I showed up in Chris Crawford’s back yard one Saturday morning, not
knowing quite what to expect, since this was my first Phrontisterion.
My sense of it all now is that this was a significant event in the
ongoing saga of the exploration of a new continent, by a motley crew of
pioneers. I mean motley in a good way, in that I met people with a
variety of backgrounds and viewpoints. It was also a very fine
outdoor setting for a small conference like this, and we were well
taken care of by our host and hostess.
Chris’ new book provided the main focus for the weekend, and this
turned out to be a good way of unifying the discussion. Chris has
managed to say a large number of insightful and useful things in the
Interactive Storytelling book, to a pretty broad audience, and I
applaud this achievement. It probably goes without saying that none of
us would agree with every thought and opinion he expresses, if only
because there are so many of them!
So, where’s the beef? Well, I had a small beef on the first day with
what I perceived as a heavy focus on marketing issues, at the expense,
naturally, of my own pet issues, which seemed rather academic in
comparison. At this stage of the game (and there was talk of both
stages and games), we’re not even sure what an ideal solution looks
like. In part this is because we don’t quite know how to agree – not as
a group, at least – on defining the larger problems we want to solve.
The participants addressed a wide range of issues, of which I now have
more respect for one in particular. The issue of textual vs. graphical
presentation in this context is so pervasive, that it extends all the
way from relatively superficial implementation problems, to deep issues
we don’t yet seem to understand very well. Maybe it will turn out that
we need both text and graphics. I don’t see how we can do without
textual input, since we need language in order to express our
intentions within a storyworld, and consumer-level voice recognition is
not so great as yet. And no commercial success would be possible
without good graphical quality; at least this is widely believed, by
those who would know.
I think that if we understood the scope of some other problems better,
particularly on the subjective side of interactions, the problems of
text vs. graphics would tend to recede somewhat, at least in the short
term. For example, storyworld authoring could benefit from a better
grasp of how participants in a dialogue choose to interpret and respond
to each other in one way rather than another. Until we find more
workable insights into this kind of phenomenon, we likely won’t know
how to represent it more effectively in a storyworld, or how to avoid
creating tasks of impractical complexity for ourselves.
Coming up with problem statements that actually lead us in the right
direction – this seems to be the stage of the game we’re in. Chris has
done more than anyone else I know of to tackle the problem of charting
the territory, and to show us that big, mysterious continent out there.
Plus, he demonstrates a clear sense of direction that is very helpful.
I very much look forward to some online exchanges with this group, and
to the next Phrontisterion.