Tag Archives: Interactive Story

Serious games, the best application for interactive story

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I’ve been waiting for interactive story to take off for years and I’m relatively new to the field, Chris Crawford has been plugging away at it for over a decade. Originally I thought the games industry would lead the way in developing interactive story, however the defining feature of games is of course the game – not the story. The industry has also famously been conservative as Wagner James Au put it, The game industry is Hollywood for Lost Boys.

It’s a business comprised almost entirely of young gamer dudes, serving an audience of young gamer dudes, covered by a gaming press of young gamer dudes, all of whom are only interested in creating, playing, and covering games that interest young gamer dudes—which they believe to be the pinnacle of entertainment.

Seeing virtual worlds though I thought it was a second chance for interactive story. However most are struggling just to find a business model and the technology is nascent. There’s still a lot of opportunity in virtual worlds but what has captured my attention is serious games. For one they have a business model. Secondly, their educational value is increased the more immersive they are and incorporating story will only help that.

Over the weekend I spent some time going through examples from Visual Purple. They specialize in serious games and simulations for training and education. What impressed me most was their incorporation of movie techniques. In Winning in Wireless: Year 1, they incorporate a virtual world but also utilize great cut scenes to pull the player into the story. Exposition is the bane of storytellers and especially in training materials, but WiW does a great job by putting it over an action sequence.

Seeing examples from Visual Purple I can say that serious games are the best application of interactive story yet. And Visual Purple isn’t the only pioneering company in this space.

It will be interesting to see what these companies come up with in way of tools, innovations, and conventions. It also won’t be much of a stretch apply these to interactive stories aimed at more entertainment than educational pursuits. Just check out the Power of Story: Driven to get an idea of where it can go.

Interactive story isn’t just about decisions

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Over the years interactive story has captured the imagination of many. Hollywood even tried to create one – Mr. Payback. But nothing has caught on with mainstream audiences. Most people’s exposure to it probably consists of Choose Your Own Adventure books, seeing the Holodeck on Star Trek, and if you’re lucky dating sims or a serious game. If you’ve ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure book you’ll know it’s full of questions. Interactive stories to date are just a series of  decisions, of which Mr. Payback is a great example.

For me it’s really difficult to watch, forced to make decision after decision. Needless to say Mr. Payback was also a complete failure. The problem is story isn’t just about decisions. James Bond doesn’t really have a choice to accept a mission or not, he has too. The story comes out of his skills and audacity of the master villain. The only decisions James Bond really makes is how to subdue the master villain. Trying to incorporate that will inevitably lead the interactive story down a path to becoming a game with resource management, strategy, and all that. Soon the story will be taking a seat in the back to the game aspects.

Decision points can actually hurt immersion

The creators of Mr. Payback could have done a better job integrating the decision points but it also demonstrates the problem of relying solely on them for interactivity.

Interactive stories typically proceed like Mr. Payback. A cut scene followed by a decision point, followed by another cut scene and decision point. Most of these decision points are directed at the player as if he was the protagonist in the story. The player is asked to dawn the role of the protagonist. However that presents a few problems of its own.

Michael Hauge, the screenwriting guru, explains that stories are interactive by their very nature. To enjoy them we already have to see ourselves as the protagonist.

Movies, screenplays, and novels are participatory events. In order to experience the emotional roller coaster they offer, audiences can’t just observe the action, they must become the hero as she faces all the obstacles standing between her and her goal. In other words, they must empathize and identify with the hero.

- Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds by Michael Hauge

Empathy is the key, however it’s difficult to empathize when the character is yourself. If you’re like me you’ll answer the questions as yourself rather than as the character. Every decision point is actually a point to just play around. Let’s go this way and see what happens. Where this might be good for educational purposes (serious games) it kind of falls flat for entertainment as demonstrated by Mr. Payback.

