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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yes, that's fair. that was part of my point, that interactivity should be used to make linear storytelling better. there's no contradiction between interactivity and linear storytelling, you can have an interactive linear story.

[Lyx]

If the game responded to the player actions, then strictly spoken the story wasn't totally linear. What you mean i think is: There is no problem with making a story MOSTLY linear yet still allow minor dynamics as long as they do not significantly change the predefined overall "path" of the game.

So, i guess part of understanding the whole issue is being aware that there are multiple scales of dynamics. A game can make it so that on the micro level, the game progresses dynamically, yet still shapes it so that on the macro level, there is only one path.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Well, I'm not speaking strictly then. I do think the story was linear though. There was a beginning, middle, and end. It's kind of like saying a life isn't linear just because it's interactive. Your life *is* linear, it's also interactive.

[Lyx]

You seem to be twisting terms to "win" an argument pretty hard here.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I apologize if it seems that way -- I don't even really see myself as having a "side" in an "argument" -- I'm just explaining how I see stories and games. I'm not particularly trying to convince anyone of how I see it, just trying to explain it.

Why do you believe that stories which allow choice are not linear? I don't understand why you believe (even strictly speaking) that a story which is interactive can't be linear.

[Alex Vostrov]

yes, that's fair. that was part of my point, that interactivity should be used to make linear storytelling better. there's no contradiction between interactivity and linear storytelling, you can have an interactive linear story.

That's a viewpoint that I want to understand then, because it's not at all clear to me.  I'm going to explain how I see the issue, and you can correct me when I go wrong, ok?

The best definition of interactivity I've found so far is Crawford's.  To paraphrase:

Interactivity is a cyclical process where two agents alternately preform the following actions:

1. Listen
2. Think
3. Speak

In the context of a game, the computer listens to player input, thinks by applying algorithms to the input and speaks via the monitor and speakers.  In order to have something be interactive, all of the above actions must be done well.  You can't listen and speak, but forget to think.

With that definition in mind, how does linear story mesh with interactivity?  The biggest problem is that a linear narrative is not amenable to player modification.  In other words, linear stories don't listen or think.  What they do very well and powerfully is speak.  A pure linear story is not interactive.  On the other end of the scale, interactive systems cannot sustain a plot.  The carefully crafted sequence of events is impossible if the player can just mess with it at will.

I see that these two forces of narrative and agency are fundamentally in conflict.  Therefore, mixing them is a bit like mixing water and oil.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

lyx: another thing I forgot: although I may not be using terms the you are, I don't think I'm twisting them, at least in the sense that I haven't changed my posit -- my proposition from the beginning was always that interactivity should be used to make storytelling better, that storytelling should be adapted to games rather than rejected. If you don't want me to call stories linear if they're interactive, I'm fine with that. We don't have to call them linear. Perhaps we can call them 'structured' or something, or 'time-based' or whichever term you prefer I use.

Alex: I think you're taking this too conceptually. I.e. you're defining what interactivity must be, saying what it must be like, and then saying what games and stories must do in order to fit that definition. As I said earlier, I think empiricism is more important than a priori reasoning. So I just don't really accept the method of defining things and then saying what something has to be like in order to fit that definition. I don't think that's a good way to approach game design generally.

More specifically, you're just defining things like "a pure linear story is not interactive". Why isn't it? As I wrote above, if you don't want to use the term linear, we don't have to. But by linear story I took it to mean a story with a beginning, middle, and end which can be mapped on a timeline. Why is it that you can't allow the player some control in determining that timeline? It's still a line either way.

[Dave Ravel]

Well, I'm not speaking strictly then. I do think the story was linear though. There was a beginning, middle, and end. It's kind of like saying a life isn't linear just because it's interactive. Your life *is* linear, it's also interactive.

All instances of stories are inherently linear, as we experience the world through the continuum of time and you will experience any given story as such. Any story that delivers a beginning, middle, and end in that order is linear. I'm not sure what you would do if somebody were to switch the end and put it at the beginning. I'm guessing that that would still be a linear story, even if the events weren't presented with the same chronology as the way the characters experienced them.

