Panel Members:

Espen Aarseth aarseth@uib.no
Celia Pearce cpearce@annenberg.edu
Eric Zimmerman e@ericzimmerman.com
Brian Loyall bryan@zoesis.com

Panel Moderator: Noah Wardrip-Fruin

Panel Abstract:

In discussions of the future of media, we often hear of forms somewhere "between a story and a game." Rather than ask again if such forms are possible, or desirable, this panel asks if such forms already exist. Four game and/or story experts - three of them active game designers - will each demonstrate (or show documentation of) two games in which story might be "at play." These may be board games, video games, spectator sports, children's games, card games, etc. In each case, the two chosen, and the manner in which they are glossed, will help the audience understand a bit of that speaker's views on the relationships between play, performance, and narrative. The remaining time will go to spirited discussion, launched from these concrete examples.

Presenter Abstracts:

Espen Aarseth -

Forget narrative!
In designing interesting fictional worlds (games, didactic tools etc.), we rely far too much (to the point of fetish) on the structures of storytelling and narrative. As with any new medium, it takes time (50 years?) to develop sound, autonomous aesthetics that exploit a new technology fully, and the sooner we stop thinking in terms of story and plot, and start to take the user seriously as a co-creator of meaningful content, the better. My choices for game analysis to illustrate the point are X-Beyond the Frontier and Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Celia Pearce -

The progress of interactive narrative is now in the throes of the evolutionary equivalent a "small mammal explosion." The "warm-blooded" forms of narrative that are emerging are something halfway between game and story. They are both and yet neither, yielding entirely new forms that merge literature, game, cinema, and improvisational theater. Procedural narrative and collaborative narrative worlds have taken over from their more clunky forebears, such as so called "non-linear" narrative, hypertext, static navigational spaces, and puzzle games. These new experiences are dynamic, participative and creative. In addition, they redefine notions of authorship as audience members begin to "take things into their own hands" and create - and in some cases and trade and sell - their own characters and worlds. These emergent narratives and economies foreshadow a future where the current "narrative hegemony" of Hollywood is called to question by an increasingly interactive audience with both the desire and skill to partake creatively in its own entertainment and narrative experience.

Eric Zimmerman -

One of the difficulties in understanding the relationships between games and "interactive narrative" is that we lack a critical understanding of how they can be designed and deployed. Is every game a narrative? Are all narratives "at play" like a game? Isn't every narrative interactive in some way? If so, what do we mean when we use the term "interactive narrative?" Using plenty of audience participation, we will look at some non-digital interactive narratives, such as Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books and Surrealist language games, as well as some of my own work, like the interactive paper book Life in the Garden and the multiplayer online game SiSSYFiGHT 2000. These examples will help us sketch out a taxonomy of narrative and interactivity that can help shed light on the new kinds of narrative experience that digital technology makes possible.

Bryan Loyall (Zoesis) -

When people talk of interactive stories, they often mean different things. Some talk of branching narratives. Others describe systems where the reader is a co-writer of the story with the author. We conjecture that the most powerful form of interactive stories will be neither of these. Rather, it will be interactive worlds in which the reader is an active and free participant in the world. The reader will freely pursue his or her own goals and desires, and the resulting experience will "turn out" to be a dramatic story that is the story the author wanted to tell. Creating such interactive story worlds requires technology for powerful, personality-rich, interactive characters, and technology for flexible dramatic guidance of the story in the presence of an active participant. The authoring of both character and story is still firmly in the hands of authors, although the authoring process is necessarily different (as it must be for any new medium). At Zoesis we are working to create this new art form, and we will present systems we have built that strive toward it.

Presenter Bios:

Espen Aarseth is assoc. prof. of humanistic informatics at the University of Bergen, currently on leave as a visiting scholar at Brown University, and the author of numerous essays on hypertext aesthetics, online culture, and computer games; and the book _Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature_ (Johns Hopkins, 1997, http://www.hf.uib.no/cybertext/). He directs the CALLMOO project (see http://cmc.uib.no), using MOOs in foreign language learning. Currently he is engaged in writing a book on digital culture and politics.

Celia Pearce is an interactive multimedia designer, artist, researcher, teacher and author of The Interactive Book: A Guide to the Interactive Revolution (Macmillan.) She currently holds a position as Research Associate at University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication and Adjunct Professor and Production Track-Head of Interactive Media in the School of Cinema-Television. Her past projects include: Iwerks and Evans & Sutherland's award-winning Virtual Adventures: The Loch Ness Expedition, a 24-player virtual reality attraction; the lounge@siggraph and The Virtual Gallery, a VR museum featuring walk-in paintings, both exhibited at SIGGRAPH '95; and, Body of Light, an interactive performance piece which has been performed at L.A.'s Electronic Cafe and Canada's Banff Centre for the Arts. She has taught and lectured throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S., and written a number of articles and papers on interactive design and culture.

Eric Zimmerman is a game designer, artist, and academic. He is co-founder and CEO of gameLab, a New York-based game developer. gameLab's first title, BLiX, is available on Shockwave.com. Pre-gameLab titles include the critically acclaimed SiSSYFiGHT 2000 (www.sissyfight.com, created with Word.com) and STRAIN (www.strainlab.com). Non-computer game projects include the interactive paper book Life in the Garden (created with Nancy Nowacek and published in 2000 by RSUB); Organism, a board game published in ArtByte Spring 2000; and game installations in a variety of gallery and museum spaces, including Artists Space NYC. Eric has taught game design and interactive narrative design at MITÍs Comparative Media Studies program, New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and the Digital Design MFA program at Parsons School of Design. He is the director of RE:PLAY, a series of events about game design and game culture sponsored by Eyebeam Atelier. Eric has published and lectured extensively on the design and culture of play and games and is currently co-authoring a book with Katie Salen about game design to be published by MIT Press in 2002.

Zoesis: Peter Weyhrauch, Bryan Loyall and Joseph Bates are three of the founders of Zoesis Studios, a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University's Oz Project where they pursued interactive character and interactive drama research starting in 1987. At Zoesis Studios they are continuing this work. Their current product, www.thelivingletters.com, is interactive entertainment for kids on the web.

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