“Levels” of Text = Levels of Game
I was reading a discussion of experiences with bots called “unconscious thinking”:
But something feels unduly missing about these artificial minds. I decided to try to understand, why do I have trouble caring about what they have to say? What precisely would they need to do, beyond or instead of what they currently do, to make me care?
this made me think of what kinds of unconscious thinking might actually be useful. AI is a ways off, and in the meantime I’m only able to contend myself with what is alredy out there.
i saw “you do not have permission to read this file” and i thought of the blog and stories and games, and also about a variety of audience, and logins and set permissions… i thought of a story that is like a game, where you get to certain “levels,” in time, levels of permission to read certain texts. I can tell my friends i call it (unofficially) “choose your own adventure, level two.” - go ahead and tell thatm that, sigh, yes, its like one of thsoe choose your own adventure books, except it has a “level two” in it. what happens when you get to level two? you have “permission” to read the level two texts, some of which build on things already past, and some of which are tangents yet to come.
This shouldn’t be too hard to build, though I don’t know how. A text that keeps track of what has been read, which choices were made, perhpas with a watchful eye toward content preferences. Perhpas there could even be a small number of different “kinds” of level two within the text.
I have these ideas, and then i get stuck for a while trying to think of what kind of story would lend itself well to this kind of a presentation.
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Adam May 22nd
DAMN you make it hard to comment
Is there anyway you can get your mail server to get mail from adam.mayes@gmx.net?
*grin* This was the mail that was the comment that is the comment again
Hiya - Just read your blog
I’ve book marked it and will eventually get round to getting an account
there so I can comment.
Long story short: Me - Game designer. Just wrote a few chapters on storytelling in games for the NIIT and did a section on Hypertext. I’m playing with the format at the moment for both a game on an iPod and also looking at writing a “game” structure into a piece hypertext fiction.
So, your analogy - Levels of a game is a wonderful analogy. However, if I may try and cut up your thinking, try looking at it less as a story and more as a game…
You’re in a sci-fi setting, there’s something going on in the place you live in but you can’t access these areas as you don’t have the clearance for that level of text. The player/reader reads through situations where they can find keys, access cards, crawl spaces, maybe, and then try and follow the story along to maneuver the character back to where they can use them.
The mapping of such a story would be an utter nightmare but if you want to bang heads with it I’d gladly yell at you. Now that I’ve typed that it’s made me very excited about writing a game/story with that kind of structure.
Hope to hear from you,
I’m going to go read the rest of your blog now
Adam
dylan May 22nd
Adam
First off, thanks for reading my blog. Sorry it has taken so long for me to reply, but i’ve been in the process of moving to Boston.
You’ve complained that its hard to comment. Can you elaborate? I’m trying to fix that problem, please be patient. Blogger jsut built a new comments system which is better than the one I had, so I’ve been switching to that. I hope any of your comments didn’t get lost. thanks for your tenacity. the changes have driven off some regular commenters.
>Is there anyway you can get your
>mail server to get mail from adam.mayes@gmx.net?
no, and for that reason i’ve got this brand new email address. i hope you can write to me here.
>try looking at it less as a story and more as a game…
I intend to focus on the common element between those two things, and life. Your setting that you described to me, which is a good one, it resembles a natural process of discovery, one that occurs within a game environment, or a life environment, and so therefore also with a good story.
You arrive. Something attracts your interests. Something different may also be interesting. Gradually, you learn more about this, and also about that.
Anyway, to return to the (useful) game analogy… I thought that there could be different “kinds” of “level two” within a text. Lets assign different colors to them for the sake of discussion. Within a story, the reader is confronted with certain infromation. The expressed interest in that information earns what you could call “points”. There are different classes of this information. You could call them “red” or “blue” and so they earn red points and blue points. After so many blue points, the reader progresses to blue level two. Maybe they aren’t as interested in the red information, and so their progress through it might be slower, or non-existant.
>The mapping of such a story would be an utter nightmare
Well, it should start somewhere. thoughts?
Adam September 18th
From mail to blog
Just a quick note. Away from my mac and using my PDA. I’ll do a bigger reply later but I wanted to say
MY GOD!! I completely misunderstood the concept. That is _amazing_
Wait…let me attach this keyboard.
OK. That’s better. Now I wish I had done a longer comment! I had an idea for a cyberpunk hypertext book when I was introduced to the idea of iPod games. The initial desire was to write an RPG. But how do you let the player decide what kind of character they want? Sure, you can make it a binary choice - go to the barracks, become a warrior - but it just didn’t seem…_game_ enough.
(I was struggling with the What to Write About problem. If you should write what you know I was stumped. All I knew was games design and *BING* the light went on.)
While the red/blue information would require some basic computation and storing of state (which could be an implementaton issue - how do you ensure that your audience has the required set up to read your book) it is amazing. Such a strong idea. The player chooses the links that, as you say, interest them and this increases their learning down that path - or their skill..
Hang on, on the move. Stylus & train. Forgive the spelling (but love the tech!).
This would mean layering “locations” so that…(very very short for illustrative purposes only)
Start of the Story
Feival walked into the bar. It is full of people, looking about from the door he spotted a small table and made his way towards it.
Following the Fighter words.
Feival returned to the bar of his childhood. Looking across the room he saw a lithe man sitting in the corner, eyes scanning the other drinkers. (Level 5) Behind the bar was a young barman. He could see the outline of armour underneath his shirt.
Following the Thief words.
Feival slipped into the bar he knew from his youth. The place had gone up in the world. Drinkers sat with their purses unattened and packs left carelessly on the floor. (Level 5) However, he noted the Mark of Glavious. The place was protected by the local underworld. He smiled to himself. A few years ago he’d have missed that and ended up in serious trouble.
etc. etc. etc.
Assuming a program that can develop this sort of tale (Which I recall having a programmer knock up in next to no time when I was working in the wireless industry) the mapping of this isn’t too horrific. It is a matter of outlining a story/set of stories/quests and the paths specific to each “skill set.”
You can get obscenely clever if you take your target platform into consideration. You can build in passages that allow readers to swop certain items between stories. This allows a theif to steal something for a wizard and then meet each other in the stories for the purpose of passing these items to each other.
On a more cynical choice of materia you could even do a modern day love story where you choose the aspects of your partner’s personality that you love. As the story progresses these are the things that slowly begin to grate on your nerves and, finally, cause you to leave (if that path is opted for, of course) showing that the things you love them for in the beginning will be the things you hate them for at the end.
Heh - and I’m a romantic :D.
Looks like this is longer than I anticipated! So, I saw a few of the shots of the place in Boston, but it was quickly as I was trying to find out if I could find any other way of mailing you!
Take your time, move in. When I get home I’ll cyberstalk the journal so I don’t have to ask you the “Boston, why are you moving there?” question!
I saw that you had an addiction to Batman comics. If you’re reading at the moment…did he date Catwoman? Last time I saw they were kissing and then moving and lack of job cut me off from my supplier.
OK, I’ll get this off and talk to you later.
Hope you’re having a good weekend.