Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling

Rating:
Summary: He's Back!
Review: First of all, I was very happy to see that Chris Crawford has resumed his humorous, optimistic writing style after his dark and gloomy episode in his previous work. Also back is the sense that an overarching thesis is directing the discourse of the book.

This book is wonderful. It is much easier to read than The Art of Interactive Design, and more thorough and comprehensive than either of his game design books.

Expectedly, this book contains many deep and engaging concepts which greatly enhance the reader's ability to think and talk about its subject.

The book is surprisingly practical, with much more in the way of examples and detailed methods than we have previously come to expect from Mr. Crawford. This practicality greatly serves to make tangible an otherwise wholly tentative and theoretical discussion.

In general, I believe Mr. Crawford is displaying a remarkable ability to ask the right questions. He raises many important topics and unlike some other writers who deal with the subject, he keeps his discussion of the problems faced by this new medium of interactive storytelling to the point, avoiding proclamations like the oh-so-common "Artificial intelligence is nowhere near adequate for this or that, maybe next century", focusing instead on the practical facets of the problem and how they might actually be overcome long before next century.

As regards technology, I believe Mr. Crawford makes a very strong case as to the very real possibility of realizing his theories in the immediate future. His interesting overview of many technological projects currently underway also serves as an instructive introduction to the current state of the field. Although he does raise several important technical questions whose answers do not seem immediately available, it seems indubitable that interactive storytelling in SOME form is technologically possible here and now.

I hold in greater doubt, however, his answers to several important aesthetic questions raised in the book. Before the new medium can have any aesthetic principles, there must be a certain body of works out of which one or several must be considered canonical - only then can an aesthetic be inferred. Crawford's work, for the most part, has only a theoretical basis. Even Bach could not have ordered an organ whose keys divide the octave into twelve (theoretically) equal parts in the specific configuration optimized for playing tonal music unless he had heard and appreciated the tonal music of his predecessors.

Mr. Crawford, in this sense, is equivalent to the medieval musicians who had based their music on Greek theory without having the slightest notion of how Grecian music sounded like. The end result was Bach and the other great composers, but their music sounds nothing like, and requires quite different theoretical tools than those of medieval music (which is largely deficient).

When it comes to art, theory alone just doesn't cut it. Mr. Crawford is making an admirable effort, but we must remember that this medium can truly be born when, and only when, it has a body of canonical works. These works might eventually lead to the conclusion that some or all of Mr. Crawford's impressive theories are in need of adjustment or replacement, while others were right on the mark from the start, but either way they must exist for a serious discussion of aesthetic, which is why it is unfortunate that Mr. Crawford does not make his technology accessible to a wide audience of users to experiment with (it is only available to Mac users, and even for them, only the authoring tool is available, so there's no way to actually experience the result of your work).

Anyway, while there may be many criticisms of Mr. Crawford's methods (subjectivity, abstraction, lack of important examples etc.), the merit of his arguments cannot be denied. I am in hope that we will soon have actual works to test these against.

An important book recommended to anyone interested in the great adventure of birthing a new medium of artistic expression.


Rating:
Summary: Will get you thinking...
Review: Mr. Crawford has obviously been thinking about interactive storytelling for a while. Like his previous books, the reader will be most fufilled if they approach the material with both an open mind and a critical eye. His writing style is both his strength and weakness, in that it will likely turn away skeptical readers quickly, but allows for a very dense amount of information for a book this size, without a lot of meandering and wishy-washy blather. You probably won't agree with him on everything, but certainly every assertion he makes is worth pondering over.

The possibilities of this medium are exciting to just about anyone, but there have continued to be a set of Hard problems that cause theorists to continue to stumble. Crawford proposes that many of these problems are too hard to think about solving anytime soon, or are indeed impossible to solve. Instead, he provides creative abstractions that obviate the problems so that we can get someplace tantalizingly close to a workable model.

The biggest problem with this being that there are no examples. Crawford's assertions are indeed well thought-out and documented, but there is no concrete back-up. I find this forgivable however, considering that even though the ideas are not entirely complete, they do tackle many problems head-on that previously went unanswered.

Another minor point is that while much time is spent on the inner mechanics of a theoretical storytelling engine, little time is spent on how these stories might actually be presented to the user. I believe this to have a pretty significant impact on how the engine might work. One can imagine many possibilities for how interactive stories might be protrayed, and this certainly has an impact on how they would be perceived.

A dense, exciting book that particuarly those in the games industry should read and think about. I look forward to his future work.