claiming that games are great works of fiction yet, but they are developing methods where the "author" (designers) produce the story and allow the gamer to discover it.
Personally, I think the worst element of story telling in videogames
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You're perhaps thinking of too recent productions. Interactive fiction [wikipedia.org] is a somewhat more specific term than "fiction and interactivity within games". Since the primary media is text, IF games can at best be just as immersive as traditional literary fiction, and the (perceived) interactivity with items in the game universe can als
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Why can't it be both? When you move from one medium to another, there's always a period of adjustment and sometimes new creative mechanisms and paradigms must be developed. When you try to "migrate" a work of fiction from one medium to another, the results tend to be shoddy, which is why seldom books adapt well to the movie screen and why movies give way to crappy games tie ins.
Now, both
Re:Pilot's seat? (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter how precise and demanding an author is, the reader always brings understanding, misunderstanding, interpretation, and their own preconceptions to a work.
There are several schools of literary interpretation, which argue and debate and grapple incessantly, and some of which are almost violently hostile to each other, but if you were to ask them WHETHER the written word is interpreted (rather than just received), they would pretty much all look at you like you had three heads.
Look behind you! (Score:2)
Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!
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Books and films don't change depending on your own actions. Games, it could be argued, do - at least to a certain extent. I think it's perfectly possible to create a game which is only just interactive, in the sense that no matter what you do, the same things happen.
Which basically means to me that the best way to create a truly interactive game is to have multiple branching storylines and good AI. Not many games have managed that yet...
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Yes, it's all semantics. Is interpreting an interactive process? No? Well, do it without the text then.
Unless your "interaction" requires a person at the other end in realtime, in which case you can't interact with a sandwich, a car, a tree, or water.
Specificity is as often abused in semantics as ambiguity.
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Here's the question though. Is fiction really ment to be interactive? Or is fiction the journey the author leads you on?
Maybe it can be either. Some fiction leads you on a set path. Some interactive fiction leads you on that same set path, but makes it appear that you can change it when in reality you can't (so you can discover things in any order you like, and stray beyond the path a bit before being gently nudged back on it later on without realising). Some interactive fiction has multiple endings. So
Re:Pilot's seat? (Score:5, Interesting)
A story has three parts. In the first act, we have the status quo, situation normal. A good storyteller might call this the set up. Then, something happens that disturbs the status quo -- something that the protagonist has to deal with. They can't go back to the status quo. In the third act, there is the final confrontation with whatever the obstacle is. After the final confrontation, there is a new equalibrium, a new status quo.
So, if you are having a bad day, you don't know where the story ends. You might get in a car wreck in the morning. You might get fired by your boss in the afternoon for being late. Your wife might leave you in the evening for getting fired and wrecking the car. At any point, you might decide to tell a story about 'the car wreck', 'the firing', or 'my wife leaving me', or you might tell a story about 'my horrible day'. Any one of those events might be the climax or final confrontation of this particular story you are choosing to tell.
You have to decide in advance what events *of the past* are going to be in your story. You have to know the climax of the story in order to build it up properly. This subject is coincidentally the subject of my last journal entry [slashdot.org].
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Chris Crawford on his site defines interaction as a conversation - each party in the conversation rotates through three stages: listening to another, processing the information and formulating a reply, and then conveying that reply back.
Currently, computer games are appalling at listening to the player, and pretty mediocre at forumlating a reply. "Facade" (http://www.interactivestory.net/ [interactivestory.net]) is an excellent example of how
A little confused (Score:1)
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For example:
Blah blah blah plot... Oh no! You see a monster! Do you:
'Run Away' or 'Fight It'
On a computer, the program will just be a bunch of IFs and GOTOs; in a book, it usually tells you to turn to a certian page depending on your choice.
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It appears that in the article he is using the term "Interactive Storytelling" to mean what is more commonly called " Interactive Fiction [wikipedia.org]".
