Category Archives: New Media

Dreamfall and Story Scripting

There are some very nice scripted story sequences in Dreamfall. Zoe Castillo, the protagonist, finds herself in a watery region of Arcadia. She traverses bridges to the edge of a wooden landing and sees a flare rise. A few moments later she catches two people on another far platform. She shouts, “April.”

The point of view in the adventure shifts to April Ryan’s. A conversation on a platform. April loses the argument and makes her way to a familiar friend, who provides her advise. She tells April that a messenger has come from Marcuria. April wends her way to make the meeting and walks to the edge of the predisclosed place. A flare goes up. She turns to find Kian, the assassin.

The POV shifts to Kian’s. He sees a flare go up. He finds April’s friend, who informs him that “The Scorpion” is available. He makes his way to the meeting place and there meets April.

As Kian and April speak, you can see Zoe traverse a far boardwalk, come to a stop, watch. Suddenly, time makes sense. Space and time square. Very nice.

I enjoyed this POV shifting. It made for an interesting pace, eased tension, and provided opportunity to wonder about the role of time in the developing story. Often I’d kick back to another point of view with a better idea about context. This POV shifting didn’t compromise suspense or suspension of belief.

This scripted plotting, however, came with a cost to a sense of shaping the story by player choice. While involved in Dreamfall, I had to give in to the fact that I walking through a controlled set of paths. Once you leave Zoe and go to April, Zoe is lost to you. April, Kian, and Zoe are embodied by “you.” “You” move April and Kian “sometimes.” “You” move Zoe all the time since she is the protagonist.

Sequences such as the one described above can be scripted without having to worry so much about degrees of interactivity. Dreamfall is what I would classify as “low-level” interactivity but the story and character interaction is strong enough to make things interesting. Thus Dreamfall often feels like digital movie, novel, and adventure genre. The rises in action and eases in tension also have the feel of digital theater and can be quite touching.

I enjoyed Zoe as a character. She begins as a fairly normal college-aged young woman properly gizmoed out and ready to face the world with her “mobile.” She finds herself in a tough spot and grows into the story and keeps going (if “you” keeps at it).

Dreamfall worries about story not so much with interactivity. Story itself is also creatively technical.

Dreamfall and The Sense of Inside

I’ve worked a little way through Dreamfall and it has R Tørnquist written all over it, a subtle sensibility of choice about what is and isn’t important to establishing a flow and feel in a world of vulnerability. There are new elements here: more control over the protagonist, a speedier interactivity, and darned good atmosphere.

I’ve had a few situations where combate was required. Imagine a Kate Walker who can launch some kicks and block the antagonist’s punches, and who feels bad about having to “knock a person out.”

What’s Coming

Already looking to the Fall. What’s to come for Contemporary Literature:

Moore and Lloyd’s V for Vendetta
Luis Fernando Verissimo’s Borges and the Eternal Orangutans
Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl

Look for posts to come on New Media preps. But look for an emphasis on system spaces and architectures of experience and a new course in the works called Digital Narrative, whose content I’ll be exploring this summer.

SiN Episodes: Emergence

I’ve played through the first episode of SiN Episodes entitled Emergence, dowloaded via steam, and have a few things to say. One of the draws of the game is this

Face off against ruthless enemies, like jetpack soldiers and mutants that evolve as you fight them. Witness enemies that adapt to your actions and truly work as a team, as they cover each other and help fallen comrades to get back on their feet.

Semiotically, Sin EM shares the typical environmentals, from Pac-Man to Kya to HL2: crates, spans, and sounds as a means of negotiating the space. But I like to engage the so called intelligent parameters of shooters and adventure games and have to say that the above description is and isn’t true as a means of addressing the ambiguity of programmed “intelligence.” I never saw the enemy evolve, in other words. Because there isn’t much to evolve.

As far as I could tell, the enemies in Sin resemble the Combine in that they’re as dumb as you’d expect. They can’t hear and don’t seem to care much about their own lives. I remember rushing into rooms and soldiers in HL2 would face windows rather than my avatar. Shoot and move on. Similarly in Sin. In one case, I entered a storage room and waited for the soldiers to enter or toss in a grenade. They didn’t. I crept to the door, peered out, and two of my enemy stood facing a wall. I tossed out a gas canister. Nothing. shoot it. Boom. Move on.

High difficulty has nothing to do with intelligence but with enemy numbers. The higher you play, the more you’re shot up or flanked. Fine. Accuracy is another question. These guys don’t miss, even when you’re hiding behind walls. That’s not intelligence. That’s programmed targeting. Both HL2 and Sin suffer from this relentless “programmed-ness” that diminished the sense of in-game intensity and decision making against an enemy that wants you and has its own wants as well.

Sin is a typical penetration metaphor. You must get in and do your business. In/out. But it lacks the grit of HL2, whose world-story is enticing as an image of apocalypse, at least in my mind. But in both worlds, the internals don’t feel intelligent. Why not a game where the intelligence is palpable and isn’t always about calculating proximity, as in hitTest() or either ors, but as a thing that has an intent beyond the avatar’s activity or mission: an agency that builds on its own ends or problems. An enemy that hunts you down and alters its plans and is often confused is a mod I’d like to see in an Half Life or Sin of the future. Anatonistic agency must have a feel of a mind of its own. Sin feels as if it’s waiting for you to walk into it. The trigger is its cognitive metaphor. But I’d suggest that more needs conceiving, an antagonist you can feel working outside your influence.

