RE: Participation versus Interactivity

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@3DProgrammer.com>]

> The first thing I thought of was "truth is stranger than fiction". If one
> author creates a story, it will have a cohesive beginning,
> middle, and end.
> The story has a goal. When multiple audience members contribute
> to a story,
> warps, twists and tears occur, creating a story as chaotic as the
> life we live.

My experience doing freeform PBEM RPG concurs with this.  It is *very*
difficult to get people to tell the same / a similar story that actually
goes somewhere.  It takes more than just Gamemastering, I think it would
ideally take several talented and committed authors who are also practiced
and good at improvising with other authors.  The common rabble, and even the
above-average rabble, cannot manage it.

That said, we did entertain ourselves in the various Games Of Mallor /
Immortals that I ran.  We got some interesting creative output.  But it came
in chunks here and chunks there, it never became a coherent storytelling
whole.  I don't think it would have been an interesting read for most
non-participants, and the bottom line is that *our* interest as participants
eventually waned.  Time-to-die was usually 6 weeks.

When I think of "participation" I think of hippie skippies standing around
the light-up clapping tree at the San Francisco Exploratorium and going
"Wow!"  One of them might even embarrassingly gush that this is the best
thing since sliced bread.  Well, it's fun, it's a participatory experience,
but it isn't authorship.  I'm an elitist, I believe the audience should be
shoved back quite a distance because it's thoroughly incompetent.


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.