Re: Interactive storytelling and me; and a challenge

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

WFreitag@aol.com wrote:

> So, here we have a fully working example of something that interactive 
> storytelling people (including me) have been blathering about the "possibility" of 
> for years: a complete set of "plot structure rules" for creating a story 
> interactively. Granted, this particular set of rules applies only to one very 
> specific subgenre of story. (Hey, what more do you want for $8.95?) But the relative 
> simplicity of the rules, and their effectiveness in application, makes me 
> wonder why similar rule systems weren't invented a long time ago and why they 
> aren't being churned out and tested at media labs now. The reason might be that 
> folks bent on interactive storytelling as a digital medium haven't been able to 
> separate the problem of plot structure rules from the problem of 
> instantiating those rules -- that is, for instance, actually being a worthy player in a 
> game like MLWM -- by means of a computer program. The latter problem is a bitch, 
> to say the least.
>  
Well, it seems like a problem of business model.  I'd be surprised if 
anyone gets rich for $8.95..$13.95 for a rarefied product offering.  
Rather, you'd really have to love pencil-and-paper RPG to make a 
business of it.  A human being is still required to make it work, so 
it's hard to see how one is going to make the money.  Heck, I came up 
with all kinds of rules "of thumb" for freeform PBEM RPG when I was 
running the various Games Of Immortals and Games Of Mallor.  But part of 
my reason for running those games, was to see the limit of Gamemastering 
vs. automation.  I took on as many players as I could handle, and after 
5 full-time games lasting about 6 weeks apiece I found that number was 
*small* if I wanted to ensure quality.  No more than 5 players, 
including myself.  No more than 3 independent units of action.  And, 
typically, no less.  This became known as "The Rule Of Three."  So, if 
things need "5 humans" to run, it's really hard to see the business 
model.  Other than the extant pencil-and-paper RPG market.  It seems 
that market has come along just fine, to the degree that it can.

Perhaps one could dumb it down and sell it to the "Trivial Pursuit / 
Pictionary" crowd.  Then one could make some money.

> But perhaps it's a problem that AI techniques can now begin to chip away at, 
> describable by a series of necessary abilities that collectively are 
> guaranteed to add up to interactive metastory generation when all are in place and 
> plugged into the overarching MLWM-like rule structure.
I think I'd rather have my AIs generate art assets, ala procedural 
modeling.  If an AI could do it decently, then the results are "known to 
be saleable."  Seems like visual art generation would be a lot easier 
than story generation.  Crap just has to look interesting.

> Can a computer program invent 
> Horror Revealed scenes from scratch? Clearly not. But selecting from a hundred 
> pre-formed Horror Revealed scenes and modifying it based on current context... 
> that seems more reasonably achievable, though certainly not easy.
>  
If you want to pursue that line of thinking, I suggest looking at King 
Of Dragon Pass from www.a-sharp.com .  It has the best story elements of 
any game I've played.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.