Basically.. it's text based adventure games. They stopped being commercially produced about 20 years ago. However, due to the ease of creating them, there are many freeware games out there. If you're really interested in seeing what the big deal is about, I'd suggest giving Zork [csd.uwo.ca] a spin -- it has aged rather gracefully.
The article is frustratingly vague, but it basi
Re:A little confused (Score:4, Interesting)
Interactive Fiction is primarily Fiction--that is, a semi-fixed story. It has multiple detours (and perhaps even multiple endings) based on choices you make, but a start, middle, and finish was envisioned before you got there. The primary craft in Interactive Fiction is to hide that from the player, such that they believe they have a large effect on what's going on. In fact, you've artfully constrained the number of possibilities, via the verb and object list usually, such that they actually have a relatively small effect. With some exceptions, the plot resolution is the primary attraction, providing a carrot to draw you through the interactions. In especially well-crafted ones, the interactions themselves are equally entertaining.
Interactive Storytelling is primarily Interactive, with a largely un-fixed story. You and the computer interact to make the story together (the Storytelling part). The craft in Interactive Storytelling is in defining and weighting the dramatic elements (Actors, Stages, Inclinations, etc.) such that the stories that emerge will be interesting more often than not. The primary attraction is in the spontaneity of the interaction, as well as exploring the range of stories that can emerge from different interactions. To use a science-fiction reference, it's like a very limited version of a Holodeck vacation.
The main problem with any interactive fiction... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The main problem with any interactive fiction.. (Score:1)
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What about interactive polemics? (Score:1)
hm (Score:1)
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isn't this already out (Score:1)
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Trolls. (Score:2)
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And yes, the packaging rocked on the original games...Maps, giveaways, beautiful gatefold boxen...Those were the days of great gaming.
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http://www.brasslantern.org/ [brasslantern.org]
http://www.ifcomp.org [ifcomp.org]
stimulus-response too limited. (Score:5, Insightful)
People smarter than you and I have been working on open-ended AI for a long time and there's still no solution yet so I wouldn't get my hopes up too high for this program.
How is this different? (Score:4, Insightful)
The limitations of these languages have generally always been with the developer not in the chosen language, so I'm a little unclear how this will make inherently more immersive games. I'm not even sure it looks easier to use (this is a little unfair as I'm judging on screenshots), but the language 'Inform' has made leaps forward in this area with a natrual language system. Or designers can use 3rd party GUI tools to assist with construction in many of the IF languages. I'm skeptical of how this will compete with the games developed with other languages and made freely accessiable in the IF archive.
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This one will have better marketing.
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Interactive storytelling is primarily about interactions with other actors, who can make their own decisions.
The personality modelling in interactive storytelling is much more complicated.
Decision-making in Storytron is numeric, not boolean.
The user interface is linguistic (that's not at all the same as textual!!!)
Seems like most people are missing the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
You have an initial setup (there's your bit of narrative). You have Stages, Verbs, Actors with Inclinations (personality), and Roles (which are sets of reactions).
You, the player, and the Actors can all perform Verbs. Performing a Verb on an Actor causes a reaction, defined by a Role assigned to the Actor. Actors semi-autonomously react, within their Roles, by performing Verbs on you and the other Actors. The Verbs they pick are constrained by the Role, and weighted by the Actor's Inclinations. Actors also choose to wander between Stages according to Inclinations, which increases or decreases the possibility that two actors meet. The important bit is that all of this is cyclic. If I do something to Actor A, Actor A may react by doing something to Actor B, who in turn reacts...etc. Or Actor B may just have -witnessed- what I did to Actor A, and then goes off and gossips to Actor C, who...etc.
So, basically, any story is emergent. You define Actors, Stages, Verbs, Inclinations, and Roles, so as to guide the Storyworld towards a particular type of theme, but from there, you (the architect) don't have very granular control. I suppose you could program an Actor as the MoverAndShaker, whose agenda (through some pretty absolute Inclinations and Roles) is basically to wander through the Storyworld and provoke people in the direction you want.
In any case, note that this type of storytelling can be very successful. Facade works much this way.