I think what we're actually arguing about is non interactive story (at least non interactive as far as significant differences of plots and events) against interactive story, the difference being the greater flexibility of the latter. A non interactive story is told one way, only one. An interactive story has a much larger possibility space. There are many possible story elements that change based on player input. I don't think this attribute inherently weakens the impact of the story. It is exponentially more difficult once you start dealing with the combinatorial explosion of possibilities, but in the end you would be presented with a linear story and if the writing was sound it should then be as meaningful as a non interactive story. It'd be like writing a hypertext, and attempting to write one of those and still retain deep meaning and significance in all possible paths is incredibly difficult. I think if it was achieved it would be a very powerful thing, because then you would have a configurative text, with many possible linear stories that would emerge from player choice. For anybody who has read Ian Bogost's Unit Operations a configurative text has the potential to house it's meaning in many different places, a single possible presentation of the story is not inherently superior than the myriad of possible presentations of a configurative text.

I think it is a falacy to state that interactive systems cannot sustain a plot, in fact they possess the potential for many plots, of which any one (in an ideal system) would be powerful, possibly even more powerful considering the player's involvement in writing the story.

We seem to be speaking of the real world instances of noninteractive and interactive storytelling so I thought I'd think of the problem in their ideal incarnations. That's not to ignore the great difficulty of constructing interactive stories, but thinking in these terms does prove that your thinking of narrative and agency being fundamentally in conflict isn't true, because not everything is permissible, the possibility space is still decided upon by the author, and the ideal author can make every possible story meaningful by configuring his units of meaning into many combinations that expresses the themes and elements well. There is still the problem of gameplay harmonizing with story but judging from the lack of interest in my last post I assume that's beyond the scope of the discussion.

[Lyx]

Why do you believe that stories which allow choice are not linear? I don't understand why you believe (even strictly speaking) that a story which is interactive can't be linear.

As i - and i would claim most others - understand the term "linear/nonlinear story", it does not refer to what the player experiences, but instead the POSSIBILITIES of alternative experiences which could have happened. The more difficult term is interactivity, because it isn't as clear what its reference should be. Should the reference be that the player can "do" stuff, regardless of if he has a choice? Does the "interactivity" only apply to the hardware-controls? Or does it also apply to that what happens in the game is DECIDED interactively? If we only apply interactivity to the game controls, then ANY game is interactive - heck, even booting up your PC is interactive, because you press a button to make it happen. Meh, even reading a book is interactive in that regard, because you turn pages. But if we also apply the interactivity to how the gameplay develops, then yes, interactivity and linearity is mutually exclusive.

[Alex Vostrov]

Alex: I think you're taking this too conceptually. I.e. you're defining what interactivity must be, saying what it must be like, and then saying what games and stories must do in order to fit that definition. As I said earlier, I think empiricism is more important than a priori reasoning. So I just don't really accept the method of defining things and then saying what something has to be like in order to fit that definition. I don't think that's a good way to approach game design generally.

I don't think that empiricism can discover new ground.  If you're satisfied to investigate and refine what has already been done, then empiricism is your tool.  If you want to imagine what's possible and expand the idea space, then you'll have to contend with a bit of conceptual analysis.

More specifically, you're just defining things like "a pure linear story is not interactive". Why isn't it? As I wrote above, if you don't want to use the term linear, we don't have to. But by linear story I took it to mean a story with a beginning, middle, and end which can be mapped on a timeline. Why is it that you can't allow the player some control in determining that timeline? It's still a line either way.

I feel a bit like you're ignoring the specific points of my argument.  If my definitions are unsatisfactory to you, you should point out why.  Dismissively waving it away doesn't communicate much.  My reasoning was a bit more developed than "a pure linear story is not interactive."  I'm making a bit of effort to understand your viewpoint, Paul.  So far, I haven't gotten anything that I can work with.

