In her post, IntroComp and Hooks, Emily Short introduces the “plot hook” and the “game hook”.
Plot hook - Make the player interested in what happens next in the story.
Game hook - Make the player interested in the interaction.
Personally I might define a game hook as being more about mastering a task, but her definition offers an interesting perspective and either way we can use the concepts to better understand the differences and similarities between immersive story and games.
One thing you learn in screenwriting is that everything needs to be a hook. Go to USC’s screenwriting school and you’ll learn the Sequence Structure which breaks a screenplay into 15 minute segments, each with their own hook and payoff. A graduate of USC, Chris Soth teaches the same technique but calls it The mini-movie method. When you sit down to write a screenplay you don’t worry about the next scene, but rather the next hook.
What separates a game developer from an immersive story artist?
In writing a screenplay all you have at your disposal are plot hooks. A game developer has both. An immersive story artist will also have both. So what separates a game developer from an immersive story artists? Not much actually. It comes down to how many plot hooks are used vs game hooks? Use more game hooks and you might be creating a game. Use more plot hooks and you might be creating an immersive story.
Not an exact science, more analogous to movie genres
However counting up the number of plot hooks vs game hooks will not always yield if a given example is an immersive story or game. What if one of those plot points is more important than another? Just as in a screenplay the sequences build on one another. So does it matter what the final hook is? I would rather not try and break this down to an exact science. People have been trying to break move genres into exact buckets for years. In the end that is what we’re dealing with, genres. Immersive story and games are not completely separate mediums.
If a movie has 10 murders it’s most likely a horror or mystery. It’s almost certainly not a romantic comedy. The same is true with immersive story and games. I haven’t seen a video game that employed a true plot hook, so they are certainly in the game category. Some of the interactive fiction games Emily Short discusses on her blog could be in the immersive story category.
Hollywood’s warning to never mix genres
It’s a well known rule in Hollywood - don’t mix genres. You don’t want your audience paying for a comedy and finding a horror once the movie starts, al a Vampire in Brooklyn. It will be interesting to see how this rule transfers to games and immersive story. Already we see some deride games for story getting in the way, others praising the game developers for breaking new ground.
I’m noticing that most of the AI development in virtual worlds is coming from companies targeting serious games. Makes sense as they can approach other companies to fit the bill or government agencies. It’s much tougher to get funding for something as unclear as immersive story. However the same technology developed for serious games can be used to power immersive story. The MASA Group seems to have started out targeting fire departments but is now branching out into immersive story with their Fairyverse.
It makes sense that serious games would eventually lead to immersive story, especially since serious games are moving to virtual worlds. Both involve interactive scripts and autonomous intelligent virtual agents or bots. Serious games are also focused more on an events/scenes and simulation rather than game dynamics as are traditional games.
There’s a new crop of free game creation tools popping up, such as Wild Pockets and Atmosphir. After seeing Atmosphir’s presentation at TechCrunch50 it got me thinking - could these free game creation tools evlove into immersive story creation tools?
Atmosphir looks a little like Super Mario Bros. but they have the right idea, make it easy for artists to build. Combine Atmosphir with 3D simulation and/or serious games software like Sim Ops Studios Code 3D and it isn’t difficult to see these tools being used by artists to create immersive story.
I’m always amazed at how little I hear people talk of interactive story in the virtual world’s industry. Then again I commonly hear doubts at the capabilities of AI at the moment. You’re more likely to find chatting with an AI powered intelligent virtual agent annoying than entertaining. However I think the key to fixing that isn’t necessarily better technology but more character and context.
As long as we see this as a technology problem I don’t think the opinion of the industry will change much when concerned with AI and interactive story. The bar is too high. Whenever we see an intelligent virtual agent we think of the Turning test. The test itself demonstrates that many tinkering with intelligent virtual agents are more worried about showing off their programming prowess than making these things useful in their current state. Maybe they believe if they can perfect the technology everything else will follow?
What we need is character to soften the rough edges, to make these intelligent virtual agents a little less annoying. When I spoke with the people from Novamente at the Virtual Worlds conference, they seemed to be more concerned with improving the technology than worrying about character at this point. Even though, they had built in some rudimentary character settings.
However when I visited Fairyverse in Second Life I didn’t see the rich interaction found in the demos. Once you teleport you’re quickly informed that the autonomous intelligent agents are still very experimental. I couldn’t get the two who greeted me to do much else than respond to keywords with canned messages. My initial interest quickly turned to annoyance, but it is also likely that their best AI wasn’t on display when I visited.
I am however hopeful that Fairyverse will advance quickly; they certainly have a strong emphasis on character. They also speak of interactive story which could add the context to the equation. Done right we might actually forget that we’re conversing with an intelligent virtual agent.
Paving the way to interactive storytelling
We strive to develop the solutions for creating virtual interactive stories in which you and your friends are the heroes
Analogies make it possible to understand a compact message because they invoke concepts that you already know.
I’m always trying to find a better way to explain immersive story. It’s hard enough that most people are still struggling to comprehend virtual worlds. But maybe making the analogy of immersive story to plays can help.
Immersive story is a play in a virtual world where the characters are computer controlled bots (NPCs) and instead of sitting in the audience a viewer takes on the role of the protagonist, the story emerging as they interact with the other characters.
How’s that work, that make it easier to understand?
