Keith Johnstone is important because his theory of improvisation, especially as pertains to status and spontaneity is extremely useful as a model for character behavior and interaction. My primary interest in locating his book was to develop a computational system that reflected his use of status. In Johnstone’s introduction, he gives a review of himself and the history behind his theories, which all derive from education. He explains that he particularly found his education to be stifling and suppressing of spontaneity. Impro is about theatrical improvisation, but may also be considered a much broader approach to education.

It is useful to compare spontaneous theatrical performance with educational learning. Performance may be used to describe learning and technical proficiency, and that is normally a very different concept. However, to Johnstone, the two can share a common approach. The reason why both are difficult is because of fear and people’s learned expectations of judgment and the ideas of correctness. These are opposing to childrens’ natural spontaneity, and thus they learn to suppress it. The solution that Johnstone proposes is to teach playfulness, relaxation, and openness, in both education and improvisational theatre.

The idea of closed adulthood also emerged in Papert’s Mindstorms, and Papert approaches the problem of learning in a very similar way. From my perspective, I would like to see this as introducing the concept of spontaneity into models and the relation that people have with models and the world. It seems that in a relaxed state, models are open, flexible, and may be easily exchanged. Improvisation is also deeply relevant to the simulation of storyworlds. Brian Magerko and Ben Medler are exploring the problem of digital improvisation as well.

Status

The problem at the onset is that many performances are unrealistic and unconvincing. This usually happens when the director instructs the actors to enter onto a stage without a context for their actions. The actors are unable to discern motivations for their actions. Most drama is based on characters who have the strongest possible motivations, leading to an overblown theatrical effect. The alternative devised here is to come up with the weakest possible motives for action. Johnstone explains the effect of status in interactions in a revealing way that is reminiscent of Goffman.

Suddenly we understood that every inflection and movement implies a status, and that no action is due to chance, or really ‘motiveless’, It was hysterically funny, but at the same time very alarming. All of our secret manoeuvrings were exposed. If someone asked a question we didn’t bother to answer it, we concentrated on why it had been asked. No one could make an ‘innocuous’ remark without everyone instantly grasping what lay behind it. Normally we are ‘forbidden’ to see status transactions except when there’s a conflict. In reality status transactions continue all the time. (p. 33)

Status is posed as an everyday system and works according to transactions, which leads to kind of a currency and economics of power. Status transactions are symbolically and situationally meaningful, but primarily so in the sense that the status exchange forms a complete system. Interactions take on the form of working to raise or lower oneself or others, in attempts to control and manipulate others. Characters who raise themselves become vulnerable to attack, and this creates an entire system of politics.

Status expectations fit into roles, but also relationships. Interactions all must carry some sort of status exchange, they cannot be neutral. “A further discovery was that there was no way to be neutral. The ‘Good morning’ that might be experienced as lowering by the Manager, might be experienced as raising by the bank clerk.” (p. 37) Status is a currency, to be protected and used to have power over others. Friendly interactions often involve status-games, where transactions are pretend.

Comedy and tragedy both operate from status and work via association (sympathy). Comedy works by lowering the status of an individual who we have no sympathy for, or whose sympathy is removed. This elevates the audience because the audience is put on the other end of the see saw. Because the victim is lowered, the audience is raised. Tragedy operates slightly differently, it is the expulsion of a high status member from the pack. The member was a sympathetic and identifiable character, but then falls, and is removed. The result is still that the audience is raised, albeit in a bittersweet sort of way.

The pack metaphor is rather appropriate because humans are social animals. Evolutionarily, status emerges from rituals done by animals to establish their heirarchy and pecking order. All social animals have rituals for working out status differences, and these frequently are structured to avoid real violence and combat. Evolutionarily this makes sense, because if two competing members for the top of a pack fight, and one is wounded while the other is killed, then the fitness of the pack as a whole suffers. It is not to say that these violent conflicts never happen, but status serves a role in avoiding them. Because it is something that is biologically, and possibly even physiologically based (I suspect that in many animals, the alarm areas of the brain are triggered by things such as eye contact, but I don’t know of any real work on it), it is clear that status should be hugely important in human society.

Expressions of status then take the form of ritualized, and in many cases, institutionalized gestures. These are symbolic interactions in the purest sense that each gesture signifies some sort of status exchange. The expressions most frequently come in embodied forms such as eye contact, posture, nervous gestures, speech patterns, and so on. These sorts of things are immensely difficult to capture in procedural form, but to acknowledge them seems very productive.

A discussion of space presents space as a form of territory, something which is kinetic and flows. A character’s space is their zone of freedom of movement. Good actors will “radiate”, and extend their space outward into the audience. High status characters will take up a lot of space, and low status characters will find space to press up against them. Space is kinetic and when altered, will affect everyone in a scene. Territory and space also relate back to Goffman’s work on front stage and back stage areas of interaction. When a character enters or exits a scene, the entire spatial landscape must handle the new character’s presence like a magnetic or electric field.

Johnstone presents “Master and Servant” relationships, which are extreme cases of status inequality. “A master-servant scene is one in which both parties act as if all the space belonged to the master.” (p. 63) The master imposes authority and puts the servants on edge. The servant’s role is to elevate the status of the master at all times. This is reviewed as a kind of status game. An interesting idea with character simulation would be to express these sorts of relationships leading to comedic forms.

Spontaneity

This was originally written in 1979 and th epicture of education depicted is horriffic. The educational system Johnstone describes is built around suppressing anything outside conventional social roles. Johnstone lists three categories of spontaneous thought which tend to be supressed: Psychotic thought, obscenity, and originality. Psychotic thought is anything which is deluded or outside the perception of others. What is supressed is the acknowledgement or admission of psychoses, not the actual visions themselves. Obscenity is the cultural supression of taboos and topics which are not supposed to be discussed publicly. However, this supression pushes obscenity to the back of the mind, where it is readily present for spontaneous thought. Johnstone argues that students should not be ‘obscene’, but aware of the ideas that occur to them. Originality has more to do with the fear of unoriginality than anything else. The mind works by association, and when primed with a thought the student’s instinct might be to repeat it, but won’t fearing being considered unoriginal. All of these are cultural pressures which supress spontaneity.

These observations are fascinating, but I am at something of a loss for what to do with them. My concern is generally simulation of characters, and I am not sure if I should think about how to simulate them to be spontaneous, supressed, or what. The kind of spontaneous thought discussed has a great deal to do with human creativity and relates not to one system, but all systems known by the actor. I am loathe to argue that sponteneity is not systematic, but I suspect instead that it has to do with the incredible breadth of systems that people can summon. This of course makes it extremely hard to model or simulate. It does not seem appropriate to simulate it in the first place, because the target for simulation is the representation of social codes, rather than spontaneous thought which escapes the containment of social protocols. At the same time, spontaneous thought can require working with proposed or accepted rules (the improv sketch is a doctor’s office), but will defy other conventions (the patient has pains in a wooden leg).

Working within a spontaneous environment, Johnstone describes a system of transactions: offer, accept, block. These are core elements of any improv sketch. An offer is a proposed element to a scene, which may be vague or specific, small or broad, and confines the space of the scene. I would argue that an offer proposes a rule for the system being simulated within the scene. An offer may be accepted or blocked. An accept confirms the rule by another actor, who will take the offer and extend and react to it. A block rejects the offer. Blocking is an aggressive act, and can lead to hostility because it leaves the offering actor cold. All of these elements are interesting dramatic processes, and work as units for scene construction.

Narrative Skills

This model of storytelling is an interesting counterpoint to Crawford. Interactivity is useful to compare with the story building process. Johnstone treats story construction as a process of repeatedly making offers. A key element though is the pattern of reincorporation and linking elements introduced earlier. Making offers and building elements is storytelling, but does not amount to a whole story alone. The whole story makes sense once the elements have been linked and reincorporated to create a clear whole. The process of doing this should require introducing elements and linking them, but not actually about thinking of the content of the story itself. Described later is a system of play writing which is very similar to roleplaying in essence. Play writing is a joint activity and involves a form of storytelling where one actor makes offers and the other does nothing but accept them.

Masks and Trance

Johnstone makes an interesting discussion of masks and trance states. Masks are extremely relevant in the study of rituals in human history and in anthropology. They are used here in drama. A useful definition is given: “A mask is a device for driving the personality out of a body and allowing a spirit to take possession of it.” (p. 148) The idea is inhabitation, which enables a certain kind of spontaneity. When the mask is donned, the original self may be left aside with all its inhibitions. The idea of masks is also extremely relevant to roleplaying, and especially networked computer culture. Sherry Turkle has explained how people may adopt and try out new identities within a safely anonymous setting. The mask gives the same power by allowing the actor to be “possessed”. A mask is like a role that is totally engrossing, obscuring other systems. The use of masks can also induce a trance state which is much like Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of flow.

