Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks the future and says, here's a little
Speaker 1: story I got to tell about three bad podcasters. You
Speaker 1: know so well. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm La, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Yep, And today we wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about interactive storytelling. Interactive storytelling, you know what
Speaker 1: pops into my mind when you say that, what's that? Joe?
Speaker 1: My favorite kind of book, Choose your own adventure book?
Speaker 1: The best books ever written? And I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think so I would argue you pick that you picked
Speaker 1: the wrong choice obviously, Lauren. Are you the one who
Speaker 1: always go through you know, the safe door and immediately
Speaker 1: get eaten by a wolf? And then you'd have to
Speaker 1: go backtrack to where you last left off and then
Speaker 1: take the other choice. I usually have like seven fingers
Speaker 1: in the book when ever i'm reading it, so that
Speaker 1: I can flip between different options. I was going to
Speaker 1: say that I knew you were a placeholder. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's actually explain. Want to choose your own Adventure
Speaker 1: book is for those few people out there who may
Speaker 1: not have experienced the true joy of literature. They're they're
Speaker 1: a little older, some younger people might not actually Ryan
Speaker 1: North just published to be or not to Be. That
Speaker 1: is the adventure, which is a take on Hamlet. That
Speaker 1: is a choose your own adventure story. So you can
Speaker 1: play as Ophelia or Polonius. If you're playing as you're
Speaker 1: playing as Hamlet, I guess you would just have, you know,
Speaker 1: lots of choices, but you never bother to choose anything.
Speaker 1: One thing that's funny we should take note of. We're
Speaker 1: already using the word play when we're talking about reading
Speaker 1: a book, and that will figure in. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: So choose your own adventure? What is it? Choose your
Speaker 1: own adventure book? Choose your own adventure book is a
Speaker 1: book where you open up to the first page and
Speaker 1: it says something like, you know, you get out of bed,
Speaker 1: your uncle Ronnie comes in and says we're going out
Speaker 1: whale hunting, and you go out on a and then
Speaker 1: it offers you choices like do you want to go
Speaker 1: out on the rickety boat with the whales that want
Speaker 1: to kill you? Or do you want to stay in
Speaker 1: your bed, and if you choose stay in your bed,
Speaker 1: like a whale jumps out of your closet and bites
Speaker 1: your arms off, right, or you get dysentery or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea being that that you actually turned to whichever
Speaker 1: page correlate choice. It's for rickety boat to turn to
Speaker 1: page seventy for stay in your bed, turn to page
Speaker 1: I didn't actually explain the mechanics yet, that's how it works,
Speaker 1: and so you keep turning to the page. It tells
Speaker 1: you to make your choice until you die in one
Speaker 1: way or another, or you think that was possible. I
Speaker 1: think basically these were books just designed to teach children
Speaker 1: that no matter what, they're going to die, which is
Speaker 1: my hamlet is such a terrific adaptation for that is
Speaker 1: a great example of fatalist literature. I was no, no, no,
Speaker 1: there are. There were plenty of choose your own adventures
Speaker 1: that had a positive outcome for you, but they were
Speaker 1: challenging to to arrive at, and often in my case,
Speaker 1: I would end up working backward by finding the positive
Speaker 1: ending and then just finding out what series of choices
Speaker 1: would have led you to that, Because, as you point out,
Speaker 1: Joe normally there's like, you know, chance that you are
Speaker 1: going to die depending upon your choices. Okay, so if
Speaker 1: I'm an indexer, then then you're the you're the system analyst. Joe,
Speaker 1: what was your form of gameplay with with Choose your
Speaker 1: Own Adventure books? I would I played by the rules.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's wrong with y'all. I survived, Joe.
Speaker 1: You're the one who believes that every choice leads to death.
Speaker 1: So I have to admit most of them. Do I
Speaker 1: encompassed all the choices? I I contain multitudes? Right, You're
Speaker 1: you're the multiverse approach. Yes, so you have the parallel
Speaker 1: universe thing going on. Okay, so this is interactive storytelling
Speaker 1: and its most basic form. Right, so you've got you've
Speaker 1: got a limited number of choices. It's not like you
Speaker 1: can introduce new elements that are completely alien to the book.
Speaker 1: Obviously you are. You are restricted to whatever has been written. Right.
Speaker 1: You can think about the plot of the book sort
Speaker 1: of is a branching tree where you started a trunk
Speaker 1: where you know you have one branching decision and that
Speaker 1: forks into two, and each of those decisions gives you
Speaker 1: new options, and it keeps branching out until there are
Speaker 1: many possible endings, right, and occasionally those branches will reform
Speaker 1: into you know, you might be able to choose one
Speaker 1: thing in one part of the book or another thing
Speaker 1: in another part of the book, and end up on
Speaker 1: the same page. Either way, Some of those, not all
Speaker 1: of those branches, end up being their own distinct pathways.
Speaker 1: In other words, sometimes they converge into a pathway again.
Speaker 1: And this is an interesting way to think about storytelling
Speaker 1: because most of the time we talk about storytelling, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a a single linear narrative that's controlled from
Speaker 1: the top down and told in one way, right, And
Speaker 1: and a good story is really really captivating, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a way that we communicate not just entertaining ideas,
Speaker 1: but also philosophies. Sometimes times it's how we tell history.
