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Re: Interactive Drama: Why I've lost interest (NOT)


On Apr 1, 2005, at 9:41 PM, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

Interesting.  I hadn't exactly heard of this "writer sensibility"
before.  But in what little work I've done as a writer and a game
designer, I have thought, "We don't have to explore literal truth, we
can explore metaphorical truth."  This is a way out of the trap of
realism / simulationism.


Exactly!


Granted, it will be a very different animal than what we current
conceive of as story, but I've been working with Chris
Crawford on his
technology for going on 10 years now, and my gut tells me we are
absolutely on the right track with this.  And that we are on
the brink
of success.

There is powerful story in the mix, with Chris's Tron.  I can hardly
wait to get my hands on the current version and start experimenting.


Those are encouraging words, especially since Chris' own recent words
were more stalwart than encouraging in flavor.  It's good that you have
a partnership.  Pencil me in as an interested author if a commercially
viable system ships on Windows.  That was the dealbreaker last time
around.

Heh. I emailed him after reading his post and said, basically, "No one in the world believes in your technology, eh? What am I -- a kumquat??"

I should let him speak for himself, but the tone of his post was partly, I think, because the effort has been much, much greater than any of us expected at the beginning. (The analogy we once used was, it was as if like Lewis and Clark, we'd toiled and struggled and fought off disease and overcome many obstacles, to finally surmount the Rockies, and there in the distance was -- no, not the Pacific; another damn mountain range.) By far the greatest portion of that burden has fallen on his shoulders.

And as Chris discussed in his post, imposing on loved ones can also be very painful. I think this is a struggle for everyone engaged in an artistic endeavor, or a startup. We do have to ask a very great deal of our family and friends. Kathy has made very real sacrifices for the sake of Chris's vision of interactive story. I have to speak up and honor those sacrifices.

But while I can't speak for Kathy, I can speak for myself in this regard. Having supported my own husband for eleven very difficult years while he got his writing career going -- years we're still paying for with a second mortgage and loans we're still paying off -- I also know that being able to help the one you love accomplish his dreams is a reward in and of itself. I could get into a whole treatise on the uncomfortable balance married women have to strike, trying to realize our own dreams and still support our husbands (and children, if we have them) in their life goals.

But no one is an island. No great achievement has ever been done without people hearing about somebody's great idea and signing up to help make it so. We believe in what he's doing, and we're going to help him make it happen.

Again, I should let Chris make the definitive statement, but afaik, this version should be available for Windows, as well as Macs.


-l.