Interactive Fiction and Indie Filmmakers--What do you think?
Biagio
stars that people like Jim, Roger, Jeff, Emily, Captain Mikee, and so
many others actually take the time to answer my questions, my wife and
I produce TV and Film (mostly reality, but beginning to do more
scripted projects as well.)
We keep a blog about producing, and it occurred to me that Interactive
Fiction is an amazing opportunity for indie filmmakers to help their
potential audience connect with the story they're trying to tell.
I posted some ideas about it here:
http://www.jokeandbiagio.com/indie-filmmakers-meet-interactive-fiction
While I'm just an I.F. programming newbie, I've been producing for a
while, and I really believe there's an opportunity here for filmmakers
not only to learn I.F. and help spread the word about it, but for I.F.
authors to team up with some of these indie filmmakers to create short
works of I.F. that can help extend the story of their film into the
interactive realm.
I don't see this as a way to make money for either side, but rather a
win-win situation for IF authors to bring attention to themselves and
the world of IF, and for indie filmmakers to better connect with the
audience they're chasing. After all, IF authors look for stories to
tell, and indie filmmakers constantly seek cooler ways to engage their
audience. If the next Kevin Smith had an IF version of the next
Clerks, that would draw a lot of attention to IF from a very young
audience.
Clearly, this is not going to work with films that already have
distribution, etc. But since indie filmmakers are going so far as to
program iPhone apps to promote their films, I think investing time in
I.F.--a medium that would help potential viewers actually connect with
the story, as opposed to just hearing it exists--is a smart move.
Okay, thanks for listening! What do you think, is it worth putting
some time into connecting IF authors with indie filmmakers? Would you
want to collaborate with aspiring filmmakers to make short works of IF
based on their stories? Am I out of my mind?
Best,
Biagio
Rowan Lipkovits
> some time into connecting IF authors with indie filmmakers? Would you
> want to collaborate with aspiring filmmakers to make short works of IF
> based on their stories? Am I out of my mind?
I think the best brains to pick would be Jim Munroe, whose recent
JayIsGames "escape" IF contest entry, Roofed, is a side-story from his
latest upcoming film, and Kent Tessman, who apparently works in film
but has opted out of using IF to spread his cinematic ideas to wider
masses. Any speculation the rest of us could bring to the table is
likely of the armchair expert variety.
Poster
<9af6a0cb-c3a0-4569...@r1g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>,
Biagio <biag...@gmail.com> wrote:
This is a good idea. I'm not sure if one art form translates well
directly into another, though. IF because it is interactive, needs more
freedom than a script permits. But sure, why not? It's one more way to
get the word out about something new, it's a unique way to engage the
audience. I myself wouldn't mind throwing together a short game for an
indie film, but remember that this is R*IF. There will be drama about it.
--
Poster
www.intaligo.com I6 libraries, doom metal, Building, Zegrothenus
sturmdrangif.wordpress.com Game development blog / IF commentary
Seasons: Q4 '11 -- One-man projects are prone to delays.
Tatiana
of your mind. Jeff Nyman had done some work based on incorporating
writing and screenwriting into IF. I'm a screenwriter myself and was
part of some classes he held. The goal was pretty much what you
describe in terms of translating IF to a potential screen format as
well as the opposite approach. We did examples with certain films that
we had the screenplays to or we made up certain things. Essentially we
were trying to see what techniques translate and what decisions you
had to make going from one format to another. Speaking just for myself
it opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities that to be quite honest I
was originally totally dismissive of. One example that we talked about
was the Stan Williams approach of incorporating a moral premise into
your screenplay (or I suppose your novel). The difference is we worked
on doing that in IF games. Quite a challenge when the player can force
the game or story to act outside of the premise. It was interesting to
see how you might 'modulate' this a bit even in various types of genre
like horror versus fantasy. Anyway I'm not sure if Jeff is still
involved in IF and there's no more classes planned to my knowledge but
I can tell you that you're not way far out in left field here. I know
a lot of people I work with were pleasantly surprised by the
possibilities and even the outright fun that we had. I'd recommend you
pursue your approach.