Speaker 1: You look at oral history, those are all told in
Speaker 1: the form of stories. And it's interesting also, I think
Speaker 1: that storytelling is one of those things that we use
Speaker 1: to try and create meaning in the experiences that we
Speaker 1: accumulate over time. Now, in real life, we don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have actual beginning, middle, and end to any you know,
Speaker 1: series of experiences. They tend to bleed over it gets
Speaker 1: really messy. But we like our stories to have a
Speaker 1: much more contained kind of approach generally speaking, I mean
Speaker 1: they are and in yeah, yeah, I'm mostly uh talking
Speaker 1: about my own experience. Obviously, I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of experience with Eastern culture stories, which can be much
Speaker 1: more abstract that you guys, have ever watched a lot
Speaker 1: of Japanese film, then you will know that they do
Speaker 1: not necessarily feel a need to stick to that react structure,
Speaker 1: but it can be a little bit of of a
Speaker 1: culture shock anyway. So at any rate, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about interactive storytelling, now we're getting into this idea of
Speaker 1: the person who is being told the stories truly impacting
Speaker 1: the story in some way. No, we're not just passively
Speaker 1: receiving it, right, You're creating input determines what you get subsequently. Right.
Speaker 1: So with the case of the choose your own Adventure book,
Speaker 1: that's quite limited obviously, but it means that you do
Speaker 1: get a slightly different tale depending upon the choices you make.
Speaker 1: But there are other examples of interactive storytelling that we
Speaker 1: have right now, right, Yeah, we don't even have to
Speaker 1: look too far into the future. How about video games?
Speaker 1: How about them. I love them. Those those are kind
Speaker 1: of big. Yeah, that's the thing. I love the interactive
Speaker 1: story about the disembodied yellow head that eats magic pills
Speaker 1: and then goes after ghosts. I thinks Thompson wrote it.
Speaker 1: It haid that joke in the video. The thing um
Speaker 1: about video games and interactive storytelling. Nobody would question the
Speaker 1: interactive part. They're obviously interactive. Some people might question storytelling,
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous. Well, well, some some video games have
Speaker 1: more of a story than others. Sure, some some video
Speaker 1: games are like Tetras, And while I have a rich
Speaker 1: fan fiction database of Tetris related information, I understand most
Speaker 1: people just see that as a puzzle game. But there
Speaker 1: are other games that have It's that L shaped block,
Speaker 1: isn't it? But which one? He has a twin clockwise
Speaker 1: L shape with the counterclockwise L. SHO. You have to
Speaker 1: read to find out, Joe. I'm not going to spoil
Speaker 1: it for you. But anyway, there are other video games
Speaker 1: that actually do have a narrative involved from the beginning
Speaker 1: all the way through to the end. Uh. Now, you
Speaker 1: could argue that video games can be as restricted as
Speaker 1: a choose your own adventure book. For in some cases,
Speaker 1: and in some cases it may be more so. Right,
Speaker 1: there may be only one story you get from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, and as you play the game, you unlock
Speaker 1: the next element of that story, so, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you might continue through a game. I think The Last
Speaker 1: of Us is a good example of this. The Last
Speaker 1: of Us. We're not gonna spoil anything, but The Last
Speaker 1: of Us is a a survival horror game and it's
Speaker 1: ex dreamely well written. I would say the characters are
Speaker 1: very well realized. There's a huge emotional impact, but you
Speaker 1: don't actually affect the story that much depending upon your choices.
Speaker 1: You do have some choice in the game, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't I think, change how the ending is going to
Speaker 1: play out. Wherever. There are other games where, depending upon
Speaker 1: your choices, you'll get one of a series of endings
Speaker 1: like a Silent Hill, to which I don't think either
Speaker 1: of you guys have played, But but but but again,
Speaker 1: a horror survival video game in which there there's a
Speaker 1: bad ending and then a really bad ending, and then
Speaker 1: a kind of thing and and so but but but
Speaker 1: but Which one of those you get? It depends upon
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of non traditional video game elements.
Speaker 1: Of of what you as a character, we're thinking about
Speaker 1: by by looking at during the game, like what you
Speaker 1: paid attention to ends up becoming the result of the storyline.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, which which is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: that's kind of called out as like, hey, that was
Speaker 1: a good one. Yeah. Yeah, there are most of the
Speaker 1: video games I'm familiar with, it's far more overt. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things where a character says, do we
Speaker 1: do A or do we do B? And at that
Speaker 1: point you're thinking, this is going to affect everything from
Speaker 1: this point forward. I better save first. I'm going on
Speaker 1: a wiki to see what Okay, I'm I'm totally the
Speaker 1: spoiler guy. I'll be like, okay, I gotta find out
Speaker 1: if I if I choose to let this person die,
Speaker 1: is that really going to haunt me later? I'm that guy.
Speaker 1: I'm that guy. I wish I weren't that guy. Now again,
Speaker 1: I just I just saved my game. I I'm just realizing. No,
Speaker 1: this is why I have ninety eight game saves, or
Speaker 1: as many as possible. I'm still doing. Yeah, you're doing
Speaker 1: your choose your own advantage y o A your y
Speaker 1: o A strategy on the video games whereas I can't
Speaker 1: do that with my strategy for doing it exactly. You're
Speaker 1: looking working backward right, but I'm looking at the next step.
Speaker 1: I don't look at the very end of the game.
