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I’ve seen your intriguing contributions on GTxA and a couple other places, and I’m happy to see someone attacking these problems from the writer’s camp, instead of the Comp. Science camp. My own meager efforts are over for the time being, but I managed to get a PhD. thesis out of it, which is up here – http://www.thealmosfunkband.com/backup/SGOPIATE.pdf –

I think my approach is at least sipping from the petrol can (which, by the way, I think Chris Crawford originally trekked all the way to the petrol station to fill)

Hope you’re even less lonely now ;)

I feel much less lonely already :-)

Yes, this can be helpful. I use Espen Aarseth?s distinction between texton and scripton, but with a twist: since I’m dealing with natural language, I have input scriptons and output scriptons, with a system of textons “in between”, and a traversal function that takes an input scripton and generates an output scripton from it (an interpreter, basically). The code is organised so that input scriptons correlate with “drama” – the PC is the character in (a varying degree of) conflict with the NPC, and her input is the way she expresses that -, the output scriptons correlate with “story” – the sequence of output scriptons that are communicating the results computed from any sequence of input scriptons -, and the textons and the traversal function afforded by them correlate with “medium”.

I believe it’s the former, and I also believe we’re all just doing the obvious. As a rough formulation: “Interactivity is being able to always tell the What and the Why”. If that could be the ground were engineers and storytellers congregate, I would see that as a major step forward in our ability to communicate.

Once you decide not to do a branching narrative but a detailed simulated world with human motivations and intentions, you rather face the problem of having to create complete and robust AIs far beyond anything that has ever been made! And pure increases in processing power will not solve it. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
– Jesper

An alternative is to face the problem of simulating a suitable AI, in a piecemeal fashion – an AI that is not based on a huge body of “common sense information” (whatever that is), but on what Aubrey has, in that other recent discussion revolving aroung the same theme, called the “Edge Metaphor”: “a percievably logical reason why the player can’t leave the designated world space”. To me, half of what makes stories useful in the context of interactivity is that they provide those edge metaphors. The other half is that they provide structure and coherence for what’s inside of these edges.

Our interface into a game is entirely crippled by a tiny amount of bandwidth, and a limited vocabulary of abilities. It?s easily for us to believe that each AI actor ALSO only has that range of expression within the game world. – Aubrey

Being human, I regard my interface into the world as being “crippled” like that. No offense meant, but Jesper’s dictum “What goes on in a game is considered ‘unreal’; has another status than the rest of the world” just does not work for me. If my experience of “what goes on” when I’m playing a game, reading a book, watching a movie, really had “another status than the rest of the world”, I don’t think that I would bother doing it. Any medium only ever works for me if I can recognize myself in “what goes on”, i.e. if it’s compatible with the way in which I construct my world. That’s why it’s so difficult for me to appreciate stories and games that come from cultures I’m unfamiliar with – I need to expand my bandwidth and vocabulary before I can comprehend the range of expression available to the characters that I encounter therein, and realize how they map to my own.

So, no, I don’t believe that there is “a completely craziness going on with AI”, as Nelson suggests there is. To me, it’s just that both engineers and storytellers, having attacked the same problem from opposite sides for some time, now have worked through to the realization that 1. it is possible to build what Blue calls “an emergent system with a controlled outcome”, and 2. to do that successfully involves painstakingly defining and motivating all of the objects and object relationships in that system, in a process that seems to be, in essence, non-automatable: TANSTAAFL. As long as AIs are incapable of understanding the What and the Why of their actions, human storytellers just will have to simulate them doing it. Doing so lots of work (I like to compare it to cell animation, and believe that, regarding available tools and procedures, we’re in the Steamboat Willie phase of this emerging [sic] craft), but some of us are actually doing this now, and yes, I actually think that we’re quite sane, thank you.

For realism and then anthropomorphism, just think about Disney or Ken Perlin works

Me: Way to take my quote me out of context. I made a specific comment about abstraction and you ignored it. Anthropomorphism is a form of abstraction, as is impressionism. And, as we all know, impressionism is a development of realism.

