a new vision for interactive stories

ewadams@designersnotebook.comwww.designersnotebook.com+44-1252-665215

I’m a member of

A New Vision for Interactive Stories

Ernest W. Adams

The core experience of trying to understand interactive narrative:

You are in a maze oftwisty little passages,

all different!

Three Traditional Assumptions

“Our goal is to create a sandbox that allows maximum freedom.”

“Interactive stories shouldn’t be games.”

“The player shouldn’t have tothink about any rules.”

Façade

www.interactivestory.net

A Bizarre Façade Playscript

(Audrey [the player’s character] knocks on the front door.)

(Trip opens the front door.)

TRIP: Audrey!!

AUDREY: Trip, I’ve been shot!

TRIP: Hi, it’s so great to see you!

AUDREY: Help me!

TRIP: Uh, well, come on in… Uh, I’ll… I’ll go get Grace.

AUDREY: There was a man with a gun.

TRIP and GRACE: (Unintelligible arguing)

AUDREY: HELP! I’m going to die.

GRACE: Hi! How are you? I’m so happy to see you after so long!

AUDREY: For God’s sake, I’m bleeding… (etc.)

Ken Perlin’s Law:

“The cost of an event in aninteractive story must bedirectly proportional to

its improbability.”

Holy $#∫†!!

Façade is a role-playing game!

(But it’s not a dungeon crawl.)

Laws We May Impose

Physical Laws No materializing chickens.

Social Laws Inappropriate behavior gets you locked up.

Dramatic Laws Bad role-playing can cause the story to

end. A war game doesn’t let you be a bad general. Nothing entitles you to be a bad role-player.

NARRATIVEINTERACTIVITY

ROLE- PLAYING

Branching Narratives

Branching Narratives

CHARACTER LIVES CHARACTER DIES

I the guy.

Situations

People

function murder(victim,murderers,relatives);

murder(King,Claudius & Gertrude,Hamlet);

Against the Flying CircusTuonela Productions

jussi.autio@mail.student.oulu.fi

Summary

Credibility is the currency of all narrative.

Role-playing mediates the tension between interactivity and narrative.

Treating interactive narratives as role-playing creates a contract between the designer and the player, such that: The designer promises to provide a credible,

coherent story if and only if… The player promises to behave in credible,

coherent ways.

Summary

The combination of human-written, embedded, but character-agnostic situations, plus a character simulator, offers: More flexibility than hard-coded narratives

and characters. More interesting dramatic possibilities than

a pure social simulator. … and it merits further study.

Conclusion

No other form of interactiveentertainment tries to be all

things to all players.

Why should interactive stories have to shoulder that

burden?

It’s time to stop apologizing for

not working miracles,and get on with the job.

ewadams@designersnotebook.comwww.designersnotebook.com+44-1252-665215

I’m a member of

A New Vision for Interactive Stories

Ernest W. Adams