On Tuesday, July 31, 2001, at 09:46 AM, Laurence Rozier wrote:

> She uses the term "participatory narrative"
> which I prefer over interactive fiction but I don't
> think interactive fiction is an oxymoron any more than
> human-in-the-loop or other forms of "simulation" which
> mix real world inputs with simulated ones. Whether
> "simulation-with-a-bit-o-story", or
> "story-with-a-bit-o-simulation" as Andrew put it, this
> mixed thing exists and we have to call it something
> right?

Clearly, I assault the term as oxymoronic primarily as a rhetorical tool 
to make the point: there is an inherent conflict between the quality of 
a story-telling and the quality of a simulation.  I do find the genre of 
quasi-storytelling-quasi-simulations difficult to describe in a might 
better be characterized as a mere "game."  Games can have incidental 
themes, as these do, and can also be serious works of art.  But to exalt 
these non-literary exercises to the level of fiction or narrative that 
is true literature seems, at least to me, problematic.

Make no mistake -- I'm one of the pretentious people who likes to think 
of my game designs as species of an art form.  I believe that they are.  
However, I do not pretend that they are literature although I'd like to 
think (at least at one time) we were getting close.  I say this, noting 
that one of my games was accompanied by more than 700 pages of printed 
prose in support of a story element.  I only got as close as I did, I 
will advise those who are interested in doing this sort of thing, 
precisely by recognizing the present limitations of the medium, both 
from the narrative perspective and from the simulation perspective.  It 
may not have been great storytelling, but it sure hung together well as 
a game -- and it shared some of the elements of great storytelling.

Huge strides have been made in 10 years concerning the quality of 
simulation.  Virtually nothing, IMHO, has been done to improve 
story-telling.  If anything, it has gotten much, much worse since the 
days of Infocom.  We have a long way to go with the sciences (classical 
sense) of what you call "participatory narrative," and until we get 
there, I suggest we eschew these dangerous labels.  They lead us to 
think that merely be putting words and characters and little pieces of 
plot together that we are actually engaging in storytelling.  I, for 
one, can tell you that commercial success and rave reviews can be 
stultifying to an artist -- I was told I made great interactive 
literature, and so I believed it.  And the quality of my products 
festered for years, until I matured to the point of understanding the 
difference.  It is a trap I advise others to avoid.

To the extent Laurence is merely observing that a shitty novel is 
nevertheless still a novel, even though it may share all the flaws of a 
great interactive game, I don't disagree with his point.  But I'm not 
sure that the observation either weakens or dilutes mine.

> Drama in its origins was
> very much a participartory form and I agree with many
> of the points made by Murray and Laurel. My
> Participant-Activity-Scenario-Stage(PASS) system(see
> Morphic Joules docs for a description) is a
> model-based development approach founded on the
> premise that object-oriented software systems consist
> of Participants that engage in the Activities of a
> Scenario which is played out on a Stage.
> Scenarios(paths thru a use case) are simulations which
> can benefit from storytelling. They seem like a form
> of participatory narrative to me but, perhaps there is
> no one single term that is appropriate. Do folks
> prefer one?

My criticism was not directed to the functionality or social utility of 
adding themes to simulations -- just to point out that what simulations 
and games do with their story elements don't amount to storytelling.  
Poetics was not directed to the functionality of the works, but rather 
to their efficacy in achieving that functionality -- the science 
(classical sense) of writing.  It is what makes a story catch our 
breath, and makes it worthwhile the read.  We aren't doing much of that 
in role-playing games these days.  Indeed, not much at all.