Re: How about "situations" as a plot abstraction?

[Peter Weyhrauch <peter@zoesis.com>]

> Um, what (1) is made of matters to the *player*.  The author still has to
> create meaning and sell it to the player.  Do you think the player trusts
> the evil character, or is the player just mashing buttons and viewing

Yes, (1) (the first deal) matters to the player.  That is exactly
why I find it more compelling to leave the details of the deal up to
the player.  Instead of trying to secure buy-in with my idea of what
is interesting or important, I feel I can get more buy-in by letting
the player take control and make a deal of her choosing.  This is
optimal, in my mind, since as an author I'm most interested in the
player's buy-in and the fact that she now trusts the evil character.
I would assume there were numerous other ways to achieve those
authorial goals in this system, since I cannot count on the player
making such a deal.

> Why are we even making a deal such as (1), if it is not
> important to the story somehow?

In my mind, the importance of the deal is to get the player to trust
the evil character.  

This gets to the essence of what the "story" is.  Is the story the
exact details or the general outline (or something else)?  I'd say for
each individual player, the story is the exact experience.  However,
for the author, the story better be more general, or it isn't going to
be interactive.

This strategy can fail.  If the deal ends up being more significant
than the trust/buy-in gained, then the exact details of this
particular story have exceeded the generalization.

> "trying all the possibilities until something happens"

This is a thorny issue.  In my ideal system, the user is compelled by
her own will to make reasonable choices since those seem the most
interesting.  To do this there should always be multiple interesting
options.  Of course there are people who will try to break the system
or see how it works, etc.  I'm not too worried about them.

Peter Weyhrauch
Zoesis Studios