I define a linear story as essentially a pre-determined sequence of events.  Insofar that they're pre-determined, they cannot allow player choice.  Let me give an example, if that makes things clearer.

In the game Deus Ex, the player at one point arrests a suspected terrorist - Juan Lebedev.  As this happens, the player's partner Anna Navarre walks in and commands the player to execute the prisoner.  The player has a choice.

1. Obey your superiors and shoot Lebedev
2. Do nothing, in which case Anna kills Lebedev herself
3. Attack your partner and kill her, saving Lebedev

Here are the consequences of all 3 choices:

1. Lebedev dies and you get approval from your higher-ups; eventually they turn on you and arrest you.
2. Lebedev dies and you get reprimanded;  eventually your allies turn on you and arrest you.
3. Lebedev lives, but you never see him again.  Another character erases the evidence of your killing.  Eventually your allies turn on you and arrest you.

To what extent is the choice to spare or take Juan Lebedev's life meaningful?  What consequences does it have?  There are 2 things that are affected by your choice.  Firstly, slightly different audio clips are played immideately after the event.  Secondly, later in the game the player may or may not encounter Navarre as an enemy.  Either way, the core story of the game remains unchanged.  This choice is only marginally meaningful and is largely irrelevant to the plot.

If your goal is to make a richly interactive game, this is quite weak.  The player rightfully feels like their choice didn't have much impact.

[Alex Vostrov]

I don't think this attribute inherently weakens the impact of the story. It is exponentially more difficult once you start dealing with the combinatorial explosion of possibilities, but in the end you would be presented with a linear story and if the writing was sound it should then be as meaningful as a non interactive story.

There's potentially a problem with this approach which is pointed out by Jon Blow.  Books and movies are batch processes and thus will always hold an edge over stories generated in real time.  If interactive stories compete along the same dimensions as previous media, they're destined for inferiority.  The only solution is to harness greater player involvement and develop the medium in new directions.  That is to say that stories made by interactive works should not neccesarily be very story like.

I think it is a falacy to state that interactive systems cannot sustain a plot, in fact they possess the potential for many plots, of which any one (in an ideal system) would be powerful, possibly even more powerful considering the player's involvement in writing the story.

What I was attacking was the idea of the author as an Old Testament God.  Interactive media force the creator to cede some of his control and move to a higher level of abstraction.  This is in stark contrast to static media where the audience takes a passive role.

[Lyx]

The author however doesn't necessary have to give up his "message", as long as that message isn't a single direction which the player is supposed to take. "My point" in my project for example IS the way how the interactivity in the game works - or rather "what" interactivity is in general. The point of the game is interactive exploration and relationships between two beings and how the actions by those two modify what happens. Granted, in this regard i have it very easy here - perhaps as easy as possible. I mean, not everyone wants to create an interactivy story about interactive introspection and relection - many probably prefer to simply engage the player in an interesting world and stuff. Perhaps thats a major point here: Conventional stories are about "telling" the player something.... Dynamic stories are probably more appropriate to create explorable interactive environments.

[Alex Vostrov]

Perhaps thats a major point here: Conventional stories are about "telling" the player something.... Dynamic stories are probably more appropriate to create explorable interactive environments.

I would agree with that general sentiment Lyx.

[Lyx]

Erm, i just remembered something: How could i have taken part in this discussion for so long without mentioning "King of the Dragon Pass" (http://www.mobygames.com/game/king-of-dragon-pass/screenshots) ??

[Alex Vostrov]

Whoa!  Where did Dave Ravel's post go?  It was right there not so long ago.

Also, I'm looking forward to your response, Paul.

[Lucaz]

I think the categorization is quite simple. I usually interpret storytelling as linear(like most point'n'click adventures), branching(most RPGs) and procedural(Dwarf Fortress, Sims). I'd say they all work equally good, it depends on intentions.