This is my first post/review/analysis of a computational artifact, rather than some sort of purely written thing. Storytron is Chris Crawford’s magnum opus, the fruit of his labor toward the great endeavor of Interactive Storytelling. The project was originally called Erasmatron, after the medieval scholar Erasmus. Crawford has received a lot of challenge toward his project, and this comes from several factors. The first is his outright rejection of games, the second is the sheer time it took him to develop it (13 years, albeit working alone), and the unusual nature of the project itself. I was originally expecting to be much more critical of Storytron, but after examining it closely, I believe that it has a rather sound architecture. The chief challenge to the project is the base unit for the dramatic system, which is the Sentence. This is worthy of criticism not because sentences are low level grammatical structures, but because the textual interaction is problematic. Storytron builds directly from Crawford’s book on Interactive Storytelling, but having experimented with both the authoring tool and the first demo game, I can discuss some of the key differences and interesting conclusions.

It will be useful to juxtapose Storytron against other existing systems, notably Facade and The Sims.

Architecture

I want to describe the architecture of Storytron first, and examine how it relates to the systems described in Crawford’s book. One of the first things that I noticed is that Storytron uses a planning model for agent behavior. The system includes a drama manager, in the form of a special Actor called Fate. It is difficult to tell whether the flaws with the model of planning emerge strongly in this system, but I suspect that these are held back by the strong personality system. Actors’ personalities have a great influence on their behavior, allowing factors such as mood, emotion, predispositions and the like to affect the Actor’s decisions. Actors do form plans, but these are directed towards the establishment of certain events.

The core elements (and hence data structures) in Storytron are: Actors, Relationships, Props, Sentences, Stages, and Verbs.

Actors

Structure is very similar to the form described in Interactive Storytelling, but has some notable differences. The structure however is open for extension, meaning that authors can create their own traits for new storyworlds. The ones given are Quiet_Chatty and Cool_Volatile. Accordance variables may be rendered unnecessary by making some variables hidden versus visible. Characters have “Weight Traits” which represent the core traits that the actor wishes to find in other characters. This involves self perception as well as a sort of desire in others. This is an interesting concept, but I am not sure how it might come into play.

Additionally, there are several state traits which reflect important states to consider when simulating the characters:

• Active
• Unconscious
• DontMoveMe
• Location
• SpyingOn
• OccupiedUntil

Relationships

The perceived traits described in the Interactive Storytelling book are included here, under relationships. These operate on the hidden traits for actors, props, and stages. Additionally, these have confidence values for each of these, reflecting how accurate the actor considers its perception value.

Storytron contains additional relationship values reflecting scales which were not described in the book. These address some of the points I thought was missing in the book. These particular traits are things that I would originally apply to situations, with more procedural representations, but here they are framed simply as numeric values. The net of these appears to be reasonably effective, however. The organization of actors, props, stages, and events seems very sound.

• Debt_Grace (Actor to Actor)
• Stranger_Kin (Actor to Actor)
• Familiarity (Actor to Actor)
• Unwelcoming_Homey (Actor to Stage)
• KnowsMe (Prop to Actor, Stage to Actor)
• WhoKnows (Event to Actor)

Relationship variables are held by both holders of the relationship. So, actors will have each of these, but the Stage or Prop will also share them as well.

Props

Like actors, these are dynamic elements in stages, and partly form the content of Interactive Storytelling. Props have several attributes, but not very many. I like the concept of props, and I intend on using a model very similar to this one. The model proposed relies heavily on authors creating their own variables denoting the qualities of objects as scalar values– Benign_Harmful, etc.

• InPlay
• Owner
• Carried
• Visible
• PropLocation

Stages

These represent the core elements that describe places. These are discussed in light detail in the Interactive Storytelling book. Like Props, Stages should have author-defined values denoting the qualities of the stages- Radiated_Clean, for instance. The other parameters listed are:

• DoorOpen (indicating whether Actors may enter or exit the Stage)
• DoorLocked
• Position
• StageOwner

The Drama Cycle

The actual execution cycle is reasonably sound. There are three phases to a turn. These are described as the “Action Cycle” the “Reaction Cycle” and the “Travel Cycle”. These are executed consecutively, and during each, every actor acts, reacts, and may travel, respectively. The action phase involves planning and execution, so the actor will think and then act. Reaction is performed when actors learn of events. In the reaction phase, each actor will assume a role according to the event’s verb structure, (this is somewhat difficult to understand, I suspect it involves whether the reacting actor is an object, witness, etc of the event). Actors may wish to form plans in response to reactions.

The understanding of role here is somewhat different than the approach that I am used to, but it appears to be an effective way of looking at integrating roles and plans. This may be an approach from which I might like to build.

Gameplay

The actual interaction with the Storytron system is robust, but somewhat difficult. The central issue is that the core mechanic of playing a storyworld is composing sentences. There is a visual builder to construct these sentences, but the representative capacity of the events is diminished. Like all projects that use natural language, (story generators, interactive fiction, Facade) Storytron suffers from the difficulty that the computer has with human language. The space of possible interactions available to the player is extensive, but is still contained by the model of the story world written by the author. When the medium is text, it seems that it should be possible to compose nearly any sentence, and perform any action that would be reasonable, but some of these simply cannot be handled by the logic of the story world. This is a necessity with developing any model, that simplifications must be made. The flaw is that using a textual medium with many possibilities creates an expectation of being able to do much more.

The representative capacity of the interaction is also diminished by sentence based representation, especially in the sense that the story world is complex and updates regularly. This critique comes from playing Balance of Power 21st Century, which is a sequel to a previous Chris Crawford game, but is also a beta and clearly a public policy game. The fact that a public policy story world lacks representative capacity is not necessarily a problem with the technology itself so much as the genre. Nonetheless, flaws do emerge, and it is interesting to compare the visualization of policy in this with, for instance, Civilization. From the perspective of the player, it becomes necessary to navigate through tables describing relationships and attributes in order to deduce the context of possible actions. This is tremendously counter to the sense of the storytelling aesthetic being heralded in the work. The scope of computational representation is very rich, in the sense that nations have a complex balance of power and influence over each other, but these elements are not well presented to the user. In keeping with the metaphor of theatrical drama, it is like going to an opera in a foreign language, and needing to read the history behind everything in order to understand the show.

One feature which is very important is the presence of faces. Story moves and sentence construction come with visual feedback in terms of faces denoting the visible moods of either the player or the NPCs with whom the player is interacting.

Another element to interacting with Storytron that is very difficult is the use of sliders. The point is that numeric and comparative values must enter into the system in order for changes to make sense. Having grown up with games, I am used to slider systems representing variables such as mood and reputation. However, these have a variety of deliberate feedback mechanisms. In Balance of Power, feedback (especially in terms of falling clout) tends to come after it is too late. Part of this is again indicative of the genre of political strategy. However it also is an indication that the numbers are not supported intuitively or tangibly in the system. The values of numbers range from “Extra Huge”, to “Huge”, to “Very Large”, to “Large”, to “Medium Large”, to “Medium”, and so on. The problem with these is that they are not reflected in terms of the language of the story world. It is unclear to the player what it means for a nation to find something desirable at a rate of “Medium Small”, or what it would mean to ask someone to do something with that much emphasis. The reason why other games that use sliding systems are effective is that the reference of the number is strongly supported within the language of the game.

Authoring

The greatest challenge to Storytron is the authoring environment, SWAT. The application is very complex and requires a great deal of time to learn. This is hardly surprising since other projects (Facade especially) have been extremely intricate, and require a great deal of content to be authored. The authoring tool centrally allows the author to create and modify the building blocks of the system.

Part of the reason for the difficulty in the editor, which is otherwise a really good editor, comes from the reliance on grammatical metaphors, and the exclusion of a programmatic language. The editor provides a tree based structure for composing boolean and other typed expressions. The ability to manipulate these is useful, but the tree based interface forms an obstacle between the author and the actual expressions that they need to write. The interface includes elements that allow the author to have complete access to the available expressions. A good example for comparison is with Facade, which has a scripting language, which is used to author many many events, and also Inform, which has a format for scripting very similar to natural language composition.

