Will Wright and Brian Eno Video

The video started out a little slow but then it got interesting. Wright and Eno talked a lot about generative systems. To my understanding, generative systems use simple rules to develop patterns, and the rules determine how different and complex patterns can get.

I found generative music to be the most interesting generative system. The reason for that is that music, for the most part, has a steady rhythm or beat. The fact that it can be "randomly" generated and still sound good, is very intriguing. Eno basically created the music on the spot and made it fit to the simulation of John Conway's Game of Life. By the way, there's a generative music app called Bloom created by Eno. There are videos of it on youtube of people using it that you can check out because the app is $3.99. The different simulations of Conway's Game of Life were also interesting. When I first played the game when it was assigned at the beginning of the semester, I had no idea what to do, I created a whole bunch of blocks and it didn't even occur to me to click Start. Watching the video and seeing what it's capable of, made me go back and replay the game. This time, I knew more or less what to do and even managed to come up with a few cool patterns.

The video also talked about Spore, a game I heard of a few years ago but never really payed attention to. After watching Wright play the game, I was totally intrigued; I wanted to go out and buy it. The thing that really got to me was the character modeling and texturing. Having had created 3d models from scratch and then seeing this program that can make them with such ease is awesome and I'm dying to try it.

What also intrigued me was that this game, in a sense, gives people a god complex. To create a civilization from a single celled organism and be able to more or less control their action doesn't get more god complex like. Granted the game gives the characters certain aspects of their personality, but that's part of the whole generative system aspect of the game.

The main thing that I took from the video was that stories are a generative system. You can start a simple story, with a few characters and themes, but eventually it will grow and take on a life of it's own. Though you can control aspects of the story, you will have to just go with the flow for the majority of the story. Many authors, especially those that write books with multiple volumes, say that they reach a point where they have little control of their characters and story. The characters essentially have a life of there own, and the author can only build on what's there. The story eventually will develop itself and the author just guides it, much like the generative systems discussed in the video.