It's a really interesting setup. In its current form, I'm not sure how successful it be for game-authoring, if only because the game interface seems to be Actors' talking heads plus a diagrammed language. It's pretty obscure for any sort of casual player. But as a core technology and an authoring system, I think there are terrific possibilities for this. I'd be especially interested in a hybrid between this and traditional guided narrative.
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However, at some level, I'm pretty dubious. A tool such as Inform 7 [inform-fiction.org] (or TADs, or the other heavy hitters) makes it reasonable to build a narrative that feels spontaneous even if it is not. My gut reaction is that Storytron will have a cursory kind of believability, but when you pressure it a little, i
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Seems like if you could define a timeline for outside events--that is, ones that don't directly result from an Actor's Verb--and then possibly have Verbs (yours and Actors'
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I think I have the same impression from Plotpoints [storytron.com] and the Action cycle [storytron.com].
But still, I think it'll require quite a bit of 'out-of
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I'm actually looking forward to trying something simple out in this. As I said previously, I think the overall experience is going to be a little strange for the casual game player, but I can see getting a lot of "ooh, neat" out of the emergent behavior.
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And what about acting based on who other Actors are, not just on an Actor's own Inclinations? For example, if Actor A had assaulted Actor B earlier in the game, the developer might want Actor B to avoid Actor A in the future, even though Actor B has no Inclination to avoid other Actors in general.
And what ab
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How would that be different from The Sims? From the screenshots it looks like each actor has a ton of varibles that might get influenced when different actors interact and then cause them to do things. This sounds pretty much exactly like The Sims. Maybe it allows different kinds of scenarios or such, not just the puppet house that the Sims provide, but I don't see a fundamentel difference that would turn his stuff magically into 'storytelling' while not The Sims. Sounds kind of like a Sims Construction K
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It's been a year or so since I've played Facade, but I thought they had cascading reactions there too...you say something to the husband, he says something back, the wif
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But, isn't this similar to the model used by the cosmic aliens who pissed human DNA down to Earth? I think the jury is still out on whether the humans will respect their planet, care for their neighbors, overcome the randomly-injected, hardcoded urge to kill, wage ware, rape, dominate, corrupt, over-tax, over-fee, and otherwise overlook the plight of many of the subjects of the experiment...
Somewhat irritating (Score:3, Informative)
Buried in Games section: news of the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition, where real games are available for downloading, playing, and scoring, with a $400 first prize at stake.
Assuming the 2006 Competition follows the usual pattern, many of these IF games will suck. Some will be OK. One or two will be extremely well-done. And one or two may, in the Infocom tradition, be the kind you remember for the rest of your life. What they will all have in common is that they're actual games, not just Crawfordian theoretical sequels to earlier theories.
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I had the same thought while reading the article on the train this morning.
Interaction is the Enemy of Narrative (Score:5, Insightful)
A player is extremely unlikely to make the choices and take the actions that lead to a compelling story.
They won't make the mistakes that lead to King Lear or Hamlet to their tragic ends.
They won't make the choices that take Luke Skywalker to defeating the death star (not if they have real choices that affect the storyline)
A good story takes the reader through a series of psychological stages resulting from the characters making choices a player is unlikely to make. (they just look up the "right" answer on the net...)
I would be more convinced if Crawford had a single example: mockup, text, an animated video - anything - that demonstrated how a working game would play in a (even a 15-minute) gaming session.
I don't even want a working system at this point - show me a walkthrough so we can get an idea of what game play would be. (it would be nice it that doesn't require the strong AI problem to be solved first as well:-)
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Please point me to something on your website that shows how a game would play out.
