For lunch today I reread Chris Crawford‘s old essay, Flawed Methods for Interactive Storytelling. You might say Chris Crawford introduced me to the concept of interactive story. Prior to that I just had a vague notion that it could be done and was overjoyed to see someone actually working on it. That said though, I’ve always found his approach to be too programmer centric. However I’m also thankful to him for that, he’s almost become the torch-barer for what is and isn’t interactive.
Seeing interactive story from the perspective of a programmer makes it too easy to see it as a problem to be solved.
There is a solution to the problem, but it’s not easy; I’ve spent the last two and a half years developing it. It requires a fundamentally different approach to the problem.
Coming at interactive story as a problem or conundrum is great in trying to understand the complexity involved, but it doesn’t exactly call for artists to help solve that problem. If you’re trying to make a car more fuel efficient you call an engineer, you don’t call an artist. But with interactive story the help of artists is exactly what we need.
je ne sais quoi
What artists bring to the whole thing is that certain ‘je ne sais quoi‘. You can break a story or movie down a thousand different ways, but it takes an artist to make it work. The use of color to express a mood, the way a camera hangs on a shot, how much time to spend on character development – that ‘je ne sais quoi’. Where Crawford sees a flawed method an artist sees an opportunity to use slight of hand, use their well earned techniques to lead the audience. That’s what artists bring to the equation.
Implied Interactivity
Crawford also leaves out an important participant in all of this, the audience. We’re all familiar with the “suspension of disbelief“, where the audience agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment. Perhaps we should familiarize ourselves with a new concept, implied interactivity. I came across the concept after reading an MIT study done in 2000, Physically interactive story environments. In the paper the researchers introduce the concept of “less-choice, more-responsiveness”.
In particular, we found that compelling interactive narrative story systems can be perceived as highly responsive, engaging, and interactive even when the overall story has a single-path structure, in what we call a “less-choice, more-responsiveness” approach to the design of story-based interactive environments.
I think it’s best to think of the concept as being analogous to the suspension of disbelief. As a writer you’re taught to pull the audience into the story, then you can play with more unbelievable story elements. You can think of implied interactivity in a similar way. If you’re an artist and don’t want to give the player agency to affect the storyline in a scene or more, you can increase the responsiveness of the environment. It isn’t that easy but it is another tool or trick in your arsenal.
Simulated Reality
But of course implied interactivity isn’t true interactive story, not by a long shot according to Crawford.
If we wish to offer our audience a truly satisfying interactive experience, it is imperative that we allow each member of the audience to express his/her individuality during the experience. There should be billions of pathways through the storytree, so that each member of the audience can find his own path through, coming to his own conclusion; and it’s no fair declaring that only a handful of such pathways are “correct”.
When it comes down to it, Crawford and I disagree on what the audience is seeking. I don’t want a place to express my individuality, I want to be entertained. When I see billions of pathways I think simulated reality. In the future I can see a virtual New York City, complete with a millions citizens. Each citizen is programmed to go about their daily tasks – simulated reality. I can enter, run a muck, and everyone will act accordingly. Maybe it isn’t New York City but the Star Wars universe. I can bump into Luke Skywalker. To me though that’s more entering a storyworld than entering a story.
Maybe that is the end point when you look at interactive story as a problem.
Immersive Story
Interactive story isn’t a problem to be solved, it’s more an art waiting for its techniques to be discovered – not unlike early film pioneers stumbling upon continuity editing.
Movies did not flourish until the engineers lost control to artists – or more precisely, to the communications craftsmen. The same thing is happening now with personal computers.
- Paul Heckel from The Elements of Friendly Software Design
What we need to do is get artist involved. We need them for their ‘je ne sias quoi’, we need them to apply implied interactivity – we don’t need to suffocate them with problem solving. That is why I’m a proponent of immersive story instead of worrying so much about interactive story, of giving the player agency to affect the storyline. As Crawford’s post explains, interactive story is an incredibly complex endeavor. Such complexity doesn’t invite one to enlist the aid of artists and nor would it entice artists to join in the effort. Instead of asking how we can solve a problem we should be asking how we can use this wonderful distribution tool of the metaverse to tell story? How can we apply this rich tool-set of AI, physics engines, scripting languages, and more to tell story? Let artists apply their ‘je ne sais quoi’ and they may just stumble upon interactive story.
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