Speaker 1: And well, I play by the rules and I just
Speaker 1: make my decision and see what happens. See, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Obviously we all know what would happen if we all
Speaker 1: had time travel devices at this point. Joe wouldn't use his.
Speaker 1: I would constantly be going ahead thinking no, don't want
Speaker 1: to make that choice, go back and try another one.
Speaker 1: And Lauren would just be doing the multiverse approach. I would.
Speaker 1: I would have a terrific library if everything that could
Speaker 1: possibly happen, that's horrifying. It's really interesting, though, because we're
Speaker 1: actually seeing more about our psyches here, We're learning about
Speaker 1: each other, which is the terrific thing about storytelling. This, this, folks,
Speaker 1: is why, in a minor tangent that I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how it's going to connect to our next point, is
Speaker 1: I think that the heart of storytelling, This is why
Speaker 1: finding stuff out about ourselves and how you know, the
Speaker 1: way that we consume stories clearly has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with who we are and and and the creation
Speaker 1: of stories is the same thing. It's all about the
Speaker 1: human experience. Sure. Sure, And so you know, Joe, you
Speaker 1: have a point here in our outline that we're looking at.
Speaker 1: I mean you you brought up the point about video games,
Speaker 1: while they are becoming a very powerful storytelling medium, they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily viewed that way by the larger public. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and there might be good reasons for that. Sure, I
Speaker 1: want to float a few ideas in that. I agree
Speaker 1: with you that I played The Last of Us and
Speaker 1: I thought that was just a beautiful game, and it
Speaker 1: had really good writing, good dialogue, strong characters, emotional depth.
Speaker 1: I felt things about what was happening. Um. And so
Speaker 1: that's real. I mean, I can totally acknowledge that. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, there is something I think kind
Speaker 1: of inherently different between the way we play most games,
Speaker 1: even those games that do have strong storytelling, and the
Speaker 1: way we experience a novel or a movie, where a
Speaker 1: novel or a movie has a plot that executes and
Speaker 1: you're you're following it and you're thinking about it, um,
Speaker 1: and you're engaging with it in that way. But games
Speaker 1: typically have a different kind of mechanic, like as you
Speaker 1: progress through the story of a game. Even like the
Speaker 1: Last of Us one with good writing, you're still there
Speaker 1: are these mechanics. There's there's competitive action, there's repetitive action.
Speaker 1: It's very task oriented. You know, you have a goal
Speaker 1: you're trying to achieve. Usually they're trying to create a
Speaker 1: sense of flow by having you do these actions over
Speaker 1: and over. And that kind of thing doesn't really, as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, have a role in traditional storytelling,
Speaker 1: right unless you're watching something like Parts of the Caribbean
Speaker 1: where they go to the same set pieces eighteen times
Speaker 1: in a row because they hadn't finished righting the script
Speaker 1: before they started shooting the movie. But that's a rant
Speaker 1: for another time. Um. Well not not all video games
Speaker 1: necessarily have that puzzle or repetitive task play element to them,
Speaker 1: And usually those are the ones that gamers wind up
Speaker 1: not being too fond of it. They come in with
Speaker 1: bad reviews. Um. They for example, the entire Final Fantasy
Speaker 1: series after say ten, Um, depending on who you talk to,
Speaker 1: someone's going to say like that was just an interactive
Speaker 1: movie that was completely crap. I have heard this term
Speaker 1: interactive movie. Um, how is this different than just say,
Speaker 1: like a game with good graphics. Well okay, so so
Speaker 1: back when, back when laser discs. If we can come
Speaker 1: back to laser discs. I don't personally have much experience
Speaker 1: with with with those, but let's go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 1: I'll chime in if I need to. I once watched
Speaker 1: a laser disc of Congo. Oh my goodness, um shun um.
Speaker 1: When people started finding out or when the technology kind
Speaker 1: of kind of allowed people to create chapter stories within
Speaker 1: a visual digital medium, um, that's when some storytellers started
Speaker 1: thinking like, hey, this is cool. I can create a
Speaker 1: sort of choose your own adventure within this digital medium
Speaker 1: and that's terrific um and and it got I mean,
Speaker 1: there were a few games that I think people considered
Speaker 1: good ones that had um a interactive element combined with
Speaker 1: full motion video that people didn't hate. That's yeah, They're
Speaker 1: very few in between. I think full motion video. The
Speaker 1: problem with full motion video was that once we learned
Speaker 1: how we could do it in a in a storage
Speaker 1: medium that wasn't going to take up a car's worth
Speaker 1: of space, everyone put it into everything. There was a
Speaker 1: short and the reason why I was short was so awful.
Speaker 1: There was a short era in video games, computer games,
Speaker 1: and then in the early nineties, yeah, where full motion
Speaker 1: video was in everything from Missed to Zork to know,
Speaker 1: all sorts of games that never needed it before. And
Speaker 1: then in many cases it was used purely as a
Speaker 1: gimmick because they had the ability to do this, and
Speaker 1: it was not executed in a way that that benefited
Speaker 1: the game that was anything that a player would really welcome.
