Firstly, I''d like to say a agreed with much of what Landfish said in the original post, partly because I beleive it''s easy to say "We are a complete new medium, we have to find our own footing", but that dosen''t mean we have to ignore the traditional well established ones. On the other hand we don''t wan''t to translate those medium directly in our own, we have been doing quite a bit of talking about non-linear narrative lately in my UNI course and just thought I''d add some ideas.

I''d like to mention a book that has come up quite a bit during our lecture''s dissucusion on this, "The castle of cross destinies". I have not as yet read it but the basic concept is this, several Taro cards are taken and shuffled. The author then creates a story following the plot elements represented by each Taro card. This is done for three different stories (the cards are printed in the margin), and the author creates three meaningful ''linear stories''.

Ok, so this requires a great deal of work on the part of the author to fill in the gaps but that is the power of the human mind. It''s common in video production to use empathic juxtopositioning of two entirely different images to portray a message (suppose a club and then a nice cuddly fur seal, hehe you get the point). This is where we introduce the idea of the reader, we are living here in the land of interative media and thus the reader is no longer a passive observer but a write\reader (or wreader if you like) where they have the power to participate in and built the story. Basically I am making a case for some form of modular experience, where the modules are story elements that when combined result in a emotional respones from the reader. But this will not necassarily result in a meaningful ''story lines'' every time and it''s not exactly the easiest of things to implement (our lecturer is an idealist not a pragmatist : ).

As for the mutilple endings issue, it really is a result of tring to clone old media into this new form and I am not a fan of it in general (althought some of the ideas AtypicalAlex was talking about sounded like a nicer approach).

I am myself guilty of using this in my assignment for this semester (but I was working in a group it was not entirly up to me . Ours was based on the Frog Prince story. In the one most people know the Princess kisses the frog to turn him into a Prince, in the Grimm Brothers version however the Princess throws him against the wall in frustration. Two endings, already for us to use : ), so what I decided to do with this is earlier on in story there is some conversation pieces and if the frog is mean/rude during these conversations (the user has control over these), the Princess (your character), seethes with anger and becomes angrier. The more this happens the angrier she gets depending on how angry she is at the end she either throws him against the wall or kisses him. (cept in our version she turns in a frog if she kisses him : ) This way we try to replicate the actual feelings the wreader is having and play the story out apporpriatly.

I have more but I fear I have rambled for long enough and probably gone off topic too : ).

Sof, for future refernce, the plural of Medium is Media. Use it, people will think you are smarter than you are (at least, in my case =)

I think you are right about not overusing techniques from other media. We all know what happened when some developer saw the similarity between games and film... the tried to force games to be more movie-like, and we got (for the most part) a pile of crap. It''s my belief that games are evolving on their own to become more cinematic, but in a way we really can''t predict. So the issue is to not FORCE it, but to let it occur natuarally. The best we can do is start changing the current system, and reconsidering the current outlook.

"people will think you are smarter than you are", hehe, this is what makes Arts students such good designers .

Any Arts students out there please don't take offence. Most of my friends are Arts students, it's just a joke.



Edited by - Sof on June 16, 2000 12:36:36 AM

Reading through this monster of a thread, there''s one thing I''ve picked up on:
Linear would be: going towards a single theme-ending, with instant "failure endings" when you divert from the path.
That''s STILL multiple endings. At more than one point on your path, you can run into a failure ending. Usually, just a single screen, with a few skulls and bones on it, proclaiming the sad passing of the character you were playing.

This is a perfect example of bad linear gaming. There''s a line, and it''s all perfectly well done as long as you stay on it. But if you stray off, you just die. No particular reason, no ending that explains why you were wrong. You just have to start over.

So the game is telling you: You messed up, but it wasn''t really at an important point, because we didn''t bother making a special scenario for when you did this wrong.
Ermm. Then why did your character have to die if it wasn''t important.
(I''m NOT talking RPG/Combat things here, more adventure style )

What I''d like to get to, is having a "wrong turn" in a game, that will instantly reduce your chance of a happy ending to zero. But the game would lead you to play your own demise, ending in a well-thought through ending sequence, where you figure out exactly why you failed, or perhaps not.
( Guess you weren''t paying attention to playing the game if you didn''t figure it out )



Give me one more medicated peaceful moment..
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

I think we already clarified endings from conclusions, Keith.

But as for what you said, death endings aren''t necessarily bad things. You just can''t be unfair about it. The player must be able to discern the right path by being intelligent, and a good player. But if you can do no wrong in a game, is it still a game? If no matter what I do I will still get at the meat of the game, I''m not going to try very hard, am I?