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Storyworld Responses, Pt. 2
By Corvus | June 10, 2006
I’m terribly enthused by the response I’m getting to my Storyworldmusings. So much so in fact, that I’m going to pull the conversation into another post so it remains high profile. This would be the third post in an ongoing discussion (Original Post) (Responses, Pt 1).
Josh of Cathode Tan (link):
I think I’m becoming overly sensitive to the gaming development notion that in order for games to become a powerful story medium, the entire notion of storytelling must be re-examined, re-invented and re-delivered. This is why Half-Life’s 2 “tabula rasa” protaganist gets my dander up, just the same as the notion that to tell a story, one must force the player to be the storyteller.
Both cases, in my opinion, are ways of trying to bridge not actually having to tell a story in the first place. Not, I’ll repeat again, that both don’t have value and merits in their own rights. It’s just that telling stories is as old as campfires … and sometimes you don’t need to fix what isn’t broken.
But often times you need to evolve what’s already there. I can think of dozens of examples of games which do a perfectly good job of marrying more traditional storytelling with an interactive media. I cannot think of one which has managed to emulate the sort of Participatory Storytelling that can be achieved by a group of people sitting around a table. You know, the deeper I get into the design of the Honeycomb engine, the less comfortable I am calling it a game engine. It’s really a digital, distributed storytelling tool, which is being built using game elements.
Yeah, as I discussed with the Anti-Character concept posts last year, I don’t think a character with no grounding detail is terribly effective either.
Now for Craig of Project Perko (link):
It takes a lot of chewing to get through this essay, but I think I agree with much of your opinions… with the caveat that I disagree with which you think is better.
There is a lot to be said for a “one way stream”. Most importantly, someone with a clue and a good view can design the next episode, instead of the mish-mash that results from giving random players too much control.
Ex: Eve Online. Much of the plot is by the players, for the players. It’s intriguing… if you’re in the middle of it. Not so interesting for newbies or outsides, except in very rare situations.
But a world with a central stream can be interesting right from the get-go, especially if your central stream story allows players to dive in at any point on any side. Although all PART of the same story, they are not all EXPERIENCING the same story.
Cohesion is important. Thieves World did marginally okay without much central cohesion because everyone involved was a solid pro writer. Your players won’t be.You can write your headwaters using stuff your dabblers have come up with – even put them in a major role. But you can’t just let them splash around.
Yeah, it got a bit chunkier than I expected. I’m glad you took the time to read through it. Although I use them in my non-digital narrative, I hope to not ever provide a one way stream in my shared digital spaces. I consider that approach a “push approach” and while it can be useful, I’m trying to avoid it. What I hope to provide is terribly compelling and forcefull currents which sweep up the audience and provide a compelling draw through the narrative. Your Central Stream musings seem spot on with what I’m talking about, although our semantics differ. I’m not talking about letting the audience alter the Storysource narratives, but allowing the Storysource (both the human and engine portions of it) to effectively respond to their actions.
I wish I had patience for Eve’s interface (I’m not a huge space sim fan), or that they’d release a Linux client so I could slowly adjust myself to it over time (as it is, I only played the demo a bit during a brief visit to my Window’s partition). From the sounds of it, though, they’ve managed to provide an incredible tool for users to create their own story. With a little extra texture and a Storysource, I can only imagine how compelling it would become.
Cohesion is terribly important. Allowing users as much control as Second Life, for example, is not conducive to the sorts of projects I’m interested in, any more than restricting them to a Jade Empire level of participation would be.
Here’s a weakness of metaphor: I was going to suggest in the article that allowing the audience to splash around was a good idea and here you are saying it’s a bad one. What do you consider splashing around?
Moving on to Patrick of King Lud IC (link):
Its fun to pick on Crawford because his voice is particularly nasally and he exudes a sense of purported supremacy. But the objective they pursue is to provide a very literary sort of experience, one which focuses on pure interactivity over agency. Their discussions of presentation suggest that the system is best served by a minimal presentation, with the prospect of encouraging fabula in the users. How succesful this will be is still open to speculation, but that system has its strengths and weaknesses.
Slight tangent, you should read up on the “Drama Princess” blog and assess their approach. Its clear that theres plenty of room in the design space for all kinds of systems.
I think a nice way of looking at the design space is in terms of what sort of perspective the player is offered within the system. While Storytron purports to offer a 3rd person, character centered experience, its seems like its actually closer to the story equivilant of tetris, with direct 1st person interaction through a fairly impersonal interface. I’d say your system is more of a 2nd person deal, letting the players bring their own characterization to the table. I’m interested in the single-player and limited multiplayer potential or the 3rd person, “blind captain” approach, where the player is given a character to operate through, and that character both contextualizes the experience and provides cues to ease the interaction.