Speaker 1: It was mostly seen as a distraction and sometimes just
Speaker 1: as really embarrassing. So it was not that it was
Speaker 1: a bad tool. I just think it was poorly applied
Speaker 1: in those early days and that kind of ended up
Speaker 1: making a um well, it kind of made it, you know,
Speaker 1: a dark mark against that style of video games from
Speaker 1: when when I said full motion video just then Jonathan
Speaker 1: developed the sudden eye twitch. That was pretty okay. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you sometime about the Tim Curry game where
Speaker 1: you play as Frankenstein's Monster and Tim Curry is Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: At one point he refers to your face looking like
Speaker 1: and I quote pork butt, not Frankenfurter, just to be clear.
Speaker 1: But it has Tim Curry in it, so that sounds beautiful.
Speaker 1: You know what else, hast video what? Okay, I'm gold
Speaker 1: a full circle, getting back to the interactive movies thing
Speaker 1: what you mentioned with laser disc. The first thing that
Speaker 1: pops into my mind is one of the earliest laser
Speaker 1: disc based arcade games, which was Dragon's Layer, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that that is basically the only thing
Speaker 1: that critics and gamers agree was not awful. The car
Speaker 1: the animation was was nice. The story was very basic,
Speaker 1: and some would argue heavily misogynist, but it was the
Speaker 1: story of you know, you're playing the character of the
Speaker 1: heroic knight who's trying to rescue the damsel in distress
Speaker 1: who has been captured by a dragon. But really that
Speaker 1: gameplay was very limited. Essentially, it meant that when the
Speaker 1: screen flashed, you were supposed to either move the joystick
Speaker 1: in one of four directions or you pressed the sword button,
Speaker 1: and you had to learn the sequence by just playing
Speaker 1: it over and over and over again to learn which
Speaker 1: way you were supposed to do this. I mean, depending
Speaker 1: upon which version of the game you played and sum
Speaker 1: it would flash in a way that would indicate what
Speaker 1: you were supposed to do. But more often than not,
Speaker 1: the version as I saw, was just screen with flash.
Speaker 1: You had to figure it out and it was trial
Speaker 1: and error, so it wasn't the most satisfying of game elements.
Speaker 1: So you were saying, p liked this. I thought people
Speaker 1: did not like this game people enjoyed. Well. I remember
Speaker 1: when the Okay I was alive, when this game was
Speaker 1: in arcades, all right, So I remember going to arcades
Speaker 1: and seeing a huge line or a group around. In fact,
Speaker 1: that this was an arcade game that was so popular
Speaker 1: that many cabinets had two screens. They had a screen
Speaker 1: mounted on top of the first screen, so you could
Speaker 1: stand further back and see what was going on by
Speaker 1: looking at the top screen because everyone was crowded around
Speaker 1: the bottom one. So it was popular because the animation
Speaker 1: style was so fluid and different from everything else we
Speaker 1: were used to in arcades. However, when it came to
Speaker 1: the gameplay elements, people were not necessarily so enthralled, but
Speaker 1: they did want to see how the story ends. Okay.
Speaker 1: But so that brings me back to the question, Sure,
Speaker 1: it's interactive, but is it really storytelling or is it
Speaker 1: I mean, beyond the most basic sense, is it good storytelling?
Speaker 1: But I think it was such a gimmick that, you know,
Speaker 1: people were so excited about the technology that they were like,
Speaker 1: let's use this technology and not let's use this technology
Speaker 1: to create yate a story that makes sense or to
Speaker 1: incorporate game play that's not frustrating or you know that's
Speaker 1: for example, I was a huge crazy X Files fan
Speaker 1: was when I was in middle school or high school
Speaker 1: around the same time that this was going on. Sorry, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: and um and so and so. I owned the like
Speaker 1: eight disc X Files video game that came out at
Speaker 1: some point that incorporated full motion video and UM and
Speaker 1: was basically so terrible, Like the the gameplay itself was
Speaker 1: so terrible that I stopped because I couldn't like, it
Speaker 1: was so glitchy that I just could not physically do
Speaker 1: what the game wanted me to do. And right, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, the the challenges of creating a truly compelling
Speaker 1: interactive storytelling experience if you're going to gamify it is
Speaker 1: that you have to create a game that works, and
Speaker 1: you have to create a compelling story. It's it's two
Speaker 1: big challenges. So you could go the last of us route,
Speaker 1: where you have a very compelling story with with good gameplay,
Speaker 1: but it also is you know, when you look at it,
Speaker 1: when you look at yeah, and the player has very
Speaker 1: little impact on how that story actually plays out, assuming
Speaker 1: that you are successful in what you do, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you sure you get to see every time you die,
Speaker 1: you get to see a different way that you died,
Speaker 1: But for for successfully completing the game, you get one outcome. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then there are other games, of course that depending upon
Speaker 1: what you do, you will get different outcomes. Like the
Speaker 1: Fallout series, you get very different outcomes depending upon the
Speaker 1: choices you make in the course of the game. So
Speaker 1: that that gives the player a sense that the player
Speaker 1: is actually contributing to the story, not just consuming the story.
