The Art of Storytelling
I've been reading the Art of Interactive Storytelling by Chris Crawford. His take on interactive storytelling and explanation of what it means is very insightful and has probably been the best explanation I've heard yet. One way he described it was through a Romeo and Juliette analogy:
The difference between an interactive Romeo and Juliet omeo and Juliet is the same difference as that between Chris Crawford and a portrait of Chris Crawford. Yes, the portrait contains a single truth, powerfully made. (Who knows? Perhaps Ms. Mona Lisa was really just a dull Italian housewife, nowhere near as intriguing as her portrait.) But ultimately, it presents a single truth, where interactivity provides many viewing angles to truth. Some of those viewing angles will not be as dramatic or as powerful as others. We should not dismiss interactivity as inferior because it fails to winnow out the less revealing angles. Interactivity shows all of the viewpoints on a truth, strong and weak. Its catholicity of viewpoint is its strength; its undiscriminating nature is its weakness. Let us not condemn it for its weakness without also recognizing its concomitant strength.
He goes on to describe interactivity in storytelling as a complex relationship between storyteller and audience where instead of the outcome being singular, such as X led to Y, the outcome of the story relies on if X, then Y. Where X is largely imagined by the audience. He then writes of his site called Erasmatron. The engine actually executes the interactive storytelling; the Erasmatron is the development environment used by the author to specify and edit the data and rules fed into the engine. The Erasmatron includes editors, navigational aids, and rehearsal tools. The big idea behind the Erasmatron is to make interactive storytelling technology directly accessible to artists. What makes this radical step possible is a transfer of the programming task to the artist in a form that is comfortable and accessible. I have created a special programming/storytelling language that jettisons all the picky trivia that make programming such a tedious process.
The difference between an interactive Romeo and Juliet omeo and Juliet is the same difference as that between Chris Crawford and a portrait of Chris Crawford. Yes, the portrait contains a single truth, powerfully made. (Who knows? Perhaps Ms. Mona Lisa was really just a dull Italian housewife, nowhere near as intriguing as her portrait.) But ultimately, it presents a single truth, where interactivity provides many viewing angles to truth. Some of those viewing angles will not be as dramatic or as powerful as others. We should not dismiss interactivity as inferior because it fails to winnow out the less revealing angles. Interactivity shows all of the viewpoints on a truth, strong and weak. Its catholicity of viewpoint is its strength; its undiscriminating nature is its weakness. Let us not condemn it for its weakness without also recognizing its concomitant strength.
He goes on to describe interactivity in storytelling as a complex relationship between storyteller and audience where instead of the outcome being singular, such as X led to Y, the outcome of the story relies on if X, then Y. Where X is largely imagined by the audience. He then writes of his site called Erasmatron. The engine actually executes the interactive storytelling; the Erasmatron is the development environment used by the author to specify and edit the data and rules fed into the engine. The Erasmatron includes editors, navigational aids, and rehearsal tools. The big idea behind the Erasmatron is to make interactive storytelling technology directly accessible to artists. What makes this radical step possible is a transfer of the programming task to the artist in a form that is comfortable and accessible. I have created a special programming/storytelling language that jettisons all the picky trivia that make programming such a tedious process.
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