Richard (or do you prefer to be called Kahuna?) wrote:
>First on the gender issue. Read a book called Left Hand of Darkness.
Author is Ursula K. LeGuin. I could talk about this book (and about
gender and identity) for hours, but I'm trying to keep myself on-topic
today so I'll spare y'all.
(Btw, I hope I wasn't too harsh in my post about Suler's site. I
definitely don't want to discourage people from posting URLs of interesting
work; thank you for posting that, Miriam. I ought to have simply said that
Suler doesn't necessarily have all the answers, rather than launching a
detailed attack on one of his pages that isn't really relevant to the
topic.)
>Anyway, why write variations of a plot?
>Why not just present a problem? Let the interactor proceed to solve or not
>solve the problem.
Well, that's one of our basic questions here: how best to create story?
Your simple-AI approach sounds very promising; I'm looking forward to
seeing your results when it's ready for viewing.
However, it seems to me that this world-simulation approach, untempered
by other considerations, is likely to often result in a lack of dramatic
effectiveness, especially for endings. If the goal of the piece is for the
interactor to solve a puzzle, this lack isn't a problem; the interactor
eventually either solves the puzzle or fails to, and the game ends either
way. This has been the traditional approach to adventure games, though the
AIs definitely add a dimension that's traditionally been severely lacking.
But most stories, even mystery novels, are about more than simply solving a
puzzle. If you want the plot to reach a dramatically satisfying resolution
at the end, you can't just wind up the clockwork creatures of your world
and release them to roam freely. You'll get something rather more like
real life than like a story; the realism is laudable, but as in life,
you're likely to end up with a series of interlinked incidents rather than
with a coherent dramatic plot.
This is certainly a viable approach; similar approaches are used in
everything from soap operas to many roleplaying games to experimental
fiction. But I'm growing more and more interested in providing stories
with dramatically satisfying endings; that's hard enough to do in a
traditional linear story in which the author controls all aspects of
character and incident, and it only gets harder when you throw in
nonlinearity and allow the interactor to specify one or more of the
characters.
Check the archives back around November of '98 for much more on these
topics...
--jed