Linear plots are good when story isn't central, or when the player isn't supposed to make choices. Branching means you can make a meaningful game, and yet allow the player to makes important choices. And procedural story means you can make a vivid world that reacts to the player choices, and he can write his own story.

None of them is inherently more powerful or immersive than the other. Some games need one, some need another. But it's true that linear stories usually lack, 'cause being completely linear, without player interaction, When it's important to the game, it might grow apart from gameplay, or even conflict it. Procedural storytelling at it's best will still be more shallow than the others. And branching means lots of work, and the more it branches the more likely it is the player will notice what he can't do. It also draws an atention to the plot, that isn't needed in every game.

[Dave Ravel]

Whoa!  Where did Dave Ravel's post go?  It was right there not so long ago.

Also, I'm looking forward to your response, Paul.

Didn't like my third post, terrible composition and examples, although I like where the discussion is going. I'm going to rewrite it tomorrow morning.

[Lyx]

Okay, lets stray from the "generate a central story" approach a bit and take a closer look at what Dave hinted at: Creating an interactive explorable environment, and then let the players interactions be the story.

Funny thing is - if you think about the words "exploration" and "interactive environment", then you notice that there actually are quite a few games which "approached" that direction... they didn't really "arrive" there, but they give practical examples what kinds of games we're talking about here: Sandbox-style games and exploration games.

Ironically, some of the games dont really seem to have recognized the strong link to interactivity. Take for example knytt stories - that game is a lot about mood and exploring the world... which had all those cute inhabitants... i REALLY REALLY wanted to interact with those - i wanted to play with them and explore them.... you know, nothing big... just stuff like throwing a ball at them.... but guess what: nothing.

Or take mount and blade - that game's setup is almost made for exploration and the players interactions with the inhabitants creating the story. But guess what: The game was rushed out of the door with shallow repetitive quests which suck, and a lot of loose ends which appear to were meant to be connected to story aspects later. And what happened after release? A bugfix patch was made, and afterwards the dev decided to focuss on an expansion which will be about..... more battles, better gfx and multiplayer...

Or all those roguelikes? They for *****'s sake have STATIC QUESTS! Static content in a roguelike? Why was it so far fetched to think, that if you can generate meaningful items via placeholder variables in an itemtemplate, you can also generate meaningful quests via cascaded placeholder variables in a questtemplate?!

So whats up with all those games? Their gameplay has the spirit/mindset which we're talking about here - yet they constantly fail to deliver when it comes to interaction and dialogue. It's not as if this is rocket science - they already figured out how to do it with nonstory related things... and often they just would need to do the same with storyrelated aspects? What is it which they miss? My guess is: It is a mix of not recognizing the obvious, and simply having no developers on board which are interested in such a kind of sandbox-style story creation.

P.S.: I just remembered that besides of the unfinished Dwarf Fortress, there IS a roguelike which applied its gamestyle to everything, by partially turning it into a life-sim. Elona.

[Alex Vostrov]

So whats up with all those games? Their gameplay has the spirit/mindset which we're talking about here - yet they constantly fail to deliver when it comes to interaction and dialogue. It's not as if this is rocket science - they already figured out how to do it with nonstory related things... and often they just would need to do the same with storyrelated aspects? What is it which they miss? My guess is: It is a mix of not recognizing the obvious, and simply having no developers on board which are interested in such a kind of sandbox-style story creation.

It's a very hard problem and a lot of people working in the industry don't naturally lean toward solving it.  What is needed is to develop algorithms to simulate a human being.  You need to have characters that have emotions and can act on them in a plausable fashion.  We've barely started on that problem.

