[Sigia-l] IA and Prototype Theory

[George Olsen]

On 3/12/04 8:48 AM, "Peter Merholz" <peterme at peterme.com> wrote:
> Genre is emerging as a key property of digital documents, because they
> help the user predict the value, meaning, and most importantly, *use*
> of the document, in a way that other metadata (title, subject, etc.) do
> not.

Back when I was hanging out with the interactive storytelling crowd in the
early 1990s,  I became convinced that solutions to some of the insanely
difficult problems combining narrative and interaction would come in genre
pieces. Why? Because genre performed a similar predictive infrastructure
role.

If you're doing a western (with the user was playing the hero), players
would understand what sort of behavior was part of the genre -- thus making
it easier for them to slip into character, and making the inherent
boundaries to the story space feel more "natural."

For example, if the player backed out of "High Noon" showdown with the bad
guys, you could have them ostracized by the other (computer-generated)
characters for cowardice, until the player went back into the fight -- or
you could gracefully end the story. Either way it wouldn't feel
heavy-handed, unlike the all-too-common "branching tree of death" approach
used at the time. (The branching tree approach was that even though it
looked like you had choices, there was actually only one true path through
the videogame, if you chose wrong, you'd end up dying and having to start
over.)

For more geek reading on genre, check out "Adventure, Mystery, and Romance:
Formula Stories As Art and Popular Culture" by John G. Cawelti
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226098672/interactionby-20/104-7330
305-6449509>. It's an excellent look at how genre fiction works and why it
appeals.

George