The main issue at stake with authoring is ease of use. It must be possible and as easy for authors to add onto a story world the same way that someone might be able to add a paragraph to an existing story. It must be possible to understand a story world, in whatever form, relatively quickly. This area is one of the major challenges with Storytron, but what I choose to do is yet to be determined.

This text was originally published in 1973, and is one of the first critical works to look at television as a medium. Williams is coming from the perspective of Marxist cultural criticism, and looking at historicization and the forces behind the emergence of technology. It is important to compare the study of television during its emergence to the emergence of the internet. It is also worthwhile because at the time of its publication, the book was one of the first books to examine television as a media tradition. Much of what Williams has to say is outdated, but he does predict many of the future developments in cable and cassette tapes. He offers an important view of how the technology informs the rhetoric and content of television. It is also useful to juxtapose Williams with Postman, who was writing later. Williams still has an optimistic view of the possibilities of television to enable progressive social change. He also encourages an understanding of how a medium may be used, co-opted, and even subverted by its users.

The technology and the society

An opening dilemma is the status of television (and technology in general) as either a cause or an effect. The question is whether it fits the role of technological determinism, or was instigated by someone or some group with a particular motive. Williams gives a set of bullets which provide several possible accounts of the emergence of television: (p. 11-12)

1. Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research. Its power as a medium of news and entertainment was then so great that it altered all preceding media of news and entertainment.
2. Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research.Its power as a medium of social communication was then so great that it altered many of our institutions and forms of social relationships.
3. Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research. Its inherent properties as an electronic medium altered our basic perceptions of reality, and thence our relations with each other and with the world.
4. Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research. As a powerful medium of communication and entertainment it took place with other factors – such as greatly increased physical mobility, itself the result of other newly invented technologies – in altering the scale and form of our societies.
5. Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research, and developed as a medium of entertainment and news. It then had unforseen consequences, not only on other entertainment and news media, which it reduced in viability and importance, but on some of the central process of family, cultural, and social life.
6. Television, discovered as a possibility by scientific and technical research, was selected for investment and development to meet the needs of a new kind of society, especially in the provision of centralized entertainment and in the centralized formation of opinions and styles of behavior.
7. Television, discovered as a possibility by scientific and technical research, was selected for investment and promotion as a new and profitable phase of a domestic consumer economy; it is then one of the characteristic ‘machines of the home’.
8. Television, discovered as a possibility by scientific and technical research, and in its character and uses exploited and emphasized elements of a passivity, a cultural and psychological inadequacy, which had always been latent in people, but which television now organized and came to represent.
9. Television, discovered as a possibility by scientific and technical research,and in its character and uses both served and exploited the needs of a new kind of large scale and complex but atomized society.

These bullets convey many different scales and means of interpretation of television. These are all valid accounts of the emergence of television, but represent many gradated positions within the scope of determined technology to technological determinism. The idea Williams brings in is that television was created by intention, but it does not determine the ultimate reception or use of the technology. Williams notes that each of the bullet points assert that technology is isolatable. This is an interesting claim, because according to recent work in anthropology and cognitive science, there is argument that technology is not isolatable from culture.

Williams gives a historicization of the emergence of television. This comes from both technological and social perspectives. Under historical circumstances, needs appeared that would later be met by television. The paradigm of transmission and reception are internally problematic and economic. This led to the contemporary broadcasting model. “Unlike all previous communications technologies, radio and television were systems primarily devised for transmission and reception as abstract processes, with little or no definition of preceding content. When the question of content was raised, it was resolved, in the main, parasitically.” (p. 25)

Institutions of the technology

Discussion is on the federal regulation of communication. There is a conflict and competition between state, corporate, and public interests. Williams discusses reviews the FCC and the institution that network television has become. The concerns are between local and large scale levels. There has been a failure of local and independent broadcasting, which enables global expansion and colonialism in broadcasting. This is interesting in comparison to the internet and digital media, because the authoritative nature of television contrasts sharply with the rampant independence and individualism propagated by the internet. In this perspective, the difference that prevented the internet from reaching the same corporate level as television, is caused by the simple economic cause that independent publishing is less expensive than television broadcasting.

The forms of television

Williams reviews the various kinds of television. These are split into two categories. The first category of content are the forms which existed before television, but are used by television: News, argument and discussion, education, dramatic films, variety, sport, advertising, and passtimes. These are extensions of old media into television, originally developed as forms of remediation. These come with their own political epistemologies. News anchors carry a voice of authority and superiority, discussion shows is presentation of existing views, actual politics are over heard, not heard.

New innovations to forms which are unique to television are: drama-documentary, education by seeing, discussion (talk shows), features, sequences, and the medium of television itself. These forms are indicative of qualitative changes, and are genuine new innovations to media. This is exciting and interesting to Williams, coming with potential to overcome existing political hegemonies.

Effects of technology and its uses

Williams rejects technological determinism, and also the idea of determined technology. When released, technology does take a life of its own. It may be subverted and co-opted by agents acting against authority. However, the emergence is the result of much history, and we cannot disregard or forget that history. Television has a controlled system of publishing and broadcasts. The method of overcoming this that Williams suggests is to develop technology for reform. This is interesting because it comes in opposition to the perspective presented by Postman. Instead of encouraging literacy within the existing technology, Williams suggests that new technology could be developed to enable alternative modes of technology use.

Alternative technology, alternative uses?

Looking ahead in television, Williams predicts the new technologies and institutions that might grow: cable, satellite, “interactive” television. The relative story of these is varied, in terms of how they actually happened. These developments would lead to political issues. Williams predicts a broad political struggle in global communication via television, depending on who controls it, who accepts it, and so on. This again relates to claims regarding the internet.

Chris Crawford is one of the great curmudgeons in the game industry. He is one of the notable pioneers in the early Atari days, and is known for his approach to interaction in games. More recently, he has been interested in expanding interactivity into territory that, in his opinion, reaches out and beyond the scope of games. The new model that he proposes is interactive storytelling, and he has been working in relative isolation for quite some time to develop Storytron, which is an interactive storytelling platform. Crawford’s work is alternately hailed as messianic, derided as unusable, or simply considered impossible. This text describes many of the ideas that would later go into Storytron. My intention in reading it is to relate his findings with my own discoveries on situated models of behavior.

Fundamentally his work on interactive storytelling is very different from my project. My project is on adaptation of narrative worlds into games. While my desire to hang onto the term “game” may be considered unusual, after all, many consider The Sims to not be a game, I do depart from the position of focusing on stories and storytelling. The process of storytelling (or being told a story) is an interesting and rich process, it is not the same as being in a world. This is a small difference, a shift in emphasis, but it is fundamental and informs the disagreements that I have with some of his conclusions.

Story

The opening poses stories as important because of their cognitive role. Crawford poses the idea of cognitive meshes, which are collections of ideas bound together through associations. This is a reduced and somewhat vague portrayal of cognitive science, but it is not inaccurate. These meshes represent an individual’s understanding of the world, what I would call a model. The concern is how learning occurs. Gradually the structure of these meshes is revised and integrated into “cleaner” forms as learning occurs. An “Aha!” moment will occur when new ideas are introduced and suddenly connect to multiple associations within the network. This sort of moment is characteristic of what happens during interaction. Stories are seen as these idea meshes. The act of reading views a mesh (the model of the story world), but does not engage with it. Interaction presents the mesh in many ways in attempts to elicit that moment of integration.

According to Crawford, stories are about: people, conflict, and choices. In these last two elements, stories are very much like games. Stories however are not about puzzles, visual thinking, or spatial thinking. These simply are not relevant. Both stories and games use spectacle, but stories need more than spectacle. Stories occur on stages, not on maps. An interesting thing to note about this set of claims is that the model being presented strongly resembles Aristotelian drama. I think that in general, stories are looser than drama (Aristotelian especially), but this is an interesting point, and relates back to interaction later (via Laurel).

Interactivity

Crawford’s definition of interactivity is a key point: “A cyclic process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listens, thinks, and speaks.” (p. 29) This definition is actually somewhat subtle, though. The key is not the extent of any one of these three phases, but rather how integrated they are. Interactivity is powerful because it compares multiple different networks of meaning.

The role of interactivity within artistic products (especially storytelling) leads to a conflict over artistic agency. The matter is who has control over the experience. An artist will want to have lots of agency over the experience and the final product, but that comes directly at the cost of the user to interact with it. This sort of dilemma is expounded in Mateas’s Semiotic Considerations.