We need to expand the interactive story tool-set

Story is about more than just decision points. Interactive story will need to expand it’s tool-set if it hopes to attract a mainstream audience and expand beyond serious games. If you’re hoping to create an interactive drama all you can rely on is the power of story – you have to create empathy organically from the story. Serious games can more or less expect the player to take on the role of the protagonist simply for the instructional value. Games on the other hand are about simple play and rarely care if you take on the role or not. We play just to see the explosions, for the challenge, etc. That said, serious games and games themselves would be greatly improved by incorporating more pure story.

Eventually the conventions and techniques of the new medium will emerge. It took years for film pioneers to discover continuity editing. Prior to that they were accustomed to just filming Vaudeville acts and trains. Continuity editing unlocked films story potential, perhaps we’ll find an equivalent technique for interactive story.

If you’ve seen other techniques that work well, please let me know by leaving a comment. In a future post I discuss some of the techniques I’m experimenting with.

Can we turn the art of story over to the players?

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On the surface the concept of interactive story seems simple. All the trouble comes when you try to create one. Not only it is a technical and interface problem, it’s a logic problem (That Darn Conundrum). But beyond even that, as an artist you have no idea where to begin. You know how to move an audience using the various mediums available today but interactive story itself seems completely foreign. That might be because interactive story actually hands the majority of the artistry to the player.

In his book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, Andy Hunt highlights research that shows we find attractive things to be easier to use. We even learn at a faster pace if it’s attractive.  Seeing the importance of beauty, Hung goes on to quote the famous architect Louis Kahn about the relationship between beauty and design.

Design is not making beauty; beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.

Hunt explains the quote further.

Kahn explains that beauty emerges from selection. That is, art comes not so much from the act of creation itself but rather from selecting among a near infinite supply of choices.

The musician has a near-infinite palette combining different instruments, rhythms, scale modes, tempo, and the hard-to-define but easy-to-sense “groove”.

Art is a process of selection. What is true for musician is true for writers.

Narrative StoryHowever interactive story hands this selection process over to the player.

Interactive Story

If art is selection, interactive story has less art than traditional narrative. True, interactive story may still allow the artist to narrow the set of choices a player can make, but that is loose selection where traditional story is definite. Plus the choices will likely compound each other, ultimately putting the player in control. The player usurps most of the artistry.

That might also explain why we have yet to see any famous or semi famous artists looking to create interactive story. First they likely don’t know how to start, but more than that they can’t see the artistry.

I’m dealing with much of this today trying to build a dating sim using Ren’Py, which is essentially an interactive story. I continually struggle with the question – is the inclusion of interactivity adding to the entertainment value or would it work just as well or better as a static story? If I hook the user, if I get them to empathise with the characters why would I then want to turn them loose to the player? It isn’t just me being a snob; we see movies made by professionals who have spent years honing their craft. Seeing a movie I don’t want to be the lead character, I want to see what happens to that character.

That said, interactive story does offer a new medium and I’ll continue to plug away at it, if not just for the learning experience. And one day I hope to test the hypothesis using Customer Development. However my intuition tells me that another form of real time story will prove much more successful given time – immersive story.

Immersive StoryFor immersive story to work though you need a highly responsive environment. Virtual worlds are perfect for this however as a platform they are nascent. Plus the costs to creating an immersive story likely increases ten fold over creating interactive story with Ren’Py. But the day will come when there is a viable platform and/or engine for immersive story.

Story is conflict, therefore real time story is conflict

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Over the years I’ve studied maybe a hundred different strategies for creating real time story, more specifically interactive story, and come away with the same three things.

  1. Nothing seems to be a finished product I can my hands on
  2. I don’t have the foggiest idea how to go about using these tools to create a story
  3. Conflict is never discussed

The last one has me the most confused. Reading everything I could find about Chris Crawford‘s Storytron, AlterAction’s Masq, the Oz Project, and the Virtual Theater Project I’m always struck with how little conflict is discussed, if at all.