If there isn't anything, you'd gain a lot of ground both with critics and with supporters if we had a more conrete idea of what your vision is rather than handwaving. I'd like to see stages - this is what the first implementation will be capable of, and what a more complete system will do. And giving an example of grandpa t
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http://www.storytron.com/overview/ov_storytron.htm l [storytron.com]
and here's a more detailed explanation of verb-based interaction:
http://www.storytron.com/overview/storyworld/verb_ based_dramatic_interaction.html [storytron.com]
here's a very thorough discussion of the nature of the interface:
http://storytron.com/smf/index.php?topic=21.0 [storytron.com]
We don't have to solve any AI problem because this is not an AI problem; it's an artistic problem and is solved by each storybuilder
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Thanks, I hadn't seen the screen mockup before, but now that I have it looks like a simple job to mockup a complete game segment to show folks exactly why this will be compelling and why choosing your response on the right side isn't just like turning to page 42.
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I am arguing that it may have to be on rails to be a compelling story/narrative.
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I'll give it a try, but the starting page talks about reaching an end in a few minute - please tell me that's not so.
Branching systems suffer from combinatorial explosions and a few minutes is practical but sustained games are difficult without choke points.
I've been playing IF since the original adventure on a pdp-11/25 in 1978? and no longer get kicks from simple complexity
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http://www.mindspring.com/~emshort/cheats.htm [mindspring.com]
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http://www.mindspring.com/~emshort/cheats.htm [mindspring.com] [mindspring.com]
Another good game to try is Blue Chairs. Less flexible, but it has enough to make the interactivity really feel interactive. Unlike Galatea this is a "real" game with moderate game length (it took me a couple nights of playing) and real endings. I still don't know which I prefer.
Going graphical a really decent exploration of game interactivity is Indigo Prophecy (PC and XB
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They won't make the mistakes that lead to King Lear or Hamlet to their tragic ends.
You've not watched the news, have you?
They won't make the choices that take Luke Skywalker to defeating the death star (not if they have real choices that affect the storyline)
Yes they will. Remember they have no real risk to themselves. Thus they are more likely to do things they would not do "in the real world" . This is
Games Masters (Score:2, Interesting)
And the thing that keeps tabletop RPGs alive is the games master. or DM or whatever the particular set of rules call him or her. That's your storytron right there: a human mind that can generate new narrative on the fly in response to the 'reader's initiative.
Unless storytron is an AI that can take the best from human GMs, human authors and Game Engi
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Some overall comments (Score:5, Informative)
1. First, there are always skeptics and naysayers who have disparaging things to say about the Storytron technology. Some of this is due to the fact that my often harsh criticisms of the games biz have antagonized many people. That's OK -- but I just want to advise other readers that some portion of the negative comments are a response to my comments about the games industry, not a response to the Storytron technology itself.
2. Second, I remind everybody that Storytron technology is exceedingly complex, largely because narrative is exceedingly complex. I have spent years trying to trim it down to the absolute minimum required to do the job, but that absolute minimum is still overwhelming to beginners.
3. I'm always surprised by the comments along the lines of "How does this differ from Technology X?" All I can say in answer to such questions is "read the documentation". Storytron technology is so utterly different from role-playing, MUDs, interactive fiction, and other technologies that it's difficult to know how to begin to answer such a question. It's rather like somebody asking you the difference between a spreadsheet and a word processor. Well, yes, they do both allow you to set fonts. They both allow you to create tables. They both allow you to print out documents. But they are so completely different in form and purpose that it's a waste of time trying to come up with a list of differences. The easiest way to differentiate Storytron from the other stuff is to cite its purpose: to provide genuine, honest-to-gum interactive storytelling. (See next point)
4. A common question (already offered here) is, "What is interactive storytelling, anyway?" If you attempt to answer this question by comparing it to other forms, you get confusion. Interactive storytelling cannot be described as "just like a game, only..." or "kinda like interactive fiction, except..." This approach always yields even more confusion. I haven't spent 14 years re-inventing the wheel -- this thing really is profoundly different from other stuff out there. The closest to it is Facade -- and Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas will be quick to point out the many, many differences between Storytron and Facade.