[Dave Ravel]

I love the example of Mount and Blade. The first dozen hours I spent in that game were magical, I was in this massive world fighting great battles, laying siege to castles, pillaging the countryside with massive warbands, and winning jousting tournaments. I think I stopped playing once I realized that even though the map was huge, the possibility space and significance of the interactions were pretty limited. Beyond trading, which was the only thing I left out above, there isn't much variety to what you do. Mount and Blade turned out to be a few good ideas replicated across the board in a non flexible fashion. Every king is fighting a war that never truly ends. Every king has one usurper that needs your help. I'd say that's a game that failed to live up to my expectations specifically because they avoided having any sense of story or consequences. There are plenty of things to be interacting with but there is no weight to the interactions. Why should I retreat to save a village being pillaged nearby when I could just ravage these trade caravans? There are no meaningful consequences since the war goes back and forth perpetually, the NPCs aren't very significant to gameplay or story, and the quests are just glorified fetch quests. The most significant choice you make is to either support a king or his usurper, but what is the difference between the different kings and usurpers?

This game was definitely given attributes of sandbox games that hurt it, namely favoring game balance at the cost of doing truly interesting things, such as conquering and exterminating the Rhodok Empire. The number of armies Rhodok has can never really be less than 2/3 to 1/2 of yours. You also can't kill Lords, which I assume is to protect gameplay balance. I think it comes down to the fact that the amount of change, which I believe is a very significant interaction, you can bring about is very small. The gameplay teaches you that you are no more important than any of the other hundred Lords in the game, and there isn't any narrative to tell you otherwise. I don't think an authored narrative would've been needed if the player's own story was interesting enough. Perhaps you could add in story elements that would add some meaning to the player's story, but that would feel kind of tacked on. The lack of weight and significance of choice undid this great sandbox experience.

I think you can approach narrative from a new direction, one that I was alluding to in my previous post. The concept of a unit operation is that an author gathers together elements to create a discrete unit of meaning, a specific thing or things that express something. Since the brain loves analogy and often has emotions/feelings triggered by things which are analogous to their own subjective experience the goal would be to use unit operations to create something that, through the players interactions, would express something important or meaningful. You can do this with traditional stories, or you can go the route Jon Blow is interested in and that is by infusing these units of meaning into the gameplay, to create significant interactions from a gameplay perspective rather than purely from a narrative aspect. Creating meaningful gameplay on a larger level than Gravitation is difficult, but I think it's possible. Maybe you can't express so much in so little, but the least you could do is create gameplay that informs the narrative, instead of being discordant or unimportant.

I'm going to return to my example of Braid as one of the few games I've played that has achieved a state of gameplay and narrative that are greater than the sum of their parts. Other examples of this would be Shadow of the Colossus, where the gameplay and narrative build off each other and makes your interaction with the game much more significant. Braid possesses six worlds, each world has a number of books telling small Calvinan chunks of story. Many people (including Paul I think) read the story as being separate from the game, it was just Tim's story, nothing more. The gameplay actually informs the story because the units of meaning that an individual world's story communicates are inherently tied into the time manipulation rules at work in that specific world. The gameplay informs the story and the story informs the player. If you think of the story as themes and ideas, a mental state if you will, then you can begin interpreting the gameplay itself as expressive, communicating other units of meaning strictly through the puzzles and time manipulation mechanics, which you can tune into if you are in a conducive mental state. This is one of the most interesting uses of story I've seen so far in a game, because even though most people distance Braid from the likes of Passage, Gravitation, Marriage, and Today I Die (there are many others) it is actually doing a lot of the same things, but on a subtler and larger level, and also with the aid of a narrative. Sadly this is an example of a non interactive story as far as player choice goes, but what it does possess is the need for subjective interpretation, which is I think a very interesting thing that both interactive and non interactive narratives can achieve.

Sadly I don't have an example of a game with an interactive narrative that achieved anything beyond fun dialogue trees to explore. I was thinking of including something like Pathways but even though you have a choice in the order of events you experience you really have no power over which events you experience, and I think that devolves into a very inflexible interactive story, because there is no exchange of elements to be included, just an interchange of the order, which could be meaningful, but in this case it really doesn't communicate anything differently based on the order. Oh god I feel like Socrates, asking a question and then rambling without ever really answering it. Oh well I have hope for this discussion and I look forward to your responses.