Whew! Thanks so much Jed. :-)
I wonder why he dismissed RPGs... I am not much into RPGs myself, but a
third of a million (330,000) users of Everquest apparently earned Sony $30
million last year. Sony expect to rake in another $40 million from it this
year. Doesn't sound like small biccies to me.
It isn't VR fiction in the normally understood sense of the term though.
Maybe that is why he doesn't like to include it.
Thanks again Jed. Have a nice rest.
Check ya later,
- Miriam
At 02:04 AM 09/03/2001 -0800, Jed Hartman wrote:
>I took fairly detailed notes on the Glassner talk, but am way too sleepy
>to organize them coherently right now. Will try to do so in next couple
>days. If you haven't heard from me on this by Sunday, somebody drop me a
>reminder note, 'kay?
>
>Very brief summary:
>
>o He's writing a book, which will incorporate the material from this and
>a couple of other talks. This material will also be on his Web site soon;
>he just got Dreamweaver 4. :)
>
>o He's a very dynamic and energetic (and kind of silly) speaker.
>
>o He talked about story structure, then explained why interactive stories
>are mostly doomed (with some harsh dissing on Myst and Riven, among
>others), then gave a suggestion as to a particular kind of computer-based
>interactive story that could work, given enough technology. (Gist of
>that: let the players/interactors perform ordinary actions and say
>ordinary things; computer translates those into appropriate in-character
>actions and statements, to provide illusion of reality without all that
>difficult role-playing stuff.)
>
>o He said that there were no good interactive stories, and elaborated on
>that point at enormous length and great detail, but completely failed to
>mention roleplaying games. I just about screamed. At the end of the
>talk, though, I mentioned RPGs to him, and he said "Oh, yeah, I only left
>those out for time reasons, you're absolutely right." ...But it didn't
>really affect his main point, as he was talking about stories accessible
>to the masses, and to large groups at once; since most people probably
>aren't interested in doing real roleplaying, the audience for RPG-like
>interactive games may be small, and handling a large group is very difficult.
>
>...I said I'd be brief, so I'll stop. More soon.
>
>--jed
Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape?
A. They are both purple... except for the elephant.
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http://werple.net.au/~miriam
http://members.optushome.com.au/miriame
Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au
Part of the development team for http://escape3d.com