Speaker 1: So when we're really talking about interactive storytelling in the
Speaker 1: future of it, we're talking about maybe some sort of
Speaker 1: not necessarily a video game, but that's the one of
Speaker 1: the easiest formats we can talk about, but some form
Speaker 1: of entertainment where the person who is consuming it is
Speaker 1: also contributing to it in a meaningful way. Right. Basically,
Speaker 1: we want to look at the term and think that
Speaker 1: it's really robust in both of the these words. It's
Speaker 1: really interactive in a strong way, and it's really good storytelling, right,
Speaker 1: And we really haven't, in my view, come across something
Speaker 1: yet that's really strongly both at the same time. UM
Speaker 1: I would say that some some LARPers, some live action
Speaker 1: role players would argue with that, um and and say that,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying this is a personal I
Speaker 1: but um but but I know many people who would
Speaker 1: argue that that they have played live action role playing
Speaker 1: games in which their characters have been able to help
Speaker 1: create the storyline and and change the storyline actually developed right.
Speaker 1: Role playing games in general, live action role playing games
Speaker 1: in particular. These are These are forms of entertainment where,
Speaker 1: depending upon who is running the game, you may be
Speaker 1: able to impact the actual story in a really meaningful way.
Speaker 1: As in let's say a character a player a player
Speaker 1: has is playing a character, and that character makes a
Speaker 1: choice that is completely within the realms of that game.
Speaker 1: It makes sense for the character, it makes sense within
Speaker 1: the context of the rules, etcetera. And the game master
Speaker 1: or masters, the people who are running the game, had
Speaker 1: no way of predictions that this was. They didn't think
Speaker 1: about it, but it makes perfect sense. They if they're
Speaker 1: good and they're flexible, they can incorporate that and even
Speaker 1: make that into something that builds onto future games where
Speaker 1: the things that you know they might even scrap plans
Speaker 1: that they had for the next three or four sessions, saying,
Speaker 1: you know, what we had was really good and maybe
Speaker 1: we can still use in the future, but this is
Speaker 1: too to Let's let's continue this and see where this goes,
Speaker 1: and in that case it does become a collaborative storytelling experience.
Speaker 1: Um from my own personal experience. Besides the role playing game,
Speaker 1: the example I gave earlier was the idea of improv
Speaker 1: games where you have improvisers on stage who are it's
Speaker 1: it goes beyond the improv games that you've seen, where
Speaker 1: it's you know, trying to go through the alphabet letter
Speaker 1: at a time, and every sentence more like it's two
Speaker 1: or three improvisers who are trying to create a scene
Speaker 1: that has a narrative arc of some sort. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there are terms that any person who's taken improv would
Speaker 1: be able to rattle off, things like the platform, which
Speaker 1: is your basic premise, the tilt, which is where you
Speaker 1: introduce some form of conflict, the resolution, which may or
Speaker 1: may not be a happy resolution. Often it's a comically
Speaker 1: unhappy resolution. But this is a form of collaborative storytelling
Speaker 1: where there was nothing before except maybe a suggestion from
Speaker 1: the audience, and I want to offer a slight qualification
Speaker 1: to that. While I see what you're saying, definitely, pretty
Speaker 1: much all of the improv I've seen was played for
Speaker 1: short term comedic effect. Like it, it may have been
Speaker 1: very a lot of fun to watch, but they create
Speaker 1: a funny scene, but it doesn't really have like a
Speaker 1: strong narrative art creating. It's not like someone's going to
Speaker 1: going to record that and hold it up as as
Speaker 1: high to ature next to Sure, I don't think it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think a good story in high literature
Speaker 1: are necessarily the same thing. In fact, I would argue
Speaker 1: that a lot of high literature to me does lacks
Speaker 1: lacks what I would consider a good story, and I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of good stories don't necessarily qualify
Speaker 1: as high literature. But I will say I agree there's
Speaker 1: a lot of the improv I've seen is really let's
Speaker 1: try and make the audience laugh as loudly and frequently
Speaker 1: as possible, and it may just mean introducing bizarre characters
Speaker 1: in an unlikely setting. But there are other forms. There's
Speaker 1: long form improv, which is designed to last over the
Speaker 1: course of perhaps right an entire season of shows where
Speaker 1: where things that characters do carry over from one quote
Speaker 1: unquote episode to the next. Oh yeah, I'll I'll hook
Speaker 1: you up. So there's a local theater here in Atlanta
Speaker 1: that does that occasionally, where they'll do a an improvised
Speaker 1: soap opera and every episode is the next episode of
Speaker 1: the soap opera. So decision that characters make in previous
Speaker 1: episodes carry over. And so you really do have a
Speaker 1: collaborative storytelling now, you know, your quality of story depends
Speaker 1: heavily on the quality of the storytellers. Yeah, and also
Speaker 1: in those situations, um, there's probably I would guess, a
Speaker 1: limited role of interactivity for the audience, like they might contribute,
Speaker 1: you know, word or something. In the case of the
Speaker 1: soap opera one, the audience is merely an audience, So
Speaker 1: the interaction is really going on amongst a small group
Speaker 1: of storytellers, not the storytellers and the intended audience. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a different kind of interactive storytelling. The idea of
Speaker 1: collaborative storytelling also interesting. Yes, yes, it's not. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: if we were to do a truly interactive collaborative story
Speaker 1: in that mode and you were to open it up
Speaker 1: to the entire audience. It would be very difficult to manage,
Speaker 1: very very clearly. It would be more like lapin I
Speaker 1: guess right, well sure hypothetically, I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: you've still you've still got um similar really a small
Speaker 1: group of controllers and a large group of people who
Speaker 1: have a pretty you know, depending pretty limited input on
