Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling (19 page)

Lesson #14 resolves the apparent dilemma of control versus interactivity. The solution is to exert control at a higher level of abstraction. As with all the examples, that abstraction is more difficult to understand, but it certainly extends our intellectual reach. Many storytellers, frozen in the traditions of storytelling, are unable (and somewhat unwilling) to grasp the novel abstractions and reject the whole concept. No matter; there’s always plenty of room in this world for traditional stories, but interactive storytelling demands more.

To understand the abstractions I’m presenting in this book, you must first let go of the notion of plot. A plot is a fixed sequence of events that communicates some larger message about the human condition. In interactive storytelling, plot is replaced with a web of possibilities that communicate the same message. Because this concept confuses most people, I’ll provide a number of examples at various levels.

As a starting point, I use the classic movie
Star Wars: A New Hope
. Here’s the direct representation of the story:

Luke Skywalker leaves home, meets Obi-Wan, travels with him to Mos Eisley spaceport, and flies away in a spaceship. The ship is captured by the bad guys; they fool the bad guys, rescue Princess Leia, and escape from the Death Star. The bad guys attack the last bastion of the rebels, and Luke helps attack the Death Star. Luke destroys the Death Star and gets rewarded by the Princess.

Now look at the same story in a more abstract fashion:

A young man ventures out into the world, makes new friends, and experiences many adventures. He learns much and triumphs over adversity, winning the respect of a pretty girl.

Now make it even more abstract:

A boy confronts the challenge of growing up to become a man. He faces many difficulties, but ultimately triumphs over adversity and establishes his manhood.

Storyworlds are designed at these higher levels of abstraction, not assembled event by event. Instead, a high-level design requires you to consider storytelling in a more abstract fashion. It’s difficult to think of many variations of “rescue Princess Leia,” but there are plenty of ways to present “faces many difficulties.” Put another way, there’s only one version of the first story, but there are thousands of versions of the second story and millions of versions of the third story.

Here’s another, less directly pertinent example. Suppose you wanted to build an “addition machine” that must be able to carry out additions, such as 2+2=4 and 3+4=7. If you think of addition as a set of all those little formulas, you have an impossibly difficult task. How could you ever program your addition machine to remember that 3+5=8 and 9+2=11 and 18+27=45? There are just too many possible variations—it could never be done!

Indeed, if you insist on thinking of addition as a collection of numerical formulas, you’re correct in concluding that an addition machine is a physical impossibility. But if you think of addition as a process rather than a set of formulas, and you mentally replace actual numbers with variables, suddenly the problem becomes much simpler. You merely program your addition machine with the laws of addition, and it will work with any set of numbers.

Resorting to a higher level of abstraction also offers a partial solution to the knotty problem of free will versus determinism discussed in
Chapter 3
. This solution embraces physics and rationalizes faith. It says that God is omnipotent with respect to process, not data. That is, God controls the universe through His laws, but not through the details. God does not dictate the position and velocity of every electron and proton in the universe; instead, He merely declares “Let there be physics,” and then allows the clockwork of the universe to run according to His laws. In an indirect way, you could say that He does control everything that happens in the universe, but it’s abstract control. God determines the principles under which the universe operates, but grants us free will to choose as we wish within that universe. He even works a little randomness into the system to ensure that we aren’t automatons responding robotlike to our environments. The important point is this: God is an abstract designer!

The same resolution works with the apparent conflict between plot and interactivity. If you are a data-intensive designer, you are necessarily a deterministic one. Like some Bible-thumping fundamentalist, you insist that your story’s characters must obey literally every single word you write. The fundamentalist focuses all his beliefs in the explicit data of the Bible rather than the abstract processes behind it.

If you’re a process-intensive designer like God, however, the characters in your universe can have free will within the confines of your laws of physics. To accomplish this, however, you must abandon the self-indulgence of direct control and instead rely on indirect, abstract control. That is, instead of specifying the data of the plotline, you must specify the processes of the dramatic conflict. Instead of defining who does what to whom, you must define how people can do various things to each other.