In terms of aesthetics of interactivity, Crawford considers three factors: speed, depth, and choice. The first two are not all that interesting. Speed represents the degree of responsiveness. Depth suggests using subject material that is important and meaningful to the user. The real point of fruition in interactivity comes in the matter of choice. This has two elements: the significance of the choices, and the perceived completeness. Essentially, the choices available must satisfy the needs of the user, be meaningful within the story world, and also be seen as complete. The matter of choice is dead on. However, it also applies to the AI controlled agents themselves. They have choices of what to do which fall under the same categories of constraints.

Interactive Storytelling

There are some general but worthwhile observations. Crawford claims that interactive storytelling is not simply games with stories, or interactivized movies. The class of games described is fairly limited: “A form of interactive entertainment involving simple and/or violent themes, relying heavily on cosmetic factors, in which players must exercise precise hand-eye coordination, puzzle solution, and resource management skills.” (p. 46) This description is meant to describe games that are commonly played. This isn’t quite complete, because games such as The Sims, the best selling series of PC titles of all time, does not exactly fall within this category. However, the category does describe the wide range of mainstream games. Games may have stories as what Jesper Juul calls fictions, but the interaction in the game is not interaction with the story itself.

Similarly, with film and other linear media, it does not make sense to overlay interactivity on top. Crawford gives the example of Star Wars, where the hero is presented with six choices (for example, “Rescue Princess Leia?” “Run away from Darth Vader?” “Trust the foce to blow up the Death Star?”), but all of the choices are dramatically required. An experience giving the “player” options to refuse these decisions would not be enriching the possible story outcomes. In order to have stories that are interactive a different approach must be used. There is a conflict between plot and interaction. This conflict is dramatically compared with the conflict between free will and determinism in theology.

The reconciliation in this problem is to abstract out the space of possibilities. Some elements of dramatic structure maybe must be preserved, but other elements may be flexible. The essence of this, although Crawford does not make a big deal of the idea, is that this requires a view of the problem as constructing a story world. The example he gives is of the world of Arthurian myths. This is not a single narrative, but rather, it is a space where many narratives may occur. The Arthurian world has many different dramatic themes, so it may be possible to have one story in this world that focuses on one theme but not another. “This is the key to creating interactive storyworlds: multiple but connected themes. An interactive storyworld must present the possibility of romance, betrayal, battle, spiritual growth, and many other possibilities.” (p. 56) Crawford explicitly advises against considering a specific story as a subject for interactivity, because the themes and possibilities are limited. This is an interesting point in comparison to adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, because it reflects the fact that a storyworld is necessarily underspecified by a single story. One way around this critique is to compare aesthetic goals: story richness versus sense of presence. It may also be argued that the storyworld for Austen extends through the rest of her works, which is consistent with the culture of adaptation.

Two Cultures, No Hits, No Runs

Crawford argues that one problem with the development of interactive storytelling is the cultural divide between those who produce technology and those who would compose stories. There is a problem with the technological culture which is actively hostile to literature, and the artistic community is hostile to procedural thinking. The picture he paints is general and stereotypical, but is indicative of a widespread cultural gap. Gaps exist between theory and practitioners, as well as between artists and programmers. I believe that this difference is artificial, and is created by the values and practices of these communities. Programmers are taught the value of conciseness, correctness, and have the aesthetic of completeness and mastery, this is informed by the entire discipline of practice. Writers and artists develop values of ambiguity, incompleteness, and interconnectedness. These values are oppositional, compounding problems between the cultures. My approach I think reconciles the two: both code and expressive works are systematic, and these systems themselves have properties and embedded values. They may be observed functionally, but also artistically.

Verb Thinking

Crawford is known for his perspective on verbs. Systems may be understood in terms of verbs and nouns. Data and content is a matter of diversity of nouns, but the range of expressivity is dependent on the verbs in the system. The cardinal question of game development is “what does the player do?” and any answer to this question takes the form of verbs. Processes require verb thinking, and interactivity is dependent on processes. Verb thinking when applied to objects perceives them in the context of affordances, rather than properties. At one level, these are isomorphic, but choosing to look through from the perspective of verbs is important in the process of thinking about games.

Above all, try to think about things in terms of what things do, not what they are. A window is not glass;  it’s something that blocks air movement while permitting light to pass freely. A car is not an engine, a body, seats, and so forth. It’s something that moves; everything else is subsidiary. A computer is not a box with a whirring fan; it’s a processing machine. A pill is not a bundle of exotic chemicals; it’s something that alters the biochemistry of your living processes. (p. 101)

Verbs tie into systems of causality. The goal for the player is to understand that system of causality. This connects to the discussion of models discussed earlier. The act of reading allows the reader to witness and observe the model described in the text. This model is witnessed through causal relations, and verbs must be used to elicit these causal processes. The language for understanding these relationships must be mathematical in nature.

Crawford gives an example of pseudocode which would be used to represent how agents might make choices within a storyworld. These are presented only as examples, not as a correct model. I would argue that these sorts of situations require world-based meaning derived from the context, that meaning is situationally derived. However, this model does not preclude that condition, but it seems more awkward.

competingForce1 = Loyalty[Darth, Emperor] + SelfInterest[Darth] – Idealism[Darth]
competingForce2 = Love[Darth, Luke] + Empathy[Darth]
if(competingForce1 > competingForce2)
then WatchLukeDie
else TurnAgainstEmperor
(p. 108)

One reason why I find this problematic is that the magnitude of the competing forces is important to the character. The plot does depend on the final decision, but what is important from the perspective of character is why that decision was made. In the Star Wars example, the moment is also dramatically significant because it is the first visible moment of Darth actually expressing care for Luke. (I am not that familiar with the lore, so that claim may be off) It is a dramatic reversal of what we have come to expect from his character. Eventually, the characters do need to decide, but the moment before that decision, where the audience can see visible signs of anxiety and hesitation are significant as well.

Crawford does address a few arguments about the quantification of characters. There is a somewhat natural reaction in the literary community about the problems with quantization of human characteristics. Crawford puts three counterpoints to this argument. The first is that in drama, simplification is necessary. Dramatic characters are simplified from real characters. The second argument is that characteristic attributes, such as love or loyalty are things that one can have more or less of. These are not normally considered to be numeric, but they are comparable at least at some level. The last argument is that while love and loyalty might me multidimensional concepts, the expression of those concepts must fall under some specific dimensions for the purpose of the story world. The dimensions that are relevant are related to the artistic content of the story world.

Language-Based Strategies

In the preceding chapters, Crawford discusses some approaches to interactive storytelling. These examples are branching structures, environmental strategies, data driven strategies (grammars). Finally, he settles on language based strategies as the ideal solution for these problems. This is the key element where I disagree with Crawford’s approach, but the strategies are particular to his aesthetic goals. Essentially, interaction takes the form of writing- composing sentences within a computer based language. Effective interactivity does require a robust system of communication. The idea is to create a language, a sort of creole which is capable of effectively being constructed and understood on a computer. An early approach was the game Siboot, which uses a visual 2d language. Crawford argues that the primary way for enabling depth of interaction is to provide player’s with access to the language of what they can do. I actually think that games like The Sims, which provide menu and object driven approaches to interaction is quite effective, as an alternative to this.

Personality Models

Crawford’s goal is to create a model of personality which is small and tight. Essentially, if the character is tight, then the plot may be flexible. The important elements in developing character models are completeness, conciseness, orthogonality, and connection to behavior. These depend on the dramatic and expressive structure of the world. The model must be complete to represent everything that needs to be represented, concise enough to keep in mind, orthogonal in the sense that the variables have correct dimensionality.

The personality model that Crawford uses is broken into several variables: intrinsic attributes, mood, volatility, accordances, and relationships. The intrinsic variables are listed as follows: (p. 190-192)

• Integrity: Characters with high integrity will keep one’s word, not lie or reveal secrets. Low value characters will do the opposite.
• Virtue: A high virtue character will take others’ needs and desires into account while making decisions. Low virtue characters are selfish.
• Power: This is the ability of the character to wreak injury upon others in physical, financial, social senses.
• Intelligence: High intelligence enables characters to make effective and pragmatic choices.
• Attractiveness: This is an actor’s appearance, and essentially their charisma and desirability.

Mood variables. These seem to be based on basic emotions, which I have found to be problematic. The justification for these binaries is given in behavioral terms, but I disagree with the sense of opposition between anger and fear, for instance. The absolute magnitudes of these is important.