What will the future of narrative look like in the metaverse? It is a question Rick van der Wal and I have discussed many times before. For us it’s all about interactivity. In a recent post Rick outlines the advances the gaming industry has made experimenting with interactivity and story. Interestingly enough, he all but discounts what Hollywood has to offer in this area.
Does Batman go left or right? Does he chase the Joker or save the girl? - these choices would give the user somewhat control of the movie and customize the experience. Looking back I’m not sure that’s an all that interesting way of watching a movie, constantly interrupting for different choices and shaping your own ending rather than appreciating the creativity of the director and professional writers.
He is exactly right, interactive story is about more than just choice. If you don’t believe me just watch the video from Mr. Payback. If you’re not familiar, Mr. Payback was an infamous attempt by Hollywood to make an interactive movie - it completely flopped. You can easily see why, when we’re looking for entertainment we don’t want to have to make choices we simply want to be entertained. If we wanted choices or to be challenged we would play a game.
Augmented reality isn’t a new concept, but it looks to be coming out of the lab and academia to a store shelf near you. I’ve seen some great examples of AR, but nothing in the way of character development until now. It appears the EyePet, a virtual pet for the Playstation 3, will be making its debut at the end of 2009. Watching the video you’ll see the EyePet exhibit all kinds of personality and character. Which is good, because after the novelty wears off character is what will ultimately sell the EyePet. Character is going to play an increasingly important part of virtual worlds and in time immersive story.
IBM has built an entire virtual hospital in Second Life to demonstrate how the company’s health care solutions can modernize health care. It’s a great example of what can be done in virtual worlds, but more than that it’s an example of what can be done with AI technology.
The Emergency Room: Avatars can chose to experience a virtual emergency by “touching” a specially scripted control. This engages a medical episode and a ride on a fast gurney directly into the private and secure emergency treatment area, where a special screen is programmed to reveal the full incorporation of the PHR to ensure proper treatment.
A trip to a virtual emergency room sounds rather fun actually. If this isn’t immersive story, how difficult would it be to tweak it to be?
He said it will not be based on natural language as that does not work. The solution is not known to him but may need to be a symbolic language.
If he’s correct that would certainly put a damper on immersive story. Canned dialogue or symbolic language can work, but lessen the level of immersion.
I wasn’t at the talk and maybe there is more to the story. Isla could be speaking just of the near future, in relation to the studio’s next release in the Halo series. Or perhaps he sees the problem with natural language processing really as a problem of containing player inputs. But that is more a design issue, not necessarily the fault of natural language AI technology. We encounter the same with immersive or interactive story - how expansive do you want the story to go based on what the player can say or do? If the player can say volcano, do you include a volcano? Do you at least need a response to when volcano is mentioned? Or do you just use a witty canned response?
I still have high hopes for natural language processing and think the shortcomings can be nullified by the a creative artist. Bungie is trying to make a game, one that already has a product history, their requirements are different than that of immersive story.
Some may see NPCs and intelligent virtual agents as one in the same, others might not. Either way they share many characteristics and overlap on technology. Seeing as TapBot would like to use them as the basis for intelligent virtual characters, I’m always interested in new developments with either. And you can understand my excitement when I heard the new MMO Stargate Worlds was uisng AI to create personality with their NPCs. However after viewing the interview I was a bit disappointed.
Apparently personality equates to an aggressiveness variable.
An aggressive enemy might throw caution to the wind and charge the player with a knife, while a defensive one will play it safe behind cover.
It’s great that they’re experimenting with AI to make NPCs more life like and interesting, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call that personality.
I’m generally not a fan of personality variables. I can’t help it, I come from the world of screenwriting where you don’t think of personality in number variables. As screenwriters are taught - a character is defined by what they do, the actions they take. No one in the theater cares if their aggressiveness variable is an 8 or even if the character said they were aggressive. It all comes down to what they do on the screen. Understandably though controlling an NPC or virtual intelligent agent in this way is quite problematic, but right now I’ve got to think there is a way. I certainly know we will need a more advanced method for creating personality than what is offered in the Stargate Worlds MMO.
We all know virtual worlds are rich interactive environments, so why can't we turn them into an entertainment platform for real time narrative story - immersive story? Many talk about creating story worlds, which are great but why can't we also build real time narratives? Some have even created interactive games that include story, but at their core games are goal and challenge based - what about engaging viewers simply through the drama?
Think of a theatrical play in a virtual world where the characters are computer controlled bots (NPCs) and instead of sitting in the audience a viewer takes on the role of the protagonist, the narrative story emerging as they interact with the other characters and environments.
Immersive story
Everything needs a name and "real time narrative story in virtual worlds" isn't going to cut it. Hence the term "immersive story".
TapBot is an open source project to build immersive story tools for artists. At the Virtual Worlds conference in LA, it came up a few times that Hollywood was interested in virtual worlds to tell stories but unsure how to get started - they need tools. The same is true for all story tellers, professional and amateur alike.
That said, TapBot is also an open source project with no code and no developers. So more specifically TapBot is an experiment in open source development itself - to build a community, define a vision, flesh out requirements, and then code. To that end we'll experiment with this blog and multiple community tools, like BuddyPress, to try and kick start TapBot.
Still it's very early - virtual worlds are nascent and it's unclear what real time narrative actually looks like. So there is a lot of work to be done before coding starts. I've already met many people through my blog, meetups, and conferences who are very interested in immersive story. Pulling them together can only accelerate development.
The book, 
