Re: Several points

[WFreitag@aol.com]

>Second, you guys keep tripping up on a common 
>problem: the crucial difference between story 
>and storytelling. You can't interact with a story.

Technically true, in the same sense that you can say a driver doesn't really 
"step on the brakes" but instead steps on a pedal that controls a hydraulic 
system that actuates the brakes. But I prefer to be a little bit inaccurate 
and speak of "interactive story" and "interacting with the story" anyway. 
Here's why.

Interaction with the storyteller can occur whether or not those interactions 
are affecting the story in an interesting or significant way (e.g. altering 
the plot). Computer adventure games, for example, are interactive 
storytellers in that they _reveal_ a story through interactive game play. 
There's no reason not to call this "interactive storytelling" -- after all, 
it's interactive and it's telling a story -- but we need a way to distinguish 
that situation from a process in which the interaction with the storyteller 
is signficiantly shaping the story itself. Thus, I would normally say that in 
the first case the _story_ is not interactive and in the second case, it is. 
"Interactive story" requires "interactive telling" but the reverse is not 
true. A typical computer game is "interactive telling" but not "interactive 
story." If we can't call any story interactive ever, it's much harder to make 
this crucial distinction.

- Walt