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Oh-ohhh, What a Beautiful (Story)World
By Corvus | May 31, 2006
Christy Dena, academic blogger from WRT (link) and CME (link) stopped by my participation post (link) and left some thoughts (Christy, hopefully you also saw the follow up post (link)). Here’s what she had to say. Let’s see if I can get a coherent response on the page before I have to head off to Video Kink.
Hello Corvus et al, I know Chris’ application is slightly different but I think the notion of a storyworld approach to writing is quite important. I’m seeing it in so many formats: virtual worlds, franchises, cross-mediaentertainment, interactive drama. The difference, for me, is that the author approaches creating a storyworld: the characters, setting, rules of the world (abstract and programmed), history and so on. Events are also thought of, but as parts of a storyworld, over time, in different locations. The world is not constituted by the events, following one after another, but as incidential, inhabiting the world. Events do not maketh the world. I find this an important distinction because of my work in cross-media entertainment. These types of stories are constructed using what I call ‘polymorphic narrative’. The events are distributed over time and space, in different media, different formats. And sometimes, the events are up to the “audience”/interactors etc. A stage needs to be set, however, before-hand. A storyworld approach, to me, means putting the creation of a rich world above that of the events; within that storyworld is the capacity to have numerous iterations initiated by any range of producers from those originally there, commissioned, encouraged and not.
Just wanted to share how I see storyworlds…I’m interested in your response.
First off, I’ve been trying to think of a good metaphoric expression for my problem with Chris’s approach to this issue. The best I can come up with thus far sounds a little like this:
I am designing the perfect hammer. It will be revolutionary if I can just get everyone to see how brilliant it is. In order to make everyone see how innovative and perfect my hammer is, I need carpenters. I don’t want professional carpenters, though. Professional carpenters are too complacent using their outdated tools. Only upstart, untried, carpenters will be able to adapt to using this hammer
Oh, and you can’t actually drive any nails with this hammer. Oh no, it’s too radical for that. This hammer can only be used for theoretical nails.
All right, you were probably with me up until that last paragraph. I feel that to call something a Storyworld is all well and good, up until the point that you exclude the ability to communicate stories… which Chris has flat out stated is the case. To my mind what he’s building is a Narrative Sandbox Engine, or even a Drama Engine. And I think he’s onto something interesting, too… it just isn’t something I’d call a Storyworld. Storyworlds ought, I believe, to allow one to tell stories.
Numerous times during the discussion of games and their ability to communicate stories, I have had people say that without a human storyteller, games won’t be compelling participatory storytelling devices. To get at the ‘why’ of this, I have done a lot of exploration into the nature of story, narrative, plot, and gameplay, especially story. What I’ve concluded is that story is a difficult to define nugget of intangible something that resides in the heart of a narrative. It consists of equal parts storyteller implication, storylistener inference, and world details imagined by both (the fabula defined by scholars of Russian folklore). It is story, first and foremost, which can make a game, or any other narrative, resonate in the minds of the audience.
It was this definition of story which led me to focus on the greater issue of participation, rather than interaction. Interaction implies granular ability to manipulate nouns through the application of verbs. Participation implies a sense of community and complicity in the unfolding of events. Story is the what, the Storyworld is the where (and arguably also the when), everyone involved is the who, Interaction is the how, and Participation is the why.
So what about the Storyworld itself? What form should it take? What makes it possible? What are its limitations and strengths? Our Honeycomb engine is being built with text interfaces, 2d interfaces, and 3d interfaces in mind. Space can ether be continuous, or isolated regions, depending on the Storysource’s needs…
Storysource. I just coined that, so let me clarify. Everyone participating in a Honeycomb Engine game will have a measure of Storytelling capability. This is done passively, as the engine is being built to provide meaningful information about character actions. For example, if you begin to horde iron in a warehouse on the north end of town, the system will note the pooling of a resource and, if not restrained, react to such an event. This will lead to events which become part of a story unique to your character. Other Storytellers will have more power than that, with the ability to craft events and characters which are dynamically spread across the information-scape of the Storyworld. Still others, the Storyworld administrators, have complete control to kill plots, produce characters on the fly, and set reactions to in-world events that were out of their control. To distinguish between the world crafter and the audience, I’m considering using Storysource for that administrative position.
Back to the show… The Storysource will have the power to limit freedoms within their Storyworld. There are three layers of narrative that run throughout the Honeycomb Engine. Primary narratives are the Storysource created meta-plots. Secondary narratives are also from the Storysource, but do not directly relate to the met-plot. Tertiary narratives are dynamic, system spawned, narratives. The Storysource may opt to allow their Storyteller participants to restrict which narratives are available to them as well. This means a Storyworld may have all three levels, or a subset of the three levels, of plot available and each individual Storyteller will have the capability of only participating in the levels of narrative that interest them.
