The existence of problems of the application design of actual interactive narrative research does not say that the very ideas or endeavors associated with IN are wrong. Mateas and Stern have called the challenges associated with IN, employ-ing a term introduced by [RittelWeber], “wicked problems”, a view and term that will be adopted throughout this dissertation. A wicked problem is a problem with a specific feedback loop, such that the definition and understanding of the problem is continuously being changed by any attempt to find a solution to the original problem. A wicked problem is thus a problem where posing the question is part of the problem. According to Mateas, for
“(…) a wicked problem such as game design, exploring design space consists of navigating the complex relationships and constraints among individual design features, while at the same discovering or inventing new features and approaches that expand the design space. (…) Theoretical and empirical analyses certainly provide the designer with useful approaches, techniques and vocabulary for thinking about the design prob-lem. But such analyses can never be strongly normative. The only way to explore new regions of design space is to make things.” [MateasStern05a]
The wickedness of IN implies an experimental, creative, open process of growth, in the course of which technologies, usage of technology, technological demands, application design ideas and understanding of the creation process depend on each other. Thus, even if some novel IN application design ideas seems clear to the inventors and feasible at the first conceptual phase, its conception is doomed to change during the production process, at least as long as no prior functional examples are available. In this sense, in which the design and the technologies
“grow” during development, IN possesses aspects of art creation.
Thus, the hypothesis in this dissertation is that the wickedness of IN implies that technology, application concepts, and authoring methodologies must be devel-oped hand-in-hand (Figure 9 and Figure 10), and that the fact that this interdepen-dence has been neglected so far has been is a major obstacle for the develop-ment of interactive narratives. Thus, it is difficult to assess whether a certain tech-nology will “solve the (authoring) problem”, since the “problem” (the application concept) has not been well established in the first place, and its concretization de-pends on the technologies available for its realization. This is a vicious cycle, since without the authoring methodologies, it is not possible to try out and experiment – and without technologies, no authoring methodology can be developed.
Figure 9 – Partially, the “wickedness” of the interactive narrative research stems from the interdepen-dence of technologies, application design, and authoring issues, which grow during the creation process. The process needs to start with well-understood technologies, in order to be able to tackle with novel quests as they appear.
The other source of wickedness of IN, in my view, is the imminent attempt at trans-ferring. Essentially, IN is the attempt to learn from non-digital narration and drama, and to transfer the lessons into novel interactive applications. This is a metaphori-cal process, where structures of something that is valid and understood are
trans-Developing the novel design idea
Developing technologies and learning to use them Creating authoring methodologies
and tools
tIteratively implementing an initial underspecified application design idea
Start with well-understood initial prototype and technologies
ferred into a realm that is promising but still problematic (Figure 11). As such, this process has already proven to be at the core of scientific inventiveness and cogni-tive progress (cf. [Fauconnier]). But, because it requires invencogni-tiveness and creativ-ity, and multiple solutions may be valid, it also fosters the “wickedness” of the re-search.
Figure 10 – The creative process of innovative, “wicked” applications with interactive narrative com-ponents should be centered on the authoring tools, and involves a team with team members fulfilling different roles.
Thus, a large variety of approaches are covered by the umbrella concept of “inter-active narrative”, and no unified theory of “inter“inter-active narrative” is available. The common umbrella also covers many essential differences. For example, the main-tenance of a dramatic arc is essential for Façade and Geist, but irrelevant for FearNot! (cf. above). In this dissertation, “interactive narration” will be not defined in terms of features of a final application. The focus of the following definition lies more on the process behind the intuitions that belong to the research area. Thus, the following will be the definition employed within this dissertation:
’Interactive narrative’ denominates a metaphorical process in which structures and experiences of traditional storytelling are transferred to devise novel, useful, enter-taining, expressive, or meaningful interactive computer applications. As such,
“in-teractive narrative” is an open-ended process that can encompass divergent ap-proaches and attempts.
Figure 11 – The term “interactive narration” denominates an open-ended metaphorical transfer from the realm of traditional narration into the area of interactive applications. This is an additional source of “wickedness” of interactive narration research.
Despite all conceptual and technological difficulties, IN has reached certain maturi-ty, in the past few years of research, as compared to initial rather visionary and tentative developments, little more than a decade ago (cf. [MurrayJ]) – in the sense that in fact the first fully functional applications are emerging, albeit on an experimental level. It is not yet clear enough which kind of application concepts are desirable and worthwhile pursuing, which technologies are appropriate to the demand, and which will reveal as dead ends. A main reason for this still missing clarity, for this “wickedness”, is that we do not have functional examples because the implementation of any novel idea on IN, even if only as a partially functional prototype, is forbiddingly complex and time consuming. We cannot simply try out and iteratively let novel, tentative design ideas mature. Cyranus, the authoring framework that will be presented in Section 4 and 5, is a (partial) solution to this problem. It is a novel generic framework for experimenting with a large class of possible IN design concepts that responds to the “wicked” situation of IN research.
Consolidation implies that we need a clearer understanding of what IN can mean.
Methodologically, this is not a “semantic” question, but a quest for an explicit and plausible exposition of application concepts, and for conceptual and prototypical examples of those applications. Thus, the application (or “experience”) design has
Interactive Narrative Traditional Stories
Dramatic Arc
Identification Story Persons Beats
Scenes Inner
Transformations
Artistic Expression
Mimesis
Transformation and adaptation
to gain more weight. The research area is still in need of a better understanding of what are a “good” application idea and a “good” experience design, and what is mistaken. A rapid, agile, iterative creation of application prototypes is required.