This is too esoteric, too indirect to allow the richness of tone that a good story requires.

Consider what a story really communicates. A story is an instance that communicates a principle.
Moby Dick
is not about a whale; it’s about obsession. Luke Skywalker never really existed, but the movie’s truths about growing up and facing the challenges of manhood are its real message. Stories are literally false, but they embody higher truths. The instances they relate didn’t actually happen, but the principles they embody are the truth that readers appreciate. They are false in their data but true in their process.

Given that stories communicate principles, consider the nature of the communication between storyteller and audience. The storyteller seeks to communicate some truth, some principle of the human condition. Rather than communicate the truth itself, he creates a set of circumstances that instantiate the truth he seeks to communicate. This instantiation is what he communicates to his audience. The audience then interprets the story; it induces the higher principles from the story’s details. Note, however, the circumlocution of this process. The storyteller seeks to communicate some truth of the human condition; the audience seeks to learn the same. Instead of just telling the principle, the storyteller translates the principle into an instantiation, then communicates the instantiation, and then the audience translates the instantiation back into a principle.

This is truly a roundabout way to get the job done—but it’s what works best with people.

Interactive storytelling differs from this process in two fundamental ways. First, the process of translating principle into instance is delegated to the computer. The storybuilder retains indirect artistic control, but must now exercise that control at a more abstract level. The basic process of translating principle into instance is retained, but is now performed by the computer. This of course entails considerable effort in algorithm creation. The second fundamental difference is that because the story is generated in real time in direct response to the player’s actions, the resulting story is customized to the audience’s needs and interests, and thereby more than makes up for any loss in polish with its deeper emotional involvement.

This is great theory, but in practice, the act of reducing storytelling to grand principles is beyond human intellectual ability. Nobody could ever handle so deeply intellectual a process.

This process-intensive style of storytelling is done all the time, and by amateurs, no less. Here’s Grandpa taking little Annie up to bed:

“Tell me a story, Grandpa?” she asks.

“Okay,” he replies. “Once upon a time there was a pretty little girl who had a pony…”

“Was it a white pony?” Annie interrupts.

“Oh, my, yes, it was as white as snow. It was so white that the sunlight reflected off its coat dazzled the eye. And the little girl and the pony would go riding along the beach…”

“Did they go riding in the mountains too?”

“Why yes, as a matter of fact, they did. After riding along the beach, they would ride up the green canyons, jumping over the brush and ducking under tree branches, until they came to the very top of the mountains. And there they would play at jumping over boulders…”

“I don’t like to jump.”

“Well then, instead of jumping, she would let her pony graze in the rich deep grass on the mountain’s summit while she sat in the sun…”

And so the story goes on. Note that Grandpa doesn’t respond to Annie’s interruptions with “Shuddup, kid, you’re messing up my carefully prepared plot!” He wants those interruptions; his storytelling thrives on them. Grandpa doesn’t enter the room with a carefully planned and polished plot, all set to dazzle Annie. He comes in with basic principles of storytelling, and then he makes up the story as he goes along—in response to Annie’s needs and interests. The story he creates is his special story, just for Annie and himself, and no other story will ever be the same. Because it’s their special story, it means more and has more emotional power than any high-tech Hollywood extravaganza. Yes, it lacks the careful plotting, the intricate development, and the glorious special effects of the Hollywood product. Its roughness is more than compensated for by its customization, however. Sure, Annie likes
The Lion King
—but she treasures
Annie and the White Pony
.

Now, if an amateur storytelling grandpa can pull that off, why can’t big-shot professionals do the same? Sure, genuine interactive storytelling presents a bigger challenge than Grandpa faces. Granddaughters are forgiving audiences, and they don’t pay for the service. On the other hand, Grandpa doesn’t have to suffer through wretched books like this one to make up his stories.

To understand and cope with ever-larger problems, we always move to higher levels of abstraction.

Storyworlds are designed at higher levels of abstraction than stories.