Francois

I thought his analysis of the lack of narrativity in games was interesting. He seems to want to develop a dramatic AI. A program for making a theatre inside a computer, but a theatre that is not linear. Traditional theatre goes from beginning to ending, it is completely linear

This guy wants a "narrative" that plays out like a bunch of atoms/bugs bouncing on each other. Would that mean that in the end even with all the different actors bouncing the result would be the same? Or would there be several possible results. What he really is talking about is a non-deterministic narrative. A narrative system.

For instance this linear structure helps plays be dramatic. Part of the experience of watching a tragedy is that we know that the hero will die, the immutability of destiny makes the tragedy all the more tragic.

There is another tension if we do not know the outcome. One wishes to see the end of a game or a book because one wishes to discover the outcome. One is not an omnipotent watcher surveying the past, but a person in real time, every moment is new. Yet unlike some portions of real life we are moving towards something: IE the end of the book.

In this program even the creator would not know the outcome(s) until the program was run.

But if one set up the program so that 99.9% of the time there was a Shakespearean pile of bodies on the stage at the end, then you might have something approaching the deterministic drama of a play.

Of course this is completely antithetical to his aims.

Also, what do the characters do after the pile of bodies? That would be an interesting piece, to set up a "hamlet" program and see what the survivors talked about afterwards.