As far as “storyworld” as a term goes, I think its really a matter of marketing tastes, the execution of which tends to speak volumes louder than any academic settlement.
Remember, design space is always vaster than you imagine it to be.
I don’t mean to pick on Crawford, although I can see why it would seem that I am. I simply have an issue with the label ‘Storyworld’ as it applies to his system. That being said, I’m very interested to see the sorts of experiences that will be created with his system.
I’d bookmarked the Drama Princess site, but I haven’t delved into it yet. For those of you who are curious, Patrick is referencing a project from Tale of Tales, the same people who brought us Endless Forest (link).
I don’t mean to imply that my approach is the only (or even best) approach. But it’s mine and I’ll use every opportunity I can to compare it to other people’s and explain why I think my approach is the better path to reach my goals. Trust me, when I see someone doing something that trumps my design idea, I’ll be adapting!
Give me some time to digest your perspective observations and get back to you. Ideally the engine will be flexible enough to provide multiple experiences, but let me see how I can explain that more in depth.
Good point about Storyworld being a marketing term and I’ve tacked your last statement to the wall next to my desk. “Design space is always vaster than you imagine it to be,” indeed!
And last but not least, Christy of Cross Media Entertainment (link):
I see there is still confusion here. But this is good, because there are alot of terms that are polysemous, and we’re all coming from transdisciplinary approaches. While I find your discussion about the differences between story, plot and narrative fascinating that isn’t what I’m talking about. I see now that you’re associating “storyworld” with “fabulaworld” and I can see why. [And I don’t think Herman’s “storyworld” replaces “fabula”. Herman is talking specifically about the mental construction that occurs, how a person evaluates textual cues and their expectations. It moves beyond what is known into the perceived rule-set that governs that world as incited by the elements in the text. Fabula is the story, the chronology of the events, as they are defined by the text (but not necessarily the order they were relayed) — nothing more. Tell me if you think I’ve got the distinction wrong.]
A storyworld is everything that exists in media (whether by one-way or two-way means; and whether invited or not) and every possible creation (unrealised narratives as they exist in potential states in a program). It is basically a term to bundle all the events that exist/can exist within a world. ‘Story’ is used because it implies fiction, it implies a creation; but it isn’t meant to imply a storyline. Star Wars is a storyworld, The Matrix is a storyworld, Lord of the Rings is a storyworld. A storyworld approach stands back and sees the whole narrative universe rather than each instantiation at a time.
A storyworld approach to writing assumes that characters and events take place beyond the each storyline and so parallel events are also created, possible events are created, contradictory events are also created, or at least the potential for them is. A storyworld isn’t governed by the same laws as our world (or as we know it to be!). All possibilites exist, it is a quantum world that allows the observer to experience each bit at a time but has alternates running simultaneously. A storyworld approach also acknowledges that people like to experience a world in different ways at different times. Sometimes they want to see it through this character, sometimes another, sometimes they want to sit back and be told bits, sometimes they want to collaborate, sometimes they want to be the sole creator or a part of their beloved universe; sometimes they want a snippet, sometimes a week-long frenzy; sometimes they want to read it in a book in bed, sometimes weave through code and sometimes squeeze a toy nose…They’re all part of it though. I’m talking nothing less than the creation of entire world, a world that is accessed/experienced/created through books, computers, theatres, plays, poems, pictures…a storyworld.
I don’t know that there’s confusion. I think, perhaps, there’s disagreement or a need for clarification, which is another beast altogether. My point was not that Storyworld directly equates to story-line, but that if the capability to tell stories within the space was non-existant, it rendered the term Storyworld somewhat meaningless. I tend to re-emphasize my definitions of Story as it relates to Plot and Narration whenever I use the terms, as I want to make sure people understand that when I say Story, I’m referring to something elusive and nearly magical that infuses the narratives we create.
My understanding of Fabula, and if I had a copy of Role of the Reader, I’d quote Umberto Eco directly to support this (or debunk myself and withdraw my position), was that when the author writes, “cramped, dingy room,” and the reader pictures dishes on the counters, roaches scattering at the sounds of footsteps, and piles of old newspaper on the floor,” all those reader provided elements are Fabula. When the author says a character, “arrived out of breath, dripping wet” and the reader imagines the character’s run through the rain, that added mental scene is Fabula. So, you can see, that my working definition of Fabula is exactly what Herman is talking about.
There’s nothing in your second paragraph that isn’t echoed in the body of my last post. We seem to be in complete accord there.
And I completely agree with the last paragraph as well. It’s precisely what I’ve done over the last… gosh, almost 20 years now. The decision to move my Storyworld into a digital space is what has prompted me to start development on the Honeycomb Engine. No other interface will allow people to participate in the world in a manner that I’m comfortable with.