• Anger/Fear. I disagree with the opposition of these, but Crawford claims that they are sides of the same coin. These are equivalent to “fight or flight” in the sense of behavioral responses. Anger is different from hostility, and is presented here as a global emotional variable (of an individual), rather than something that is directed toward a particular individual.
• Joy/Sadness
• Arousal/Disgust. The consideration of arousal and disgust is tricky, since in other models, emotional arousal is associated with all moods. Crawford’s definition of arousal relates more strongly to the sexual dimension of arousal or heightened sensitivity in a positive fashion.

Volatility variables. These affect the rate at which the moods change, high values let characters moods change dramatically, while lower values mean that these values change more slowly. This relates to the stability of moods, so characters with low volatility values will seem to be relatively set in their moods. This does not seem accurate in the case of some fictional characters who are generally predisposed to a particular mood- self disgust, depression, perpetual anger. These characters could reach their alternate extremes, but fictionally they tend to return back to their predispositions. Although, this could be ameliorated and incorporated into the model by inclusion of “predisposition” variables.

• Adrenaline: Controls the rate of change for anger/fear. I find this problematic because anger is something which dissipates and tends to fluctuate even when it is active.
• Manic/depressive: Controls the rate of change for joy and sadness.
• Sensuality: Controls the rate of change for arousal and disgust.

Accordance and relationship variables. These variables control how characters interpret the intrinsic variables of other characters. Accordance variables are used as the default for a character’s impression of a stranger’s intrinsic variables, while the relationship variables control how the character interprets the intrinsic variables of specific other actors. If character A needs to make a decision based on the Integrity of character B, then A’s interpretation of B’s Integrity = A.AccordIntegrity + A.PerIntegrity[B]. These follow the same templates of the intrinsic variables:

• AccordIntegrity is something like gullibility versus suspiciousness. PerIntegrity[other] is similar to trust. Characters with high values of these will tend to trust and confide in others, believing them to keep their word.
• AccordVirtue is how well the character might believe others are intrinsically good. Low values would cause the actor to believe the world is full of people who have its worst wishes at heart. PerVirtue[other] is how much the character believes the other is virtuous. Crawford suggests that this has a similar operation to the Virtue variable, and it may be effective to add Virtue and PerVirtue in calculations.
• AccordPower is how the character believes the rest of the world to be powerful, essentially a measure of timidity. A low value would yield overconfidence, essentially an overestimate of it’s own Power. PerPower[other] is something like awe or fear. Fear is inspired by PerPower minus PerVirtue, which would be how much the agent suspects the other of being both evil and powerful.
• AccordIntelligence represents how readily a character will defer to other character’s judgements, while low values will yield another sort of overconfidence in decisions. PerIntelligence[other] reflects something like respect, which can be positive or negative accordingly.
• AccordAttractive causes a character to see the world as either beautiful or disgusting. PerAttractive[other] causes the character to believe another is attractive, which may mutually affect PerVirtue. A character who is attracted to another may overestimate the virtue of the object of affection.

Drama Managers

There are some useful bits here: Crawford supports the idea of drama management. The emphasis is that the process of playing through an interactive story is a dramatic experience. Crawford does not build on theory of performance and drama all that strongly, but raises a few important points. The first is that the drama manager is a solid interactor in the sense that it listens to the actions of the player, thinks of potential responses, and manipulates the world for the phase of speaking. The second is that the drama manager must work to encourage the dramatic flow of the experience, rather than working to thwart the player.

There is a strong impulse in games and artistic works to force the player down the path that the designer thinks is the “best,” rather than allowing the player to interact effectively with the world. The problem with this is that it enables players to behave “unreasonably” within the world, working to thwart the game world. The response Crawford proposes is to allow the player to do any reasonable thing within the game world, but impose consequences (ostracism, death) for irresponsible behavior. An important example of this is in Mateas’s Facade, which will eject the player from the drama (in the form of Trip escorting him or her from the apartment) when not acting according to the dramatic rules.

The final idea proposed is to implement a scoring system to measure the effectiveness of a story. This seems problematic from the literary perspective, in the sense that it involves quantization of narrative value, but it does make sense at some level. There can be good or bad stories, in the sense that a good story might have positive results. The example given is in the Arthurian storyworld, where the score will be damaged if Mordred becomes king, improved if characters have mutual good feelings toward each other, and improved if Excalibur is returned. A legitimate critique of this is that it impedes the player’s ability to make their own meaning from narratives, restricting their openness in the Eco sense. If a story will necessarily be judged, then that means that the player “ought” to reach a good score. That means that there will necessarily be some ideal solutions, and as such, the story world comes pre-evaluated.

A good counterexample for this, though, is that many literary works are tragedies. There is a concern about players committing imaginary suicide, however the dramatic value for tragedy is more significant. This interesting approach turns the normal survival and scoring instinct for gameplay on its head. Most games value self preservation, but tragedy, pre-evaluated though it may be, would value self sacrifice. The means for encouraging the player to commit virtual suicide is to shift the player’s perception of his or her role to that of a dramatic performer.

Verbs and Events

Crawford poses a model of interaction that works by the player constructing sentences. Verbs transform into events when executed. These interactions have a specific structure: It has a name, it has some import-how significant or noteworthy the event is, it requires some time to prepare, some time to execute, and has some sort of audience. Crawford also lists types of audiences that these events may have:

• MentalState, the action is entirely mental
• AnyAudience, the action does not have any requirements on the audience
• RequireWitness, the action must be witnessed by someone
• SubjectOnly, the action must be carried out in secret
• SubjectAndDirectObjectOnly, both must have privacy and secrecy
• AllAudience, the event is global, and when it occurs, everyone knows
• etc…

HistoryBooks and Gossip

The key issue with the mechanic of these interactive stories is that characters must communicate, and NPCs must communicate with each other. Crawford poses a model of gossiping, where agents will communicate according to some algorithms. The model of communication relies on sharing events. The gossip model provided is dramatically motivated, rather than socially motivated. A key element of this is a mechanism for causing characters to lie and keep and share secrets. This section is somewhat underspecified, though.

These notes are adapted from something I wrote earlier, but had not yet moved to the new bibliography system. I am still regularly turning over ideas, so much of what I am writing is only a partial view of my larger set of notes. I do have a very large set of notes, and will be posting those soon. I am posting this now because I want to have a completed entry for P&P in the bibliography.

Overview

Pride and Prejudice, as a narrative, is about the extended courtship between Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Elizabeth is the second daughter of a well to do (but not wealthy) country family and Darcy is the son of a very wealthy and well established family. The Bennett family has five daughters and its household is entailed, meaning that it must pass to a male heir. Given this, the family is in a very dangerous predicament because the estate will be taken away when Mr. Bennett dies. At the same time, the daughters of the family are an unruly bunch, with the senior two daughters insisting on marrying for love, and the younger daughters being wild and not very well behaved.

Darcy first appears with his friend Mr. Bingley who has bought a house near where the Bennett family lives. Bingley appears to be a very charming and congenial member of the aristocracy, but Darcy comes across to all who meet him as arrogant, aloof, and haughty, looking down on those around him. Similarly, the Bennetts come to pick up this negative impression as well.

To condense matters a bit: Eventually Darcy comes to realize that he was incorrect in his initial judgement of Elizabeth Bennett, and he comes to appreciate her charm and intellect. Elizabeth simultaneously comes to realize that she was rash in her initial dislike of Darcy. The two spar, but later on reunite after Darcy has done much to restore the compassion of his character.

On the surface, much of the play in Pride and Prejudice is about class, and it is true that class is the spur and the staging ground for many of the conflicts and impressions that span the novel. However, the book is much more importantly about pride, forming impressions, and then re-evaluating those impressions. There is focus on changing of character, but the strongest weight is on understanding and judging other characters.

To explore Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of simulation, it would be important to put a lot of value on the subject of impression forming and managing attitudes and complex relationships between characters. To be a participant in Jane Austen’s world, a player must be able to pay attention to how she appears and comes off in the setting, and also be able to form and voice her impressions of other characters.

Literary Style

For a faithful adaptation, it would be important to echo Jane Austen’s literary style. It may not be possible to reflect it entirely, but it would be important for it to come through and be noticeable in some explicit way.

Most notably, Austen has a distinguishable style that uses free indirect speech, where she periodically exposes an internal look into characters thoughts amidst third person description. Every so often, Austen will give a little bit of extra information illuminating for the reader what is taking place inside a character’s head, noting changing opinions, justifications for some actions, and attitudes that are only partially divulged by the character’s actions. These glimpses are not given to only one character, but many, allowing the reader a privileged position to understand the events playing out in the novel.