It's not a story, it's storytelling, and the difference between the two is profound -- and confusing. A story is noun or data; storytelling is verb or process. That's why there's not a plot in it; only stories can have plots. Storytelling does not intrinsically include plot. Think of it this way: the difference between story and storytelling is analogous to the difference between a cake and cooking. A cake can have texture, but cooking doesn't have texture. Texture is a consequence of cooking, but not a component of cooking. In the same way, plot is a consequence of storytelling, but not a component of storytelling.
So what is it? As we have built it, interactive storytelling puts the player in the role of protagonist in a dramatically rich environment, and then permits the player to interact with other actors in a dramatically rich fashion. The size of the verb vocabulary is what makes it so different; Storytron can provide thousands of verbs. No more just picking things up, using them, destroying them, and so forth. Most of the verbs provide interaction with PEOPLE, not THINGS. We already have about 80 verbs (few of which are fleshed out, though) and intend to have hundreds by the time we release the technology.
Anyway, if you want to learn more, go to the website.
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You're right when you note that the inability to explain a concept or principle bespeaks a failure to understand that concept or principle. However, this Storytron stuff is not a concept or principle -- it's a technology. There are actually a lot of concepts and principles that underlie the technology, and I do explain those concepts and princi
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Yep, there's no demo. People have been screaming for a demo for years. And we nearly started working on a "dead demo" -- a fake representation of what would happen. We decided that our time would be better spent on building the real thing.
Moreover, I have been building this thing from the ground up to be viable as the foundation for an industry. This has required months and months of effort to build in capabilities that won't even show up for years. It's easy to slap together something that works once and
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Crawford (Score:1)
Interaction Simulator (Score:2)
Imagine an office-politics simulator. You create Actors for the influential people on your, above your, and immediately adjacent to your team. You probably have some observations about those persons' reactions to different situations and ideas, as well as existing personal dynamics, so translate those into Inclinations and Roles.
Obviously, you wouldn't be able to pitch a completely fleshed out idea
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The unfinished sim-phoney (Score:1, Interesting)
What bothered me is that it isn't done and they want people to "try it out." Not even the tutorials were finished, and even if they were, the
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To answer your question, "How do you as the player know what the others are doing when you aren't watching?":
They tell you. There's a whole (and quite complex) system for how people know about events and decide whether and how to tell others about events. (There's even a means to record how strongly they believe in the truth of a reported event.) I disabled the system a few months ago because I want to get this thing out quickly and there's a tricky problem in the presentation of the events, but the basic
Holy Bull. (Score:2)
Computer games are a tiny subset of computer applications. What was his point again?
He's into something, though, with his ideas in general. I play games for about 30 years now and am still looking for that kind of game he's talk
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I meant 'computer applications' as in 'uses for computers', not as in 'programs'. Computer entertainment software is a tiny subset of what you can do with computers and I think you assign too much meaning to computer-based entertainment. Seeing your CV, I can let you get away with it.
I disagree that games are 100% of computer entertainment. If I let my iTunes run with a nice visual plug-in in the background when some friends visit, it definitely
Everybody hates Chris (Score:3, Insightful)
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"Everybody" hates me? Does Ezra Whorton hate me? Sandy Piscator? Johnny Fisher? What kind of scientific study did you do to arrive at this conclusion? ;-)
I'd suggest that your statement would be more accurate if you rephrased it to "Everybody I know hates Chris." And then of course it would be reasonable to ask how many people you know.
There certainly are some people who hold my work in high esteem -- I keep getting paid to speak at all manner of conferences. However, I agree that my caustic remarks ab
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Who's he trying to kid? (Score:1)
Point-and-click programming has failed catastrophically every time it's been tried. My experience (e.g., iShell) taught me that it's too slow and cumbersome for programmers, and still useless for the non-programmers (defined as that vast majority who can't design program logic by any means, graphical or otherwise.) Inform 7 [inform-fiction.org] is a recent attempt by IF authors to help others, NOT by making programming unnecessary, but
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fiction != storytelling (Score:2, Troll)
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Where is the story in storytelling? (Score:2)
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Let's try it out (Score:1)