The problem with process

[WFreitag@aol.com]

>www.erasmatazz.com/library/JCGD_Volume_8/Free_Will_Determinism.html
>www.erasmatazz.com/library/JCGD_Volume_7/ControlInteractivity.html

This is a response to the essays Chris referenced previously. Which everyone 
should certainly read, by the way. Here's what I feel is the weakness in his 
argument.

The only function Chris attributes to narrative is to convey messages. He 
points out, and I agree enthusiastically, that messages can be conveyed 
through process instead. Authorial message and interactivity can therefore 
coexist in a process-intensive interactive world.

But this overlooks something really simple and extremely important. Narrative 
is not just a convenient way of conveying messages by instantiation. It also 
is beautiful. Without beauty, messages in narrative would be irrelevant, 
because no one would read them. Without beauty, story is just a police 
blotter. Without beauty, drama is just a really bad day you'd rather forget. 
Without beauty, an interactive story would add far less appeal to an int
eractive world than a beautiful non-interactive story can.

If all you want is interactivity and the ability to embody a message, a 
simulator is enough. So why worry about storytelling at all, except in the 
retrospective sense of "whatever happens, that's the story"? Modify a flight 
simulator so that it always crashes if you go over 3,000 feet. Voila! An 
interactive, um, something, that embodies the same message as the poignant 
myth of Icarus. 

Yuck.

Calling something an interactive story or a storyworld implies that the 
audience will experience something like the beauty of stories. That, not 
message, is what's potentially in conflict with interactivity. Authors 
hesitate to give up control not because they're fanatics obsessed with 
pounding their personal creeds into the reader, as Chris's essays accuse, but 
because they're artists, craftsmen, and entertainers who want to be certain 
their audience experiences something beautiful.

What can we achieve with process alone in the forseeable future, extrapolatin
g current tools, technology, and understanding of the medium? Simulate the 
macroscopic dramatic aspects of human behavior? Almost certainly. Embody 
messages including messages about human behavior? Definitely. Generate 
narrative beauty? No. Not one iota of evidence have I seen.

- Walt