Lovecraft and Games

I can’t remember who it was who had expressed interest in Lovecraft (Matt, Jesse?), but I thought this might be interesting.

The game also allows you to stamp your own style onto the proceedings via an advanced AI system that can react to your method of play. Cthulhu enemies can roam freely around the environment – opening doors and tracking you down single-handedly or in groups. To stay alive you won’t just be able to outshoot them, you’ll need to outthink them as well.

Machines, Environment, and Learning

Ruairi Glynn writes of Michael Fox

Michael Fox shows how interactive architecture doesn’t require a degree in computing, electronics, and architecture just to get things going. The combination of simple practical skills from these disciplines within a conceptual framework is capable of creating something much more exciting than the individual disciplines would appear to offer.

Intentions

I like the idea behind this from Doc Searls

The Intention Economy is about markets, not marketing. You don’t need marketing to make Intention Markets.

The Intention Economy is built around truly open markets, not a collection of silos. In The Intention Economy, customers don’t have to fly from silo to silo, like a bees from flower to flower, collecting deal info (and unavoidable hype) like so much pollen. In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer’s purchase. Simple as that.

The Intention Economy is built around more than transactions. Conversations matter. So do relationships. So do reputation, authority and respect. Those virtues, however, are earned by sellers (as well as buyers) and not just “branded” by sellers on the minds of buyers like the symbols of ranchers burned on the hides of cattle.

The Intention Economy is about buyers finding sellers, not sellers finding (or “capturing”) buyers.

Thanks to Hugh Nicoll for the link.

It’s one of those “should be” ideas that Amazon approximates. Let’s say I’m in the market for a miter saw, which I am, and I want to engage the intention. In almost all cases I don’t need to be sought out for stuff–because there are some items that I want to purchase for specific things and I typically don’t want or need anything else. I’d type my complicated request into an engine and I’d receive offers from Dewalt, Porter-Cable, and Hitachi.

Those things that I don’t want or need need not be addressed.

Networks and Competition

I remember when my Dell router suddenly failed a few years back. In looking into the matter, I found that numerous other people were complaining about the rapid failure, too, on the forums. Neither Dell nor Comcast would claim responsibility. That’s why I use a Linksys router. It was just one of those things: an operable devise just quit working and yet another worked just fine in its place. I could replace the router; but I couldn’t replace the service provider. It’s not that easy to do. (Now I’m locked out of my course at home and the response from support is, “It’s your fault.” No it ain’t. Yes it is, you dumbass, Texas hick.)

So what to make of this article in The Hartford Courant informing about the demise of Gemini Networks, whose millions were supposedly meant to provide 200 customers telecom service in West Hartford.

Gemini’s demonstration project, a 200-mile network serving about 230 customers in West Hartford, will be shut down and mothballed by the end of the month.

Jophn Moran’s article provides the complaints by Gemini, but very little detail about the actual narrative–this is a piece about telecommunication industry competition, which, as I illustrate above, is a joke in this state and, I’d imagine, in others.

Moran provides an either or case: either Gemini followed the rules or AT&T stiffled them.

Meanwhile, he said, the state Department of Public Utility Control and state legislators did nothing to enforce the order that AT&T lease the network or otherwise foster competition in the telecommunications industry.

A spokesman for AT&T called Chase’s claims “ridiculous.” A spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Utility Control said the agency had no comment.

Chase said Gemini’s inability to expand by leasing AT&T’s inactive network or putting more lines on utility poles doomed the company, which could not operate profitably on the small network it initially built. Lack of competition means that prices will remain high, he said.

“Everyone complains about the high cost of doing business in Connecticut. Yet when branches of state government have an opportunity to create real change, they ignore it,” Chase said.

But John Emra, executive director of external affairs for AT&T Connecticut, said competition in the state remains strong, despite Gemini’s departure.

You tell ’em John. Set us all straight. Tell me where to go when Comcast turns down the water pressure. At the bottom of the article, we have this

The DPUC ultimately ordered SBC [now AT&T] to permit Gemini to lease the network, but SBC appealed and no lease deal has ever been executed.

Typically, competition in any thing can be gauged by a balance of opposing forces. Team A can compete with team B if they are in the same league. How does one compete with AT&T? Yet, what’s the outcome of providing 250 units in West Hartford? On another note, how would someone compete with Comcast? Is inexpensive 56k operability competition? I’d love to see how a small firm would provide data, with what, and on whose backbone. What is Vonage competing with? Deregulation was supposed to, grinningly, promote competetion. It did not. Most users sit in a faily complex space of technology and service provision that amounts to Kafka’s castle.

Girls and Boys

S, my 4 1/2 year old son, pretends to be a 16 year old girl. And I’m often cast as her brother, Franck.

“Is Franck still at work?” he’ll ask my wife.

“Yes,” she says.

This girl is tough, good at counting, and is fearless, willing to leap through windy tunnels to solve problems, do the right thing, and risk her health for a good cause.

I ask S, “Would you like to go to Mars some day?”

“Kya would,” my son responds.

“She would like to live on Mars?”

“It’s just pretend, Franck,” my son tells me.

Place and the Internet

It always strikes me how you can read a weblog and suddenly realize that the author lives in a place you’ve never experienced. Yet the body of post speaks about activism, writing, and the Internet with such “shared experience” that “space” has been reduced to word and impression.

I like it.