Biagio
Thanks for your reply. I agree that a straight translation of a movie
into a work of IF would be the wrong way to go. To me, the best way
to work it would be to let IF do what IF does best, and not cram
another medium down it's throat. By creating a work that's IF first,
inspired by the story/characters second, there's a chance to do
something really great that is set in the world of the film and/or
includes the characters. I think a beat-by-beat recreation of the
world would be lame, but the opportunity to participate in the story
in a whole new way could be really cool for potential audience
members. Glad to know you, and hopefully some others, wouldn't be
opposed to teaming up with an indie to do a little something. I'm
going to look at possibly adding a forum to the blog where indies and
IF authors can connect.
Best,
Biagio
Biagio
I had seen a post where Jeff Nyman had mentioned SAW as a way into
thinking about IF. That's what got me really thinking about it
(coincidentally, the prize on our reality show Scream Queens is an
actress wins a role in the next SAW film.)
That's great that you looked at this topic so in-depth. I'd be so
curious to hear more.
Another reason I wanted to write the post was a shock I had at the
office. 3 of my editors on Scream Queens (in their 20s) had never
herd of IF, Infocom, any type of game where they had to "type" the
replies...I was shocked. 1. I'm not that old. 2. How did a whole
generation completely miss IF? So in a way I'm on a mission to help
young filmmakers learn about IF, and pass that on to their young
viewers.
Thanks for your reply, and if you'd be up for an interview on our blog
about your experiments in class, I'd love to have you.
Best,
Biagio
Tatiana
> I had seen a post where Jeff Nyman had mentioned SAW as a way into
> thinking about IF.
HA! Yeah, that's right. We did use the Saw films quite a bit, I do
remember that. The idea that Jeff was doing with those was to keep the
puzzle-like aspects that are some common to IF (which match the
puzzles of the Jigsaw killer in the movies) but then to also focusing
on providing backstory and NPC interaction. So you had to figure out
how to communicate with various NPCs to get the information but also
to solve the puzzle. I know Jeff also liked how the Saw films played
out 'at the same time.' I can't remember all the details but I
remember that two or three of the films actually took place at the
same time, but in different locations. That was considered an
interesting element to model with the IF stuff as well. I think part
of the goal was to still tell the same story and have the same
'surprises' even when the player could disrupt your plans from an
authoring standpoint. So like if you were technically supposed to
cooperate with the other NPCs to solve a puzzle, but you instead let
them kill themselves off, were you still telling the same story?
> Another reason I wanted to write the post was a shock I had at the
> office. 3 of my editors on Scream Queens (in their 20s) had never
> herd of IF, Infocom, any type of game where they had to "type" the
> replies...I was shocked.
That doesn't surprise me too much. Most people I know have no
knowledge of IF. I remembered it as more of just the 'Zork' like stuff
and even that was second-hand since I only became aware of IF after
playing some games based on the Gateway book series.
> Thanks for your reply, and if you'd be up for an interview on our blog
> about your experiments in class, I'd love to have you.
Sure. We'd have to get Jeff involved probably since he did a number of
these classes and could probably tell you a bunch. I don't know if
he's still around but I can at least tell you about my experiences.
The main thing I think that was important was that people (like me!!)
didn't just get introduced to IF but we actually saw a way to make IF
appealing to people who might not otherwise consider it. I remember
most of the writerly-types were almost entirely skeptical that IF
could offer a different way to tell good stories.
We even had some pretty cool interaction with a current big name
producer who was interested in an idea of 'Cloverfield' as IF. I don't
know if you saw that movie but basically it was about a monster that
attacks New York. The idea in IF was to provide lots of pictures of
devestation and then have players go through a city that's being
attacked like in the film. The goal was trying to see what kind of
impact could be made via IF when you allow the player to wander the
city, plus have all that backed up by pictures. There was even some
thought of using video footage but I remember the only system that let
us do this at the time was one called Hugo. (Which is designed by Kent
Tessman who someone mentioned above.) The video footage was meant to
be like what you saw in the movie since it was these kids recording
things on their camcorder devices. There were plans to do something
similar like this based on the film 'Diary of the Dead' but I don't
know what happened with that. It was a pretty cool idea, though. The
idea is that people would just capture stuff on their recorders,
convert it into something that can be used in the game engine, and
then have the IF parts around that.