Speaker 1: what's going on. But yeah, but I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that all of these examples that were coming up with
Speaker 1: of um of widely collaborative storytelling are are very very physical, um,
Speaker 1: you know, very non technical exactly. Sure, well, you know,
Speaker 1: creating the technology is not necessarily the problem. And uh, Joe,
Speaker 1: you linked to a great article for us to read,
Speaker 1: the Gamma Sutra article by Ernest Adams, which was all
Speaker 1: about designing interactive stories and doing interactive storytelling and and
Speaker 1: Adams points out that there are a lot of considerations
Speaker 1: you have to take into account before you try and
Speaker 1: create some sort of uh. In his case, he's telling
Speaker 1: mostly about video games, but it doesn't have to necessarily
Speaker 1: be a game, but an interactive story session. For example,
Speaker 1: if you were just to create an open world environment
Speaker 1: and then give players free reign to do whatever they
Speaker 1: want and gave them no input whatsoever as to what
Speaker 1: is important or not important. You might not see very
Speaker 1: much happen, or it might not be a story particularly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it may just be chaos. There might not be enough
Speaker 1: there to drive players to do anything beyond whatever basic
Speaker 1: capabilities they have because of the game. Story is more
Speaker 1: than just behavior, you know. Story implies some kind of
Speaker 1: significance or meaning that things have a cumulative meaningfulness. I
Speaker 1: guess I'm beginning to end and there's some form of
Speaker 1: persistence there that that something that happens matters for things
Speaker 1: that follow, right, Otherwise you just have things happening and
Speaker 1: there's no connectivity. Yeah, you want you on an arc
Speaker 1: and a climax and resolution. So yeah, there's these are
Speaker 1: These are things that are the basics of storytelling. But
Speaker 1: anyone who has tried their hand at storytelling can tell
Speaker 1: you they're not necessarily easy to master. I mean these
Speaker 1: are that's whether so few really fantastic stick storytellers out there. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there are plenty of people who like to
Speaker 1: tell a story, and you probably know a few who
Speaker 1: are good at telling really entertaining ones. But someone who
Speaker 1: who really like transcends that and becomes the person who
Speaker 1: is known as the storyteller. That's a that's a tough
Speaker 1: skilled master. Uh. Just take a fiction writing workshop sometime
Speaker 1: to see how hard it is to create a good story.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you are the only person working
Speaker 1: on it and there's nobody else there to get in
Speaker 1: your way and mess up what you're trying to do,
Speaker 1: it's still really hard to write a good story. Sum
Speaker 1: when you're introducing the random variables of massive collaboration or
Speaker 1: the interactivity with even just one audience member or player
Speaker 1: at a time, You're introducing so many variables and all
Speaker 1: of the possibilities of the ways your story could not
Speaker 1: go well, just balloon, it just goes huge. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there also a problem with them, with with the
Speaker 1: with the writer's ego. I think wherein sharing something that
Speaker 1: you have created can get really really internally messy for you,
Speaker 1: like because because you know it's it's you probably have
Speaker 1: an idea of where you want that idea to go,
Speaker 1: and if the next person down the line doesn't take
Speaker 1: it in that direction, it can it can be frustrating.
Speaker 1: This is something that it becomes clear in some of
Speaker 1: the previous examples we talked about like role playing games.
Speaker 1: So role playing games the way that Lauren was talking
Speaker 1: about them, the way I was talking about them earlier.
Speaker 1: If you have a game master who is not flexible,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that they're necessarily bad. They just can't
Speaker 1: handle these diversions from a plot that they have in mind,
Speaker 1: whether it's a pre bought module of an adventure or
Speaker 1: it's something that they have written up themselves. And you
Speaker 1: can tell these kind of game masters because they will
Speaker 1: steer players back onto onto the right course, or they'll
Speaker 1: just deny the players outright from being able to do
Speaker 1: things right right. It's the kind of thing like like
Speaker 1: well I want to open that door, you can ant
Speaker 1: open that door. I open it anyway, you die right right,
Speaker 1: or or it's just like nope, doors gone, what like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what happens when you give me was actually
Speaker 1: a gelatinous cue. Nice Joe, So you have played all right?
Speaker 1: So but yeah, these are these are examples of how
Speaker 1: storytelling and collaborative storytelling is such a challenging thing because
Speaker 1: it really it involves sharing control of the story. It
Speaker 1: involves listening, it involves reacting, it involves building, it involves persistence,
Speaker 1: It involves trying to create a narrative arc of some sort,
Speaker 1: especially if we're talking about the Western tradition of storytelling.
Speaker 1: These are all very tricky things to incorporate in a
Speaker 1: way where a lot of people can participate. UH. Simultaneously,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about UM. One idea I had
Speaker 1: that I thought would be an interesting way to approach
Speaker 1: interactive storytelling, which would be to take the sort of
Speaker 1: open world gaming approach that you see in games like
Speaker 1: Grand Theft, Auto or something where if you haven't played
Speaker 1: these games, they don't have a linear storyline where you
Speaker 1: have to go certain places and do things in a
Speaker 1: certain order. Well, at certain points they might, but generally
Speaker 1: you're free to roam. You can go all over the place,
Speaker 1: and you can you can do things in whatever order
Speaker 1: you want. You can look wherever you want to look.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a there's a future where people
Speaker 1: might create movies that are like this, meaning they're interactive,
Speaker 1: not so much in that the audience can change what's happening,
Speaker 1: but the audience is free to roam sort of throughout
Speaker 1: the movie. So if the audience member UH doesn't like
Speaker 1: following a certain character as the protagonist, the audience member
Speaker 1: could select a different character and to see the same story.