Nelson: What you are calling for reality in a movie, is nothing more than film conventions developed through decades, accepted by masses as true expressions of reality and that you learnt to understand since your infancy, seeing TV and movies. I could give you interminable references for this, but once you?re considering me as an ignorant, I believe that you wouldn?t be interested in any of them.

Me: Don’t make judgements about my upbringing or disposition and then accuse me of being closed minded. And with regard to realism and film conventions, I have a thorough background in film study and I am fully aware of those conventions. I am not talking about the realism of a situation, I am talking about realism of experience. Like, when say, a cartoon character smiles, it helps if the smile behaves as the audience might expect to behave. Or that arms and legs bend where they are supposed to. Or when characters have actual motives for the things they do (although this can be subverted to dramatic effect).

Nelson: Blue: Newsflash – Half Life 2 is a form of emergent design?

According to Steven Johnson, yes.

Me: As well as every biology and psychology class I’ve ever taken.

Nelson: t was a joke, didn?t you get it? Only taking into account an old Cartesian dualism mind/body, we could think about these myths and fairy-tales. If we assume a more recent scientific perspective of no possible separation between mind and body, there is no possibility for mind transferences over networks, or even for artificial mind creations, because we ?humans? only exists as a ?mind + body? entities. Your thoughts, your reality view depends not only of your mind interpretation and meaning construction but also of your body responses that helps you in the process of reasoning through emotions.

Me: I don’t disagree with you here too much, just a few nitpicks. Emergent intelligence simulations are possible if you simulate body functions with a programmed system, a la the Matrix. Also, emotion itself is a body response because all thought is simply a function of chemistry in the brain, a physical realm itself.

Nelson: I don?t know, what ?live action roleplaying? is. Is it a mix of theatre drama plus paintball socializing? What is the success of it as a storytelling form, has it any type of popular wide acceptance as movies, books or even theatre?

Me: Live action roleplaying is like playing D&D, except you act out the parts. It has wide acceptance in old soviet bloc countries and Israel. Also, it is fairly widespread, though not as much as in the aformentioned areas, in the USA.

Nelson: I believe that I?m giving preference to this relation, because I?m looking at the game as an artefact not as a medium. So I?m going for the relation game-man as the relation movie-man or book-man, which is completely different from the relation man-machine-man.

Me: I don’t disagree with this, (I don’t think Game-man is the same as movie-man, though. And really, I’m not sure why you brought that up in the first place) I and I don’t think all games should be played out by live human characters. But I do think that if you simulate human characters, give them motivations and build a setting specifically tailored to these motivations, more could be accomplished with this style of system (it is more robust and dynamic) than with a traditional plot-tree or quest system. Like how events based on emergently designed physics are better and more robust than events based on scripting.

There. :P

Yes. “I, Robot”, (2004), by Alex Proyas, suggested by Isaac Asimov’s book

Blue: You can?t just sidestep the whole conversation by declaring airily that “Interactive Storytelling is not looking for that.”

Don?t take out of context my arguments, please. I didn?t declare that. I said ? “I believe?”

Blue: And I read Steven Johnson?s book. Give us a little credit, for god?s sake.

I didn?t assume that you or anybody else hasn?t read it. I was only passing information about the theme to the forum and not to anyone in particular. The point was sharing information. I don?t know everything, and so I?m also willing to get new bibliographies, new information, new perspectives, and new visions, are it from industry or from academy.
“Emergence”, is an interesting book that tries to describe a very complex concept through a cool and well communicative writing. Steve Johnson is a journalist not a scientist (at least in the way he writes his books). So, if you?re really into try a deeper understanding of what he is “trying” to say, you must look for other sources.

I?m no expert in emergence. And being this a forum where we are discussing game/storytelling theory, I assume that most of the people are also not experts in that area. So it is a bit annoying, seeing deep and very complex genetic, mathematic or physic?s concepts as “Emergence”, “Chaos Theory” or “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle” being treated with light weight in discussions of new media or videogames.

Blue: Newsflash – Half Life 2 is a form of emergent design…

According to Steven Johnson, yes.

Blue: ALL stories told by humans are based on human experiences, so the natural destination for ANY storytelling medium is more realistic and\or vibrant characters, plots, and settings.

For realism and then anthropomorphism, just think about Disney or Ken Perlin works.