Biagio
I'll email you, and try to email Jeff as well, and see if we can do a
little interview on the blog about it.
I'd love to hear if anyone else would be interested in teaming up with
indie filmmakers to do some short pieces of IF. If there's enough
interest, I'm going to build a forum over at the blog where IF authors
and Indie Filmmakers can connect.
American Yak
this forum previously about an idea I've had to join more conventional
approaches to writing with interactive fiction. As Tatiana said, " I
remember most of the writerly-types were almost entirely skeptical
also my experience that many of the more entrenched, long-time IF
types were skeptical of anything outside the traditional IF model. I
think I may have had some conversations, however, with Jeff Nyman that
were encouraging, but he reinforced to me that many are skeptical of
any type of wedded approach.
One of the thing that fascinates me so much is the new medium
available to IF-ers that weren't available in the 80s when IF was
popular. I've heard it said a number of times that the reason IF
worked back then is that we didn't have such rich computer graphics,
and once computer graphics reached a certain zenith, the world just
became bored with IF. I think there is a lot of truth to this
argument, but I also think it misses the point. I think part of what
happened was that interactive fiction did not adapt with the
technology. This isn't to say IF could know a predictable course to
take. But I am suggesting that there are probably ways to reintroduce
interactive fiction into current technology that would stimulate its
discovery/use/play.
I'm interested, for example, in multi-user environments that capture
social networking as a layer. I often think Twitter, with it's brief
snippets, is an interesting _interactive_ environment -- and all
people are using is text. Text, text, TEXT! Somehow, somewhere,
somebody could make use of such an environment, perhaps in Twitter
itself, extending IF-like commands into layers of socially networked
forums that are aggregated and translatable in game play.
I'm also fascinated by games like Sony's Little Big Planet game
( http://www.littlebigplanet.com/ ) which has a highly adaptive,
amorphous environment, but is also a game built on creativity, or to
be more correct, creation. It's multi-layered in that it takes a
social networking approach to building worlds together, but those
worlds are built within the overall world itself, with highly
specialized tools, etc. To translate this into another type of
creativity, writing, authoring, could be, I imagine, somehow tucked
into a creative gaming environment to help people be more creative,
etc., and I can't imagine a more ripe environment for such a thing
than interactive fiction.
Anyway, I always find it difficult to explain what's in my head. But
I saw this thread and just wanted to add to it.
American Yak
such tasks, if translated into an online application...
On Apr 5, 7:57 am, American Yak <langb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Coming to this particular conversation pretty late, but I've posted to
> this forum previously about an idea I've had to join more conventional
> approaches to writing with interactive fiction...
George Oliver
> By the way, Inform 7 is *brilliant* and would lend itself so well to
> such tasks, if translated into an online application...
I don't know if you're familiar with muds, mushes, and moos, but if not,
you should certainly check out Guncho, an online multi-user I7
application. It would be possible to write a bot that allows interaction
between Guncho and Twitter, for example, essentially allowing you to
script a Twitter bot in I7.
namekuseijin
> I'm also fascinated by games like Sony's Little Big Planet game
> amorphous environment, but is also a game built on creativity, or to
> be more correct, creation. It's multi-layered in that it takes a
> social networking approach to building worlds together, but those
> worlds are built within the overall world itself, with highly
> specialized tools, etc. To translate this into another type of
> creativity, writing, authoring, could be, I imagine, somehow tucked
> into a creative gaming environment to help people be more creative,
> etc., and I can't imagine a more ripe environment for such a thing
> than interactive fiction.
Reading this I can't help to think that many see the *writing* of
interactive fiction as the most fun and *interactive* part of the
whole process. An end in itself, leading to much more authors than
audience.