…and I have now run out of time. I’ll encapsulate my response in the following sentence and follow up with another post this evening or tomorrow…
Storyworlds allow you to tell stories.
May 31st, 2006 at 10:16 am
The world is not constituted by the events, following one after another, but as incidential, inhabiting the world. Events do not maketh the world. I find this an important distinction because of my work in cross-media entertainment. These types of stories are constructed using what I call ‘polymorphic narrative’. The events are distributed over time and space, in different media, different formats. And sometimes, the events are up to the “audience”/interactors etc.
Herein is my prime issue with the concept of a storyworld. It’s not that I deny that emergent narratives don’t exist, it’s just that I haven’t found them to be compelling forces for a solid narrative. While the interactions in an online world might make for an interesting anecdote, most of them translate into a sort of “you had to be there” kind of experience. Refactoring that experience with AI or emotive engines, in my mind, does nothing to resolve that issue … rather it probably exacerbates it.
The central part of the reason I’m not interesting in interaction via storyworld is the emphasized text above. Events might not maketh a storyworld … but they do maketh a story.
May 31st, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Re: emergent player stories/”storysource”.
The problem is keeping direct PvP from becoming too prevalent.
It’s not a new theory (in fact, I don’t even think it needs a new coined term). I’ve run several tabletops/LARPs with that concept at their core. It makes for a very interesting game, but if handled clumsy, will drive away players who get lured into high-stakes “stories” that cost them more than they really wanted to wager.
June 1st, 2006 at 5:57 am
I have responses to both of your comments, but they’re getting tangled up in a post which won’t see the light of day until this evening or tomorrow.
June 9th, 2006 at 4:57 am
Hello Corvus et al!
I’m so glad you continued this topic as I find it very interesting. I see that I need to clarify, however, what I mean by storyworld. I am not discussing Crawford’s notion of a storyworld specifically and I‘m not talking about emergent narratives, or the ‘where’ of a world, but a phenomenon I believe is taking place. There has been a shift in the way many creators approach a narrative creation and this I have identified as being a ‘storyworld approach’. I see it in the ‘storyworld’ approach of Crawford, in the design of virtual worlds, in the design of cross-media entertainment. But before I clarify this, I’ll bring into this conversation some definitions of a ‘storyworld’.
Narratologist David Herman describes a ‘storyworld’ as part of the process of narrative comprehension, where ‘narrative comprehension is a process of (re)constructing storyworlds on the basis of textual cues and the inferences that they make possible’ [source] In this sense, Herman’s storyworlds are design principles that are inferred from textual clues, that guide the reader’s expectations.
This relates to Lizbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca’s notion of ‘transmedial worlds’. They posit that transmedial worlds ‘are abstract content systems from which a repertoire of fictional stories and characters can be actualized or derived across a variety of media forms’. [pdf] Like Herman, a transmedial world has three categories of rules that enable us to identify and duplicate a world: mythos: which is everything you need to know in order to interact with or interpret events in the world successfully; topos: knowing what is to be expected from the physics of and navigation in the world; ethos: knowing how to behave in the world.
In their careful academic speak, Herman, Klastrup and Tosca are putting forward the idea that a reader/player constructs in their head a whole world that guides their imagination. As a design guideline, K & T are also saying that the three core features need to be consistent in order to participant within the same world (this has relevance in licensed entertainment etc.).
Chris Crawford describes a storyworld as ‘a universe of dramatic possibilities, revolving around a central theme and exploring all the variations of that theme’ (56). In this sense I see Crawford talking about how in an interactive work the user goes through experiencing a range of storylines. For interactive designers, this means creating a range of possible storylines or creating the rules for a user to create them within. Either way, there isn’t one storyline, one story that is envisioned, but many.
The same applies in cross-media entertainment. Though not interactive or player defined, there are multiple storylines. A creator starts with a world, like The Matrix, and decides what storyline will be explored in what media and format at what time, or distributed over many. The creator starts with a bundle of storylines and designs across the various media according to the rules of the storyworld.
So, for me, a storyworld doesn’t just mean the where. A storyworld is all of the stories, all of how, all of the where, when and who. There is no story, no singular event anymore, whether you’re creating linear, interactive or emergent narratives. A storyworld perspective says that you create a world first and the player experiences it one story at a time.
June 9th, 2006 at 9:31 am
[...] This is a long one today. I finally managed to extract the “Design for Failure” post from the Storyworld follow up post and Christy Dena provided me with some more feedback on my last Storyworld post (link) which deserved some response as well. Thanks to everyone who commented, it’s been incredibly informative! [...]