To adapt the introspective style to a simulation, it may be worthwhile to represent certain events that might be taking place inside of a characters mind or state, and make these visible to the user via icons. One thought would be thought bubbles, but this may provide too deep an insight, given that the player is participating as a character. Another thought would be to produce icons reflecting good or bad opinions, moods, etcetera, as is often done in The Sims.

Austen also has another habit of eliding over many events very quickly. Some conversations will be described abstractly, others will be rendered in dialogue. Sometimes complex and significant events (at least ones complex to do via simulation) will be described briefly, and then the reader will have the chance to get some detail on an interaction. The effect of these is that the reader is positioned like an unnoticed guest or a ghost in the story, occasionally getting distant, long perspective views of the events playing out, and occasionally getting very intimate and close perspectives on the characters. This quality makes the book very hard to adapt to any other narrative medium, and the BBC series often makes some conversations explicit that were glossed over in the text itself.

The occasional omission of explicit dialogue from description, even though dialogue is clearly taking place, is reflective of the fact that speech acts are intended for a purpose, rather than just means of information transition. Given that Austen manages to omit some dialogue in her characters’ interactions in lieu of more abstract symbolic description, a procedural adaptation would not be inaccurate if it used symbolic language in place of some conversational interactions.

Simulation Domain

To describe the simulation domain is to answer the question of what is managed by a simulation of this story setting. That, in turn, provokes a great many other questions: What sorts of characters can players be? What sorts of interactions do characters have? What is important within the world? What states and characteristics do characters have? What conventions and tropes are in the source domain, and how are they carried over?

Interaction

To be a player within a game world requires being in that world. The player must be a participant and a character in the world like any other character. As such, the player must interact like any other character. In this sense, interaction means both in terms of appearing to others, and in terms of actively performing actions. Within Pride and Prejudice the book, only a little attention is given to given to dress, some is paid to appearance, but most is in terms of manner. A player must be able to control the manner of their character. In terms of action, attention is paid to nearness, gaze, games (especially card games), but most action is dialogue.

Dialogue

Conversation is very important within literary worlds, and it has been a perpetual bane of AI projects since the earliest days of computation. Nonetheless, many conventions have been developed around simplifying conversation so that it works effectively (examples: Sims, Indigo Prophecy, Mass Effect). I think with these in mind, it will be possible to come up with a conversation system that is effective but not too severe.

Conversation is notable in that it is a real time phenomenon. It is highly referential, very loose in structure, transitioning between topics and ideas, and overall very volatile. At the same time, it is a natural pehenomenon. As humans we can easily recognize when something is a conversation as opposed to something that is not. To accomodate this, I pose that this simulation requires a real time conversation mechanic. Furthermore, it should be context dependent, and constructed via a symbolic interface (as opposed to free text). It should be possible to state a large number of things, and it should be restricted so that most of the things it is possible for a player to say be things that might make some sense in the situation.

Conversation speech acts should be built interactively, and be strongly aided in their construction. Essentially, topics that might be relevant for a character’s current situation or might be pertinent to things that the character has been thinking about should appear readily accessible, while more off-topic and tangential speech choices would be harder to access.

Defining character by conversation: Characters should be able to have voices, manners of speech, and particular habits and ways of speaking. A number of these should be accessible to the player. If the player chooses a character to play who has a well established personality and manner, then the types of conversation styles (as well as topics) should be prioritized when the user goes to select them. However, with a more neutrally defined character, it should be possible to choose options that will help define that character’s manner and personality.

Conversation in Pride and Prejudice is fairly complex, with a great many topics and means of going about approaching them. However, it should be possible for many of these to be representable by the conversation system.

Character Actions

While most all of the substance of interaction between characters occurs via dialogue, there are still many more activities that the characters do while speaking. The social caste to which the characters in Pride and Prejudice belong is slightly (and more than slightly) aristocratic, and spends a great deal of time in leisure activities. Characters read, play cards, write letters, play music (one character plays piano, and another might sing), they dance, play outdoor games (which the females ususally do not get involved in), have coffee, tea, breakfast, or dinner, and go for walks in the countryside. Generally, these activities are the locus for certain types of conversations. But the types of activities pursued are telling on the nature of the performing characters.

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein is primarily concerned with language. He is concerned with words and meanings, and describes the mechanisms of the use of language extensively. The core argument appears to be that ostensive definitions are inherently flawed, and that language may only be understood by use. The proposed mechanism for studying language is through language games. Wittgenstein is very influential on many individuals, and it is important to get a ground on that influence. Here I will try to pick out the elements of the text that are relevant, but leave the more thorough summary to Wikipedia.

Philosophical Investigations is about the method and practice of philosophy. It is written in a manner that embodies the practice. Instead of giving an explanation of his perspective, Wittgenstein presents thought experiments and expects reader to simulate or deduce from them, and reach the same conclusions he has. This approach is troubling to me, because I disagree with Wittgenstein’s initial approach to language. His first step is to look at the idea of word definitions, and to perform a logical refutation of the necessity of definitions. I would argue instead that language comes into being because of human practice, that it is a fundamentally human phenomenon, and any formal meaning that may be attributed to words is due to the phenomenon of the word’s use.

The meaning and definition of words are ambiguous and conflicted. To examine why this is the case, he presents models of languages where definitions are clear, which resemble micro-domains used for problem solving in AI and computer science. The first example is of a person who goes to the store to buy five red apples. How does the shopkeeper know how to iterpret that request? The conclusion reached seems to suggests to focus on the manner in which words are used, not their pure definitions. I would go a step further and say that such a request has a special meaning defined by its use and context. A person in a store knows how to respond to customer requests. The broader philosophical question is how the shopkeeper came to learn that in the first place, but it does not seem to be too difficult of a problem.

Wittgenstein extends the ambiguity problem to the idea of a game. Games and play are intrinsically ambiguous, as scholars have known, and Wittgenstein pulls an interesting trick with it. It is impossible to identify common phenomena that are intrinsic to all games, but the game-like qualities that are present in games are more like “family resemblances.” We can either say that games have many definitions, or that those definitions are incomplete, but people nonetheless know what games are, nonetheless. The idea is that we do not have a definition for “game”, but we use the term correctly anyway. It is not impossible to define game, but such a definition may not be productive.

That said about games, Wittgenstein goes on to argue that language use is inherently gamelike. Patterns of use of language are like different types of games. These games are playful, and operate according to some form of rule structure. These rules are culturally and socially instituted, and are also inescapable. To be aware of a rule is to break it. This is similar to the notion of mediation and immersion. Awareness of the medium stymies the process of communication over it. I disagree with the assertion that awareness of rules implies breaking of the rules, though. Some examples of language games are the following: (p. 11-12)

• Giving orders, and obeying them
• Describing the appearance of an object,o r giving its measurements
• Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)
• Reporting an event
• Speculating about an event
• Forming and testing a hypothesis
• Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams
• Making up a story; and reading it
• Play-acting
• Singing catches
• Guessing riddles
• Making a joke; telling it
• Solving a problem in practical arithmetic
• Translating form one language into another
• Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying

Wittgenstein makes a vague analogy of (I think) the practice of philosophy to the understanding of a machine, with both observed and potential processes. Like language, machines have both regular operation, and also cases of fallibility. Parts in a machine may bend, break, melt, and so on. To understand a word is to understand an entire process.

Gradually, the entire argument shifts to the matter of personal experience. Personal experiences are internal, and cannot be shared by their inherent nature. Wittgenstein gives the example of pain. One may experience a pain, and see another exhibit signs of pain, but it is impossible to know if the two are the same. This is seen as a major obstacle. I would argue that this is still possible to communicate about these experiences. It is not necessary to share exactly the same sensation as another to identify and sympathize with them. Experience is located in the body, and we can thus locate it, because the body is there and is referrable. We can point to our own bodies and those of others. Considering pain and experience as though they are isolated is fallacious.

The reason why these are identifiable is because people have a common set of experiences, and a common set of relationships to the world. These commonalities that are physiological are universal across the human condition. However, many experiences, especially those that are rooted in language, are culturally derived. With the differences in cultures, it is possible for individuals from different cultures to have dramatically different reactions to the same words or images. Personal experience too yields a diversity of reactions, but a common foundation is still there.