For me Facade was the first example of interactive story that reflected what I imagined in my head as interactive story. For those interested, many of it’s creators thoughts can be picked from Grand Text Auto and their earlier work on the defunct Oz Project at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Oz Project’s approach to interactive story is similar to other platforms. It always reminds me of your car’s GPS – you enter a destination and it plots a course based on your current position. If you make a wrong turn it will simply recalculates the route. The Oz Project uses a similar process to create believable agents. Each believable agent has their own goals and motivations, or in our analogy a destination. Just as a driver can take the wrong turn the player character in an interactive story can take an action that requires the believable agent to recalculate their route.

Lets say in the future GPS units go even further and help you plan a trip. Taking in time allotted, traffic conditions, weather, etc. they will plan a weekend road trip guaranteed to give your kids a true sense of LA. If you spend too long at Disneyland the GPS unit will slot in a quick bite to eat at In-N-Out Burger instead of risk a long line at Pink’s Hot Dogs. This capability would be similar to Oz Project’s drama manager where it might remove or add a character, adjust a character’s objective, change an environment, etc.

So where is the conflict? A common error of novice screenwriters is to see story as the sequence of events – continue down the street, left at the light, take the first right, etc. Where is the conflict in that? How would I start a fight with a GPS unit? I could do the opposite of whatever direction it gives me, continually forcing it to recalculate? Perhaps I’m being too literal, but if conflict is central to story wouldn’t it be central to real time story? The philosophy behind the Oz project doesn’t mention conflict.

Drama = Character + Story + Presentation

Conflict is the core of any story. Conflict is what grabs audiences, it’s what makes interesting characters interesting, it’s what drives stories.

Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.

- Robert McKee

Each scene is designed around a conflict. Scenes build to larger conflicts and form acts. Acts build to an overriding conflict that drives the entire movie. If there is no conflict there is no scene and no movie. When examining a scene a script doctor will ask first –  what is the conflict you’re trying to show? Either you pump up the expression of the conflict or you cut the scene. There is no place for transition scenes that fail to drive conflict.

Granted, screenwriting is stricter about conflict then other mediums. A novel might allow for a transition scene, but I believe real time story will be closer to screenwriting then a novel. Plus, given our short attention spans it would be safer for real time story artists to follow the cardinal rule of screenwriting - never be boring.

With the GPS recalculation model of real time story, I’m afraid the developers have gotten carried away with enabling interactivity and forgotten about story and conflict. It’s an easy thing to do, real time story and especially interactive story is a rather complex thing. But whatever we do, we can’t forget about conflict.

Interactive story resources

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From time to time I’m asked to recommend reading material related to real time story or interactive story in particular. While there is little resources dealing with real time story as a whole, interactive story is just a subset and it has a long history of research. That research can be applied across all forms of real time story – immersive story, story worlds, and of course interactive story.

Books

http://www.amazon.com/Computers-as-Theatre-Brenda-Laurel/dp/0201550601/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226473728&sr=1-3

You might start with the book many credit with introducing the idea of interactive story to the wider public, Brenda Laurel’s Computers as Theatre. I finally read the book a year ago and found it more nostalgic than helpful, but Brenda does have an interesting perspective.

The next book that came along I found much more helpful, Janet H. Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck. I actually received this book as a gift from a friend and found it eye opening even if it is a bit dated.

The first book I read on the subject was Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. I might disagree with some of Crawford’s suggestions but of all the resources he at least lays out a strategy for actually creating interactive story. A strategy he is putting into action at Storytron.

A more recent book and good overview of the interactive story field is Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction.

Online

Two great blogs you can add to your RSS reader would be Grand Text Auto and Emily Short’s Interactive Fiction. A few of the writers behind Grand Text Auto put together the interactive story Facade. The developers of MASQ also have an interesting take on interactive story AlterAction.

Ongoing projects

And If you get tired of reading you can always check out some ongoing projects.

Examples of interactive story

If those aren’t enough of you, why not just jump into some interactive stories.

Continuing updates

When I get some time I’ll move this into a more permanent page which I can continually update. But I hope this helps for now.