Speaker 1: But I'm more interested in following this character instead of
Speaker 1: that one. So let's say it's a a heist movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the example I used in the script. Sure, so
Speaker 1: you could follow either one of the potential criminals, or
Speaker 1: you could follow the person upon whom the heist is
Speaker 1: going to be committed, or you could follow the law
Speaker 1: enforcement that is trying to respond to and counteract this
Speaker 1: um or. You know. Obviously, this would make creating any
Speaker 1: sort of film much more complicated. It would get more
Speaker 1: complicated as you added characters, because you have to have
Speaker 1: an entire story told from that person's point of view,
Speaker 1: at least from the point when they come into the
Speaker 1: story to the point where they leave, so that you
Speaker 1: would be able to allow people to jump from one
Speaker 1: to the other. There's nothing that says we couldn't do that.
Speaker 1: It would require a lot more work, and I would
Speaker 1: imagine this would be something I hesitate to use the
Speaker 1: word easier, but I can imagine this being something more
Speaker 1: likely to be seen in a computer generated movie, as
Speaker 1: opposed to we're shooting live actors, which would just mean
Speaker 1: we have to shoot the same scene from like eight
Speaker 1: different points of view, although I mean, I would argue
Speaker 1: that many movies are already being from eight different points
Speaker 1: of view, and that the work, the technical work of
Speaker 1: rendering a scene out is just as expensive, almost as
Speaker 1: as filming the actors that many times, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: So it's just it's a lot easier to work with
Speaker 1: camera placement in a three day like a computer generated environment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another aspect of this potential open world movie would be,
Speaker 1: so instead of following different characters, what if you could
Speaker 1: interact with different localities. So let's say I want to
Speaker 1: park the camera right here. Maybe it's a movie that's
Speaker 1: like a disaster movie. You know, here's the day that
Speaker 1: aliens attack New York City. I thought you said it
Speaker 1: was a disaster movie. Nice. Um, So here's the day
Speaker 1: in New York. Here's the day aliens attack Jonathan Strickland's house.
Speaker 1: That would be a disaster hand you can, you can
Speaker 1: park the camera and lots of different so and one
Speaker 1: way you're looking at what's going on inside the house.
Speaker 1: Another way you're looking at what's going on in this place.
Speaker 1: You know, as the police gather outside and do not
Speaker 1: help Jonathan. Um, you know that's fair. I'm on several lists.
Speaker 1: My original example worked better if it was a citywide
Speaker 1: you can you can focus on lots of different places.
Speaker 1: I totally I totally want an interactive movie that you
Speaker 1: can um uh switch directorial styles like like like have
Speaker 1: like this is aliens attack Johnson's house by way of
Speaker 1: Hitchcock and then continue. Would never be able to tell
Speaker 1: when things were happening, like is this before the alien
Speaker 1: attack or after the alien attack? What's with the gimp? Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's my question, Okay, go for it. Um So all
Speaker 1: of this is interesting to talk about, but will it
Speaker 1: ever really catch on? Because I feel like interactive storytelling
Speaker 1: has not caught on in a mainstream way except unless
Speaker 1: you include gaming, and even that's not necessarily mainstream. I
Speaker 1: think it's more mainstream now than it has been. The
Speaker 1: one thing that the video game population has grown up
Speaker 1: with video games, and so it's become more of a
Speaker 1: mainstream thing. Let's table video games and just talk about
Speaker 1: these other types of interactive storytelling. I would imagine that
Speaker 1: for the most part, if we were to talk about
Speaker 1: some sort of movie experience, for example, where you you
Speaker 1: would go to a movie theater, let's let's just do
Speaker 1: this this kind of thing. You got a movie theater
Speaker 1: and everyone has a little controller yeah where they can
Speaker 1: they can shoot, make choices throughout the film, and then
Speaker 1: the film goes with whatever the majority rule is. That's
Speaker 1: the thing I can I can imagine that happening. Like
Speaker 1: I can also imagine after every choice you hear like
Speaker 1: half the audience go oh, come on yeah. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: it's I can imagine it happening. In fact, it has happened.
Speaker 1: There are films that have have tried this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I think they were massively unpopular. That's the thing is
Speaker 1: that it's it's such a gimmick, right, Even if you
Speaker 1: were to do it really, really well, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: that being um something that would be a norm. I
Speaker 1: can imagine it being once in a while, you dear,
Speaker 1: especially if if some well known filmmaker took it upon
Speaker 1: him or herself to create this kind of film that
Speaker 1: might make big news and be popular for a while.
Speaker 1: But I think that having a personal experience of that
Speaker 1: rather than a group experience, would be better. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if if I was sitting there with my
Speaker 1: own personal headset and going through a movie with an
Speaker 1: ad option that would be that would be fine. I
Speaker 1: think it'd be fun if it were on online and
Speaker 1: then you could and there are video games that are
Speaker 1: like this, uh their online video games where you can
Speaker 1: make your choices, and then not only would it play out,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the movie, it would tell
Speaker 1: you how many other people made the same choice you made. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you could find out did you make
Speaker 1: the same choice that the majority of the audience did?