Whyte’s text reviews urban environments from a perspective of design. The methodology of the book is documentary, but it carries with it an agenda and exhortation for the enrichment of the spaces themselves. The purpose of designing spaces is to encourage the environment, urban life, and community. Having lived for the past several years in Atlanta, I find Whyte’s depiction of urban spaces to be somewhat shocking, a phenomenon that is easily supported by the fact that the book was published in 1980. It has been nearly 30 years since then, and the depictions of openness, freedom, and intermingled spaces have gradually been eclipsed by a number of factors. Our fear-loving political mentality among them. This outlook aside, and in spite of politics and our insular and slightly agoraphobic climate, much of Whyte has to say is extremely relevant from a number of perspectives.

Whyte is part of the “media traditions” tag on the big reading list. This is because the text is about urban planning and architecture. Much of what Whyte discusses are plazas, and how to design them to be inviting. This is relevant for anyone interested in architecture, but it is also relevant for anyone interested in social spaces, either real or virtual. From the perspective of AI and character simulation, it provides a useful glimpse into how characters might behave within certain spaces. Embodiment is a property of the situation as much as it is of the individual, giving some clues as to how to get characters to react to and experience spaces. Urban spaces are not especially interesting for my work, so I’ll focus on elements that may be more general.

The first thing to discuss is how Whyte might be used to discuss space within virtual worlds. Within multiplayer environments, this conveys the strongest analogue, but it may also be used to examine the relationship between the environment and simulated characters within first person games. The key goal of the book is the construction of inviting spaces. Whyte’s first main point is that it is people who determine the use of a space. All social spaces are emergent, and cannot be controlled directly. People will occupy places that are desirable, and will avoid places that are not. Paradoxically, what makes places desirable are other people. Plazas are expansive areas that are open for walking, and are usually placed outside of corporate buildings (in New York, the reason for this is also emergent, and relating to zoning laws that encouraged the development of plazas). This means that people move in and out of the plazas on their way to and from work, and often come outside around lunchtime. What makes these spaces appealing for use comes from several factors: sitting space, sunlight and shade, trees, water (especially waterfall features), food, retail, street performers, and ready access to the street itself. Aside from the environmental effects, these are all important because they are things that people will use. When a space is usable, and inviting to be used, it will be used. This is a sort of environmental sense of affordance.

Criticized in the book are “megastructures,” much like the hermetically sealed bubbles described by Jameson in Postmodernism. These are places with no readily visible or accessible ways in or out (on foot, anyway), and are built like fortresses. These structures are designed to be accessible primarily by car, and thus the visitors will be travelling from one bubble to another. Invariably, when present on the ground, these will have spiked ledges to disallow seating, and forbid any kind of casual use of the space.

A key takeaway in this is to consider the way that virtual spaces are designed, and assess whether they fall more into the category of the former or the latter. It is clear that spaces are the most lively when they are the most easily used. However, virtual space fits into this at an odd level. On one hand, virtual environments are not precisely necessary the same way that real ones are. Virtual bodies are not real, and the characteristic that makes spaces inviting, things such as: sitting area, food, proximity to important locations, such as the street, an office, or stores, are all essentially unnecessary in virtual worlds. These obstacles exist precisely because there are spaces that exist in between real people and where they are going. These simply do not exist in virtual space. A person using a computer does not need to go through a virtual space to procure food, or to sit down, or to shop, or to go to work. However, all of these processes may be simulated.

The situations where virtual places might be the most inviting are within multiplayer games, where the players have characters who inhabit these worlds and have things that they want to do in the world that are situated. The best example of this that I can think of is in World of Warcraft, specifically within the Horde city of Orgrimmar. There are three locations that players visit with great frequency: the mailbox, the auction house, and the bank. These three are conveniently placed very close to each other, creating a triangle of activity. Near that triangle may be found many players gathered together, occasionally talking, occasionally giving away enchantments, and occasionally dancing or behaving silly. Outside of hotspots like these, places are much less vibrant. In many games and virtual worlds, interaction with other players is done with private messages, which enables people to communicate without being near each other. Second Life enables instantaneous teleportation and flight, which is fun, but detracts from the necessity and integral nature of space. As a result, most spaces are empty, apart from the occasional drifters. By providing players with instantaneous access to the objects for which space is normally a medium, space becomes unnecessary, losing its value as a medium for emergence.

The key to getting an idea of “placeness” seems to be embodiment. We use space because we inhabit that space with our bodies. Virtual characters will use virtual space by inhabiting it with their own virtual bodies. One element to this is the simple necessity of being in a space. When the player (or a simulated character) is forced to occupy a space, that space will come to be seen in terms of affordances. Easy types of affordances are the relation of that space to other spaces. A reading room is a useful space because that is where the books are. However, other issues indicated by Whyte are important but very subtle. One is that people prefer to sit down. People also prefer to be in spaces that have consistent and pleasing climate (sufficient sun and shade). In games such as The Sims, these sorts of ideas are expressed by having sims have a “comfort” and “environment” needs. Playing a game of The Sims yields interesting emergent effects when the player furnishes a home. Frequently, the sims will coalesce and occupy one room more than the others, and that is generally the room that has the most comfortable furniture and the highest environment. I am not sure if this demands more attention, but it seems like it should be sufficient to simply be aware of that effect, and keep it in mind while developing models of how characters act within places.

Relating this to my work may take a bit of maneuvering, but it’s on my reading list, so here it goes.

Stoppard plays are often absurdist and existential, but come with a comedic vein absent in other absurdist theatre such as Beckett or Brecht. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is set following the eponymous characters from Hamlet. While in Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor, spending most of their time in the background, in Stoppard’s play their roles are reversed with that of Hamlet’s cast. They exist in an ambiguous and indeterminate state, the very world around them is vague and indistinct. They are fraught with the problem of not being able to make out the world, and being unable to change their roles within it. The play reads like Hamlet’s backstage, only the actors never come out of character. The world seen is a quasi-state that is both part of Hamlet’s fiction and also is definitively outside of it.

This sort of situation is relevant to media studies from the perspective of its general philosophical influence, but also from the perspective of performance and presentation. Jay Bolter and Diane Gromala have described digital artifacts as being transparent and reflective. Transparency is the idea that a user may engage with a work without the interference of mediation. Reflective artifacts instead draw attention to the mediation and it is through that awareness that the work is able to convey meaning. Pure transparency is an illusion or myth, of course, as mediation is present in all interactions, and it is only through convention that these mediating factors are ignored, or understood symbolically without requiring contemplation.

Plays are artistic artifacts, which use mediating factors and devices which operate on a symbolic level that is meaningful to the audience. Conventions make use of the stage, especially in the way that characters enter and exit, to communicate symbolically to the audience what is taking place. A viewer unfamiliar with these conventions would not find plays to be transparent at all, and would be baffled by the characters who enter and exit, by the conventions of scenes, lighting, and curtains. They would be puzzled by these gestures much the same way that someone who had never seen a computer would be puzzled by a web browser. Beyond the pure issues in communication of symbolic gesture and representation, there is the issue of literacy. In addition to conventions of interpretation in a domain, there are also traditions of works and use which abide by and originate these conventions. A familiarity with these traditions is generally a form of literacy. When such conventions become pervasive enough to be naturalized, their use is considered transparent.

Reflective artifacts reveal that the mediation process still occurs, even in these circumstances. Absurdist theatre challenges the conventions of theatre and in doing so defamiliarizes the audience with the conventions and their expectations. Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead presents a view which operates in a liminal space between the domain of Hamlet and something else. It depends on the literacy of its audience to understand Hamlet, and also unseats the understanding and expectations regarding the nature of characters– how characters are supposed to work within a play in the first place. Characters are supposed to have clear identities (so we may identify with them), they are supposed to be empowered within the scope of the action (so we may admire them), and they are supposed to be naturally within the world (so the world will seem real to us).

Stoppard’s play is also significant from the perspective of literary extension and adaptation. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead extends the world of Hamlet. This is important because of the form of the adaptation. The play extends the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but also borrows some of the major cast of Hamlet. The borrowed characters are not extended, are not presented as whole round characters, but are rather flat representations. We understand the significance of Hamlet not because of what he does, but because we know that he’s the same Hamlet from Shakespeare’s play. The world of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is evoked, but not extended or even represented. The result is something which produces a commentary on the original material. Instead of continuing the world of Hamlet with its own rules and logic, we see the events of Hamlet rendered according to a new set of rules. In essence, the representation has not changed, the key events have not changed, but the underlying model that produces those events has changed.