Thanks again for the ongoing feedback and discussion!
June 10th, 2006 at 9:45 am
But often times you need to evolve what’s already there.
I’ll disagree with only the use of a single word … need. My problem with a lot of the debate in general on storytelling and games is the focus that games shouldn’t behave as traditional mediums do … that you must use participation or tangents or something to form a powerful narrative.
When in truth, what’s really happening is making an already difficult task all that much more difficult. Telling a really good linear story with nothing more than pen and paper is hard enough. What I fear is that people, in the pursuit of dynamic story engines or AI based actors or whatnot, will forget that sometimes the good old fasioned method is still a tried and true one.
And I know it’s my favorite kicking boy, but I need to go no further than Half-Life 2. Everyone marvels at how Valve doesn’t intrude on “your” participation as Gordon. And it’s grand that the game never relies on normal cinematics …. so …
A game considered an epitome of advanced game storytelling has no real protaganist and very little plot. I don’t see this as evolution. The Sims is also a favorite son of the interactive story crowd and yet, I have yet to hear a compelling narrative being built from it.
Again, I acknolwedge I’m largely speaking on a tangent here … moaning more about perhaps, what could happen if one didn’t do something rather than try something completely new. I’m all for the completely new. But I’d say that the game industry still hasn’t learned the lesson that Doom’s story didn’t suck because of anything dealing with technology … but rather that it had a bad story.
Or to put it another way … were I to choose which built a better narrative … Max Payne or Half-Life 2 or Sims … Max Payne will win every time. And it was built on little more than 2D panels and linear plot. If Doom had used the exact same mechanism … completely plausible with it’s level of tech, we might still be talking about the story it told today.
June 10th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Re: Josh’s comments:
There will always be a place for linear storytelling, but like Corvus, I think that we can use a more robust, interactive form of storytelling in games. The fact that most of our good stories to date have been using classical methods means nothing: we have had two thousand years to focus on those methods, and have had around ten years to try to figure out the new methods.
Also, I couldn’t freaking STAND Half Life 2. It was one of the most poorly designed games I’d ever seen. As for “story”, I considered it the second weakest portion of the game, right behind the vehicle levels.
Re: Corvus’ comments:
I think a good push can allow you to create a very powerful game world, and it sounds like you agree. I think our primary disagreement on that matter is level of pushing.
I think that a talented guide is critical to establishing and maintaining a cohesive world. Moreover, I think that the central “pushed plot” needs to affect everyone in the game world, to allow for a level of useful cohesion. This sounds like it’s somewhat more aggressively centralized than your ideas.
June 10th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Corvus: Storytron “storyworlds” are systematized webs that spit out descriptions in Deikto, which’ll give you clunky caveman language, but the whole essence of the experience they’re trying to create is that the player will read these basic sentences and induce fabula from them, a sort of literary immersion. If you’re going to take issue with it, take issue with the way it provides agency. Crawford’s aim is that players will be able to have lots of global effect navigating a sea of scripts offering constrained local verb selection, and from that tell their own stories. What he meant in the original interview about there being “no story” was that embedded narrative will be non-existent or minimal, the aim is, as you correctly point out, a complete systemization of “story”, whatever that means in their engine’s context. There might be a paragraph of embedded text at the outset of a storyworld, and maybe at some endings, maybe, that’ll be about all the “storyline” in the thing.
Josh: Personally, I don’t care if the narratives generated by stuff I’m involved in creating don’t stand up to the canon of linear literature, though I think they might be able to stand up to the story seen in some decent anime series’ or maybe Grimm’s fairy tales. When designing an interactive play experience, the key is the experience, not the rules or fiction alone but the confluence between them. I think focusing on including social challenge and character empathy in a game experience is a more useful goal than including narrative cohesion. The latter’d be nice, but I think the prior would be enough to prompt the player to fabulize their own sort of experiential cohesion.
It seems like you’re argument is “why try to systematize story elements when we can’t even write a decent storyline for a game”, and theres something to this. But consider that all games are composed of rules and fiction, even a system where the rules deal with story from the bottom-up. So your argument is actually parrallel to the problems of designing and engineering dramatic game systems, good writing is always a good thing, but good writing alone won’t bring this art form to fruition.
Christy: while I share your optimism regarding transmedial storytelling, and what I think (perhaps radically) are its logical conclusions: pervasive gameing/storytelling, social reimagining, the dissolution of the difference between the real and virtual – Crawford’s use of the term is distinct from yours. He means “storyworld” in a specific sense of something playable made with Storytron, and in a more general sense of something playable made with the Facade technologies or another drama engine. I’m pretty sure he isn’t terribly interested in transmedial storytelling, he’s interesting in interactivity first and foremost. That said, Storytron might make for some good literary and film adaptations, I’d personally like to do a storyworld based on The Aristocrats. Just picture that.
