Intraactive fiction?


15 Sep 1995 03:51:39 GMT

IF: INTERACTIVE OR INTRAACTIVE?

For at least seven years now, we've discussed on & off the problem of
computer players for interactive fiction (IF). I, and I think all of us,
have always looked at the problem as one of writing computer programs
clever enough to take the part of characters in the story.
But that's not really the problem.

Since January, I've been playing on a MUSH. (GarouMUSH, if you have to know.)
At first I thought of MUSHes as multiplayer adventures. They're not.
The great thing about having other players is not to have foils to play
against, or compatriots to cooperate with, but having someone to play with.
Someone to tell a story to, and someone to tell you a story.

I wrote an article for Interactive Fantasy (hopefully it's in issue 4)
about this. I think the crucial point for this audience is that having
other players turns your attention from accomplishing a goal, to telling
a story. And hearing a story. And this means that the players will
turn their steps toward tragic endings, or humor, or just extended
character development, and all the other things that we can't get them
to do in single-player interactive fiction.

The problem of creating interesting computer-mediated interactive fiction
doesn't just need computers so smart that we will want them to tell us a story;
it needs computers smart enough that we will want to tell them a story.
And I don't expect that in the next thirty years.

So I think, maybe, we're doing the wrong thing. If we do create computerized
agents that are satisfying foils, we'll just create one more excuse for people
to play with themselves, just one more way for people to cut themselves off
from society. Instead of bringing them the joys of *true* interaction --
interaction with people -- we will help isolate them. That's not
interactive fiction -- it's intraactive fiction. It would still be
wonderful in many ways, but it would have its dark side, too.

Phil Goetz@cs.buffalo.edu