Blue: Saying that all games need to be implausible and unrealistic representations of reality? is like saying that all movies have to have 50 ninja fights, and villains must be incontrovertibly evil. It is an ignorant view, and damaging to the medium.

What you are calling for reality in a movie, is nothing more than film conventions developed through decades, accepted by masses as true expressions of reality and that you learnt to understand since your infancy, seeing TV and movies. I could give you interminable references for this, but once you?re considering me as an ignorant, I believe that you wouldn?t be interested in any of them.

Blue: And to think that Emergently designed personas ? resent being used as “slaves” is so ridiculous?. they will be completely unknowing of the nature of the world that they live in?

It was a joke, didn?t you get it? Only taking into account an old Cartesian dualism mind/body, we could think about these myths and fairy-tales. If we assume a more recent scientific perspective of no possible separation between mind and body, there is no possibility for mind transferences over networks, or even for artificial mind creations, because we “humans” only exists as a “mind + body” entities. Your thoughts, your reality view depends not only of your mind interpretation and meaning construction but also of your body responses that helps you in the process of reasoning through emotions.

Blue: And with regard to your comment on having writers and actors simply play parts (this is all directed at Nelson, by the way), what do you think live action roleplaying is?

I don?t know, what “live action roleplaying” is. Is it a mix of theatre drama plus paintball socializing? What is the success of it as a storytelling form, has it any type of popular wide acceptance as movies, books or even theatre?

I?m not chasing a type of interactive storytelling experience achieved through multiplayer or massive multiplayer systems, because these are completely different forms of the IS single experience. The first one uses the computer/game as a mediator between persons, helping in creating complex and social relations, and so can maybe be an easier path to arrive at a certain type of IS. The second one is an object, which must interact alone with the person, it has not the advantage of having another complex being in the other side of the court to help rising the complexity of actions, and so to rise the moral controlled uncertainty of the system. I believe that I?m giving preference to this relation, because I?m looking at the game as an artefact not as a medium. So I?m going for the relation game-man as the relation movie-man or book-man, which is completely different from the relation man-machine-man.

You can’t just sidestep the whole conversation by declaring airily that “Interactive Storytelling is not looking for that.”

And I read Steven Johnson’s book. Give us a little credit, for god’s sake.

I’m wondering if YOU read it. Emergent systems are defined by how individual elements LIMIT other individual elements, causing them to behave in particular ways. Thus, any game that has even a predefined setting is rigged, and is not a true Interactive Story by the definition you accuse us of having.

Newsflash – Half Life 2 is a form of emergent design. There is no scripting system in the game. All objects are arranged in such a way as to interact with each other on a individual level, following the laws of physics and such. The player simply adds his interaction to the already complex web of forces that exists within the game, and it is designed in such an elegant way as to allow individual and interactive gaming experiences that are balanced in pace and emotional tenor.

ALL stories told by humans are based on human experiences, so the natural destination for ANY storytelling medium is more realistic and\or vibrant characters, plots, and settings. Thus, it is only natural that we begin to push characters to be more psychologically similar to human beings (I mean, they are already shaped like us on the outside, aren’t they?). Saying that all games need to be implausible and unrealistic representations of reality (not to trash abstraction, which is a simplification, or streamlining of reality), is like saying that all movies have to have 50 ninja fights, and villains must be incontrovertibly evil. It is an ignorant view, and damaging to the medium.

And to think that Emergently designed personas, A.I.’s (which, as has been stated repeatedly, are a long way off) with moral codes and such would somehow resent being used as “slaves” is so ridiculous that I’m not even sure it warrants a response. FYI, they only become slaves, dissatisfied with their lot in life, if they have an extension into PHYSICAL REALITY. Otherwise, they will be completely unknowing of the nature of the world that they live in. The whole crutch of the matrix was that people could somehow sense that they were in a world not their own, and could “snap out of it”.

Ok, /rant off

People seem to forget that ultimately, we’re not trying to simulate reality in creating I.S. Percievably conventional stories can be created from far, faaar more cut-back notions of the real world, and frankly, players benefit from systems that are seemingly simple – an overcomplex system creating perceivably random crap dumps on players’ ideas of causality, taking them out of the game.