Noah’s talk on the state of procedural fiction in the gaming world completely opened my eyes. I’ve been working on a project over the past few months that connects text in an e-reader environment, but I hadn’t realized how my ideas could be utilized in a gaming environment, which is much more immersive. I had a few questions for Noah after his talk, but had decided to email him instead, so this post will be expanded on once I get some feedback.
Briefly however the talk covered:
Issues of complexity in gaming environments
RPG story evolution
The operational logic of game stories
Dialogue trees, Quest flags, and Milestones
The “Eliza” system of conversation as transformation
Tale-Spin and author goals
Themes: Authors can express ideas through computation, Audiences can experience through play, and critics can examine through new media lenses.
I’ve started work on the class final, and it’s a procedural fiction story generator. It’ll most likely be in a MUD format (text-based RPG, known as Multi-User Dungeon) and hopefully I’ll have developed an evolutionary storyline by December.
1 Comment
October 15, 2009 at 1:25 pm
It’s great that you were able to take so much from Noah’s lecture. I also found his lecture eye-opening but in different ways; I realized that until now, my perception of video games has been limited and distorted. Video games may never been my thing, but I am intrigued by their complexities and sub-cultures that we’ve encountered in class.