Of course, Inform is an authoring tool, not a game. And I believe
many people think about the same about games like LBP, The Sims and
Simcity... not really games, just tools to toy around ideas...
Tatiana
> Reading this I can't help to think that many see the *writing* of
> interactive fiction as the most fun and *interactive* part of the
> whole process. An end in itself, leading to much more authors than
> audience.
One thing I remember getting out of Jeff's class was his idea that IF
could be used as a prototyping mechanism for stories. We had a set of
classes devoted to taking apart the game Trinity and showing how it
could be "recast" in more of a story-centric format but still with the
interactive elements in place. For me it was a fascinating experience
because we played around with things like viewpoint and tense and how
to describe situations. For example I remember one thing about Trinity
that Jeff brought up was that from a game perspective, the fantasy and
"real" elements sat together okay. But from a storytelling aspect,
they sort of fell over. I'd have to dig up my notes on this for
specifics but I remember thinking how interesting it was. That kind of
thing was then a springboard for bringing more writer-focused or story-
focused (or whatever you want to call them) concerns into the game
itself. That's partly why we also used movies or existing books. Saw
was mentioned upthread but we also used some of the Star Wars films.
We also used a book called Blindsight. There are some others that I'm
forgetting. The idea was to go both ways: take the story to the game
and take the game to the story. The middle ground is where Jeff
believed the techniques for IF in the modern era were to be found, by
which I think was meant getting more people involved. Even with that
though I'd say the focus was probably not just on the 'writing being
an end in itself' since there was a goal to get people to show their
work to others. That was a requirement of the classes in fact. Source
code, design notes, and the finished product had to be distributed to
everyone participating. This thread is kind of making me think it
would be good to do something like this again.
George Oliver
>This thread is kind of making me think it
> would be good to do something like this again.
I've heard Jeff talk about the classes here before, but I've always had
questions about what they were exactly, like how were they organized?
Where did they take place, and how often? How many were in the class?
How did you hear about them? There's a local writing center here in
town, and I've always thought it'd be cool to organize something like that.
Andrew Plotkin
> That kind of
> thing was then a springboard for bringing more writer-focused or story-
> focused (or whatever you want to call them) concerns into the game
> itself. That's partly why we also used movies or existing books. Saw
> was mentioned upthread but we also used some of the Star Wars films.
> We also used a book called Blindsight.
Hm. That was an interesting book (assuming you're talking about the SF
novel by noted felon^H^H^H^H^H author Peter Watts). What did you wind
up saying about it?
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
James Jolley
I see this, but there have been attempts. The Guncho project is one of
these colaberative ideas and as far as it goes, people like it. I've
not really used it much, perhaps I should look at it.
Best
-James-
Poster
George Oliver <georgeo...@gmail.com> wrote:
The meeting of Twitter and R*IF is perfect, in a way. What would happen
when two different groups of navel-gazers collide?
Tatiana
> I've heard Jeff talk about the classes here before, but I've always had
> questions about what they were exactly, like how were they organized?
> Where did they take place, and how often? How many were in the class?
> How did you hear about them?
I heard about the classes through one of my screenwriting groups. I
don't know how many classes there were in total or of what different
types there were. They were organized via both online and in person,
depending on where people were located. In the class I was in, there
was about thirty of us, almost all of us with writing or screenwriting
backgrounds. We did two separate classes, one based on design and the
other based on implementation but the classes were related. The second
class ended up picking up about ten more people after word got around.
Jeff could fill in more details. They were definitely worth it,
though, because I think for people who didn't know IF or didn't think
it had any viability, you needed that sort of direct interaction and
focus reinforcement to keep people interested and working at it. What
I personally liked was going between screenplay, novel, movie and IF
and considering how to craft elements in each. It put in focus what it
was possible to do in IF. So if you're thinking of doing something
like this, I'd certainly recommend it.
Tatiana
> Hm. That was an interesting book (assuming you're talking about the SF
> novel by noted felon^H^H^H^H^H author Peter Watts). What did you wind
> up saying about it?