June 10th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Wow. Great comments again from my usual suspects. Expect more follow up tomorrow or Monday!
June 10th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Patrick:
But consider that all games are composed of rules and fiction, even a system where the rules deal with story from the bottom-up. So your argument is actually parrallel to the problems of designing and engineering dramatic game systems, good writing is always a good thing, but good writing alone won’t bring this art form to fruition.
Mostly agreed, hence my acknolwedgement that I’m arguing more of a tangent than a point. What grinds my gears, to quote Peter Griffin, is rather when the new mechanics are used to cover up or excuse lack of a story. Or rather, “even if you don’t systemize, at least fictionalize”. Or. Something. English grads are allowed to invent new words right?
Craig:
Also, I couldn’t freaking STAND Half Life 2. It was one of the most poorly designed games I’d ever seen. As for “story”, I considered it the second weakest portion of the game, right behind the vehicle levels.
*tips hat*
June 10th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
Patrick, I know Crawford’s notion of a “storyworld” is different”, just as a MMOG “storyworld” is different, the same with cross-media entertainment/transmedia storytelling/distributed narratives/cross-sited narratives/polymoprhic narrative. Perhaps I’m the only one that sees it (it is a nice view on the edge of somewhere else!), but I see a pervasive shift in the way many different types of storytellers are approaching storytelling. Corvus has been doing this for 20 years, that is why I brought up the topic with you Corvus. I see the shift from creating a storyline to creating a storyworld, from creating one path to creating a world. This approach, although it begins inside the skull, affects the output of the writer. To me, some interactive storytelling, virtual worlds and cross-media entertainment is evidence of this shift. Rther than being the domain of a few, it is becoming pervasive. I guess part of the problem is that I’m saying your approach to storytelling is not unique to the form you’re working on. That people with different software structures, people using linear media, people using different media can share the same approach to story. Although of course each is the individual artists’ expression of how they think it works, how it can manifest, and each has its own unique set of skills.
But back to the term “storyworld”, as a term to describe everything within a fictional universe. Since some have considered it “marketing” (though I should note for the record that it has been used in narratology for decades, Umberto Eco even used it), I’m interested to hear what better terms you’ve heard or think of would be more appropriate. I like storyworld because it is accessible to industry and academia, but the variety of meanings we’ve ploughed through here is an indication that it may not be as effective. What other terms do you think capture it better?
I’d like to add too that I’ve loved talking this through with you guys. It has been really good fro me to clarify what I’m talking about and an absolute thrill to talk about it with people who understand narrative and are working with emerging forms. And yes Corvus, I understand why you describe story, narrative and plot: you’re having multiple conversations at once!
Cheers, Christy
June 10th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Christy: Totally. I completely feel you. Many television shows, films and books released recently seem to carry a greater and greater tinge of game-like qualites, just as games are carrying greater and greater tinges (or even outright systemic designs) of narrative. I got an idea about an hour ago of writing a contemporary reimagining of Measure for Measure, maybe set in the fifies or something, but my relexive thought after having the idea was “that’d probably be more worth doing as a film.” My experience writing novels and miring through the usual post-structural angst has led me to believe that interactivity is just a better art form, or a persoanlly preferred one; I think that a lot of the efforts of post-structural writers and theorists has been to essentailly arrive at interactive story.
And since I’m a naive transhumanist, I’ll take it even further than most academics, and suggest that reality itself is transforming into a highly dynamic story/game told interactively between patricipants. Virtual worlds are only the prototype. The universe is an MMO and capitalism is crunch time.
But, I’m pretty sure what prompted Corvus onto this extened mini-series on “storyworlds” isn’t a problem with the term, its a pretty decent one, though I’m not sure if it has more marketing potential than “game”. The storytronics people certainly seem to think so. I think Corvus’ problem, and my problem as well, is with the design philosophy behind Storytron.
Corvus describes his complaint in the engine’s systematic neglect of participation, I describe it as a lack of local agency. Either way, its a highly abstracted engine that seems to take the wetness right out of stoytelling. The interface is a clue enough, but combined with the obstinate conviction that Storytron should remain “pure” and avoid flashy front-ends, or things like character body postures and any sort of expressive text, and you can’t help but feel that the revolution hasn’t yet arrived.
That said, I’d like to take advantage of the zero overheads involved in their buisiness model and explore the potential of the technology. Though I suspect that Micheal Samyn of the Drama Princess project is correct in his prediction that character interaction in storytron will seem shallow compared to the empathy seen in linear stories, probably because the design of the engine is centered on a single level of interaction that hinges on a homogenous data structure and character model. The character interaction will certainly be better than anything seen in videogames, however, which is why a few dozen people have signed up for their message boards and voiced interest in being early adopters.