[MUD-Dev] narrative

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Bruce Mitchener wrote:

>     * The ability to divine the motivation and intent behind the
>     actions of the player.

It is impossible.  You have no idea why the player is moving left or
moving right, clicking the mouse rapidly or slowly.  You don't know
if the input data represents fascination or impatience.  The only
thing you could possibly do, is provide a few simple UI components
for the player to click on, such as an "Are you bored?" button.
And, hope that the player clicks on these UI components in good
faith.  He doesn't have to: if there's any powergaming advantage to
be had by clicking on the UI component at various times, most
players will do it.  Also, he doesn't have to feel like giving you
explicit feedback today.  He might be bored out of his gourd, so
bored that he can't be bothered to lift a finger to tell you.

Sometimes when we research things, we have to accept negative
results.  Just because you want a capability, doesn't mean that
capability is possible.

> Would anyone like to keep fleshing out some of these things and
> talk about what they're doing and how it might be made to be
> better?  Pointers to relevant research and existing work are (as
> always) entirely welcome.

Try the idrama mailing list:  

  http://www.flutterby.com/idrama/

It's been quiet for awhile but I'm sure that anyone raising these
issues will immediately provoke discussion from many quarters.  For
instance, you can bug Chris Crawford about his Erasmatron if you
like.  Most people on the list are pro-technology.  I'm the Luddite
of the list, and I usually stay quiet for the longer discussions.
The list recognizes a spectrum of approaches from the completely
manual to the completely automatic.  At present, I'm on the
"completely manual" side of the spectrum.  I see the tech approaches
as a waste of time, people could be churning out a lot of good
writing in the time they waste on R&D.  Many of the technologists
believe in this big payoff of "If only the stories were generated
automatically, we'd have such a great resource for our games."  Some
technologists may not be so concerned with the payoff, they just
deal with the problem because they find it inherently interesting.


Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.


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