Speaker 1: Did you did you take the path less traveled? Uh?
Speaker 1: Did you eat the marshmallow? Yeah? Did you take the
Speaker 1: red pill or the blue pill? Did you deny the
Speaker 1: existence of the matrix sequels or did you embrace them
Speaker 1: like the person who is wrong? But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that part of the problem with part of the problem
Speaker 1: with all of this right now is that the technology
Speaker 1: is still kind of clumsy, and that as as the
Speaker 1: technology improves, maybe it'll get more popular. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, at the same time, you know, if you
Speaker 1: if you take the the current functional working examples of
Speaker 1: things like improv and LARPing, not that many people larp.
Speaker 1: Other nerds look down on laper's. I don't like talking
Speaker 1: about my limited lamp experience in public because people go, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: never mind, it's gonna make a joke. But I'm not
Speaker 1: going to. I'm just gonna back away. Wait, you're actually
Speaker 1: one of those people. Uh So here's the thing. I yes,
Speaker 1: I agree that it's it's a niche thing. I think
Speaker 1: that even if like the technology, I'm not so concerned about.
Speaker 1: I think the technology could be we could, We could
Speaker 1: do it right now. The problem is writing a good
Speaker 1: story to have it work. The technological problem is not
Speaker 1: a hardware problem. It's a design problem. Right, And and
Speaker 1: that's and you know, and also just you know, what,
Speaker 1: what are people looking to get out of a story? Are?
Speaker 1: Do most people want to do the work that it
Speaker 1: takes to participate in an interactive story? Right? That's also
Speaker 1: a good question. I mean, I think for some people
Speaker 1: it would be a curiosity that they would be willing
Speaker 1: to try out once. But you know, would that ever
Speaker 1: translate into something that's truly successful if you were to
Speaker 1: compare it to say, other traditional films, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it would mean if you wrote a really good
Speaker 1: one and you had lots of different choices and they
Speaker 1: were different enough so that the film was a satisfying
Speaker 1: experience no matter which series of choices were made. Maybe
Speaker 1: you'd have like the next big enormous blockbuster in your
Speaker 1: hands as everyone goes again and again in order to
Speaker 1: see what the other outcome would be. All Right, everybody
Speaker 1: already seen what happens if you hit ay, everybody hit
Speaker 1: B and then you find out, you know, when you
Speaker 1: punch the guy, the movie gets twice as awesome. So
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd have to have someone really good at
Speaker 1: creating a story to develop that. And even then, like
Speaker 1: we said, it's just going back to that video game
Speaker 1: model where the interaction is still limited. You're you're given
Speaker 1: a couple of choices, and it does impact the way
Speaker 1: the story unfolds, but ultimately you're not creating the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and with like the open world movie idea I was
Speaker 1: talking about before, it um it would It's not that
Speaker 1: we lack the technology to make that either. But what
Speaker 1: we said I think I think you said it Lauren correctly,
Speaker 1: is that you know you would have to take like
Speaker 1: two hundred hours of footage or something or Moore, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like, let's just think of it
Speaker 1: as just like a simulation of real life. You know,
Speaker 1: you could go and sit down and on a park bench,
Speaker 1: and on one day you might see the most amusing
Speaker 1: series of characters walk by and overhear conversations and think
Speaker 1: it's fantastic, and maybe you even see something that is
Speaker 1: well outside the norm, maybe there's like a police chase
Speaker 1: or something that goes by. You get something really exciting.
Speaker 1: And then the other day, on the next day, on
Speaker 1: the same park bench, you sit down and it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, just a quiet, normal day. The same sort
Speaker 1: of thing could happen in one of these you know,
Speaker 1: these environments, unless you were to engineer things to happen
Speaker 1: so that everyone remains Uh, I'm going to use the
Speaker 1: word you love Joe engaged consistently over time. You know,
Speaker 1: this is I love this conversation. That's a great one.
Speaker 1: I love this idea of interactive storytelling. And there's so
Speaker 1: much more we could talk about, but we really need
Speaker 1: to wrap this up. Guys, for those of you out
Speaker 1: there who are storytellers or who just love a really
Speaker 1: good story, way in on this, come over to FW
Speaker 1: thinking dot com. Let us know what you think. Tell
Speaker 1: us if you've got an experience in a collaborative story.
Speaker 1: Maybe we didn't even talk about. You know, some of
Speaker 1: the traditional approaches like round round robin story telling, where
Speaker 1: a person starts writing a piece of fiction and passes
Speaker 1: it on to someone else who then takes it up
Speaker 1: with the same trying to use the same voice and
Speaker 1: continue the story using their own imagination, and then passing
Speaker 1: it on to someone else. I've seen stories like that
Speaker 1: that turned out to be great most of the time.
Speaker 1: After about three passes, it just takes a wild turn
Speaker 1: and you're thinking you already had a narrative in your mind,
Speaker 1: you were determined to apply it to a pre existing story,
Speaker 1: and or it turns into something like Christopher Tolkien taking
Speaker 1: over for his father's work or something like that. We'll
Speaker 1: talk more about then our next episode. Uh spoiler alert
Speaker 1: for you guys. All right, so we're wrapping this up.
Speaker 1: Go to fw thinking dot com joining on the conversation.
Speaker 1: We want to hear from you, and we will talk
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