Saussure is one of the establishing figures in modern linguistics and semiotics. Saussure’s work is important because it establishes the origin of structuralism in linguistics. The theory of language is important in any investigation of media studies, and the ideas of communication and signification are especially relevant in the perspective of networked discourse and visual culture. However, my approach is going to be to look at Saussure from the perspective of meaning and symbolic systems. Structuralism seems a certain starting point for the logic of traditional AI, but Saussure’s conception encourages thinking much more broadly: he discusses the perception of language both as a fixed system (synchronic linguistics), as well as a system that evolves in time (diachronic linguistics). Both of these depend on a community of speakers to share the meaning of signs. I will focus on the sections of general principles and synchronic linguistics.

Part I: General Principles

Saussure opens by contextualizing his goal in opposition to the existing view of language, which is that words correspond directly to meanings. Instead, he claims that concepts are tied to “sound-images.” This connection is psychological and not associative. The pair of the concept and sound-image is a sign. The sound-image is the signifier, and the concept is the signified. Signs operate according to two principles: Arbitrariness and linearity. Signs are arbitrary because, in terms of words, there is nothing in the signifier alone that naturally implies the signified, and it could easily be any other signifier that could be bound to the signified. The claim of arbitrariness is slightly contestable given recent studies in cognitive science, but for the most part, it is logically sound. Saussure does discuss later how elements of words (prefixes and postfixes that can be tied to other word bases) are signifiers in of themselves. Linearity applies to the fact that we perceive signs, read and hear, linearly. This has to do with our inherent means of perception and ability to read and interpret language.

Language has qualities of both immutability and mutability. Language is immutable in the sense that it is intangible and connot be consciously changed by a single speaker. A speaker who wished to change language would not be able communicate the changes with others by simpy using the changes. Language instead depends on a community of speakers, who use the language through time. The key dimension in this is time. Without movement in time, a language has the potential for life, but it does not live. Through time, the language will suffer inevitable changes. It is productive to think of this at a meta level, in terms of Barthes’ mythologies, and look at texts and readers. Texts too have a life in time, and are interpreted differently over the course of it.

Part II: Synchronic Linguistics

This section is on synchronic linguistics, which is linguistics that have a fixed state and does not change over time. This can also be read as a general interpretation of language meaning and use.  Saussure argues that linguistic entities are concrete, if and only if it has both an expression and meaning. The meaning of an entity may also be considered an intention or representation). Entities must be delimited via difference from, and as separated from other units. The idea is that a linguistic expression (like a word or a phrase or a sentence) is composed of units, such as words or syllables, and these syllables must be delimited from each other, and distinguished by their difference to other units.

Thought and sound are coupled in the understanding of language. This is at outset a troubling argument, as the deaf can use language, but Saussure might refer to images or muscle patterns to account for this case. The argument seems to go in the direction that a union of perception and expression comprises thought. “Linguistics then works in the borderland where the elements of sound and thought combine; their combination produces a form, not a substance.” (p. 113; emphasis in original) Saussure’s goal is to understand the idea of linguistic value, but value differs from signification. This is because signification involves a certain multiplicity, whereas value does not.

There is a paradox in seeing the sign or word-meaning as a linguistic unit, as it is interdependent. Language as used contains interdependent terms, and the spoken word does not stand on its own, but depends on the words around it. Note that GOFAI symbols are independent/universal/objective. There are two elements to linguistic values: (1) Dissimilar things can be exchanged for the thing of which the value is to be determined. (2) Similar things may be compared with the thing of which the value is to be determined. The essence of these are similarity and exchange. These are the core of the process of transformation. Transformation occurs between signs and reality, as well as between sign systems. Values may be exchanged, but signified may not exactly be exchanged. Saussure gives the example of the English word “sheep” and the French word “mouton,” both of which signify a sheep, but they do not have the same value. The French word “mouton” also signifies the food for which the English word is “mutton.”

Language ultimately comes down to differences. The key element is distinction between elements such as letters and phonemes. Differences are within the system, not before it. Both the signified and signifier exist differentially, in that they are different from other signifieds and signifiers, but the sign as a whole is a positive unit.

A syntagm is framed as a meaningful connection between two linguistic terms. These are structures within the system. Extra-system comparisons form associations, which are formed in absentia, whereas syntagmatic relations are formed in praesentia. A syntagm is two terms effective in a series. Saususre gives an example of a building supported by columns. The relation between the base, column, and roof are syntagmatic relations, whereas the type of column that may be present (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, etc) are associate relations. The syntagm is a role and position within space or time, and an associative relation is the capacity for variance and multiple values. (I think the term for this has been co-opted as a paradigmatic relation.) Terms and meanings are built from syntagmatic and associative relations. Associative relations work via difference, but syntagmatic relations are constructive.

It is difficult to write a summary for a dictionary. So, a bit on the context: Gerald Prince developed this as a dictionary of important terms in the study of narrative. Because narratology takes into account many perspectives and has deliberate uses and definitions of terms from normal English, a dictionary is worthwhile in both expounding those terms and contextualizing their theoretical underpinnings. This is a useful source for referencing in pursuit of clear explanation for terms and to find the scholars who popularized their use.

Instead of organizing my discusion into sections, I’ll instead pull out several terms which are relevant for my work, and paraphrase Prince’s take on them.

Actant: An actant is a role in narrative deep structure. This is useful for the structural analysis of narrative, and in this context forms a kind of syntactic unit. It is important to note that an actant is a role, not a character. An actor is a concretized actant, one who occupies the actant role. The actant fits into the “actantial model,” which operates like a narrative version of semiotic communication theory. The actant roles in this model are Sender, Subject, Helper, Object, Opponent, and Receiver. This was primarily developed by Greimas.

Character: One definition is that a character is simply “an existent endowed with anthropomorphic traits and engaged in anthropomorphic actions; an actor with anthropmorphic attributes.” (p. 12) Or alternately, “an actor; an existent engaged in an action.” (p. 12) Characters are classified in terms of flatness and roundness, as well as the spheres of action they reside in, the roles or actants they occoupy or concretize.

Deep Structure is the lowest level of structure, which is in opposition to the surface structure. This defines the meaning of the narrative. The relationship between actants occurs at the level of deep structure, while actors and characters operate at the surface level. The deep structure cooresponds to story, wereas the surface structure corresponds to discourse. In the Greimassian model, the deep structure can be converted into the surface structure by means of transformations.

Diectic is used as a literary term, indicating situating prepositions and adverbs. Diectic terms situate the characters in the diegetic time.

Diegesis: “The (fictional) world in which the situations and events narrated occur.” (p. 20) This is another way of referring to the story world. Normally it is considered in terms of the diegetic level, which can have interdiegetic and extradiegetic dimensions.

Discourse is the expressive part of a narrative, in opposition to the content part. Discourse defines how the story takes place, as opposed to what takes place. Frequently, discourse is used to describe discussion and rhetoric within a conceptual domain, but the definition here is centered on the expression of a narrative alone.

Function: An act which is significant in terms of the narrative action or situation. The strongest use of function comes from Propp. Barthes describes a function as a narrative unit which is related to the others metonymically. That is, the function is related to the situation through consequence (or causality). The function is opposed to the index, which supports the narrative metaphorically. The idea is that the function supports the events, but the index supports the atmosphere.

Narrative Domain: This is defined as the space of possible outcomes within a situation inside of a narrative, or the set of possible moves or functions which charactes may perform. “From a schematic point of view, a narrative domain is governed by a number of maxims or rules establishing what is or could be the case, regulating the character’s knowledge, setting his or her priorities, and, most generally, guiding him or her in assessing a situation and reacting to it.” (p. 62) This seems to represent the idea of the possible generative outcomes of narrative systems.

Narrative World: A set of motifs in a narrative which are considered true and factual within the world. Ryan (1985) distinguishes between actual and possible worlds. My understanding of narrative worlds is much more specific, and covers the cognitive and conceptual dimensions of the world as defined by the author and reader.

Possible World is a sset of affairs and individuals which is complete for a particular narrative. This is defined in terms of what is considered factual in context of a narrative, but also what is non-actual, given by character’s plans, beliefs, or fantasies. The definition as given considers possibility in terms of possible interpretations or ambiguity (Eco style openness), but not genuine possible variance of the course of narrative events.

Schema: A semantic framework which represents the perception and comprehension of reality. Schemata are serially oriented, and work with other cognitive elements, such as plans, frames, and scripts. A plan is considered a goal-oriented schema. Whereas frames are parallel modes of perception and interpretation. Scripts are explained to be interactive schemata intended for situational use, “sterotypical, goal-directed schemata” (p. 86)