Several people have asked a fairly obvious question about the new approach that I’m using with Le Morte D’Arthur. The design has very little branching until the end; it is in effect a linear story right up until the end. This, it seems to many people, means that the interactivity is much reduced. This perception is wrong; it reflects the instant-gratification style of modern gaming, in which effect is instantly produced by cause. This is also why games are so insipid; there’s no subtlety to the game play. You put the coin in the slot, and the candy bar pops out. You shoot the monster, and he’s dead. You use the key on the door and it opens. Everything is immediate and direct. This is fine for young people, but adults expect greater depth and subtlety. One of the major goals of interactive storytelling is to provide interactive entertainment that meets these expectations.
The person playing the Le Morte D’Arthur storyworld will make several hundred decisions during the course of the story. Although the story itself doesn’t change, the decisions of different players will be different, and those decisions determine the values of the global values that will determine the outcome of the story. And in fact, conventional games aren’t that different in fundamental architecture. They have just two fundamental outcomes: you win or you lose. There are endless flavors of these two outcomes, but they remain the fundamental outcome.
The biggest difference between a storyworld and a game is that the storyworld does not provide instant feedback. The player will make hundreds of decisions in Le Morte D’Arthur, and will not know whether they were right or wrong; all the player will know is the end result of all those decisions. This will of course frustrate gamers, who want to be able to calculate their way to victory. They don’t want to have to use their intuition. But in fact, most social reasoning relies on social intuition, not mathematical calculation. The player with strong social intuition should be able to win fairly easily. Sadly, not many gamers have strong social intuition. They’re going to hate it.
The interactivity in a storyworld is just as real as the interactivity in a game, but it’s quite different in style. It is not knee-jerk interactivity; it cannot be calculated; and it extends over a much longer time frame.