Yeah, the Peter Watts book. Basically we worked at how to tell a story
like that -- the gradual reveal of a high-tech future -- without
necesarily burdening the reader of IF at each and every point with
gobs of text. If you remember the book, you had resurrected vampires,
the "Fireflies" that appeared over Earth, the comet, as well as the
"Big Ben" object. There was a lot of story to convey and the novel
itself was written in first person, but also had a bit of second
person elements in it. So we were talking about possibilities of the
"progressive reveal" in IF and how to deal with flashbacks, which
happen a few times in the book. We also used it as a showcase for how
to present heavily idea-driven concepts in IF around characters that
the player can actually control. We also did some stuff with a book
called Revelation Space because of how it uses the story weave concept
of various storylines converging to a central point. It also provided
a way to try playing multiple characters in IF.
Jerome West
> The meeting of Twitter and R*IF is perfect, in a way. What would happen
> when two different groups of navel-gazers collide?
The ultimate Speed-IF, with entries limited to 140 characters of source
code.
Twitterverse is a room. North is blogosphere. A tweet is here. Check
examining tweet: end the game saying "Goodness - a Speed-TwIF entry!".
Jerome West
> We also did some stuff with a book
> called Revelation Space because of how it uses the story weave concept
> of various storylines converging to a central point. It also provided
> a way to try playing multiple characters in IF.
I'd imagine this would make a really interesting work of IF. There are
just enough points where the story could naturally branch in different
directions, without there being too many to code. The interaction
between the different strands of the story before the point where they
meet would be fun to model too.
namekuseijin
awesome! :D
Tatiana
> I'd imagine this would make a really interesting work of IF. There are
> just enough points where the story could naturally branch in different
> directions, without there being too many to code. The interaction
> between the different strands of the story before the point where they
> meet would be fun to model too.
I checked my notes on this one. So we had three story lines (Dan
Sylveste, Ilia Volyova, and Ana Khouri). Their stories took place in
different locations and in different time periods. But in the book
each one of those storylines converges at one point. What was
interesting is that each of the storylines had progressive reveals
that highlighted things that mattered in the other storylines. Just
reading the book itself meant that you as a reader knew how to think
about those other parts. Jeff's challenge for us was how do we reveal
information to a player -- thus possibly changing their actions in one
of the other storylines -- when they are controlling the protagonist
that doesn't know that information? In other words, the player would
know more than the protagonist Ana Khouri because the player was given
more backstory while playing the Dan Sylveste storyline. But Ana --
the person the player is playing -- doesn't know that. Yet the player
is going to be making decisions as if she did. So that part of the
class was focused on how to deal with handling how and why the
protagonist (in-game avatar) responds a certain way when the player is
doing things that clearly requires knowledge the character they are
controlling doesn't have.
I did get in touch with Jeff but apparently he's not doing much with
IF anymore. He gave his wholehearted approval for posting the class
notes I have somewhere though. I have a little mini-web site and I can
put stuff up there. People might find some of it interesting.
dhakajack
literary setting -- It's 139 characters including white space:
Venice is room.
Every turn:
award 1 point;
if score is 5:
say "Be?";
now score is 0;
be.
To be:
(- if(~~YesOrNo()) deadflag=1; -);
Matt Weiner
Shouldn't the room be called Elsinore?
dhakajack
That's what I get for thinking of something on the drive home and just
jotting it down.
The shortest IF in the world, and I *still* need beta-testing! :-)
If I went with Elsinore, I'd have to find another character somewhere,
so how about we just call it Denmark.
OK, version 2.0:
Denmark is room.
Every turn:
award 1 point;
if score is 5:
say "Be?";
now score is 0;
be.
To be:
(- if(~~YesOrNo()) deadflag=1; -).
Matt Weiner
Wow, it is really hard to work within the limits
of the tw-machine. Here's my try at a polemical,
political piece, but it's got a lot of flaws:
War is room. "To battle!" Instead of doing something other than
looking: say "The only way to win is not to play."; end the game in
death.
The version without "other than looking" is fun.
And yeah, I'm chewing a lot of my space with
the quotation -- but I need it!