July 5, 2004
Chris Crawford on Phrontisterion V
An initial summary of the goings-on at the fifth Phrontisterion conference on Interactive Storytelling is now online, written by its organizer. Chris reports that the attendees will soon write up their impressions as well, to be compiled into a new group blog.
A highlight of the conference was the discussion of several new books, notably Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling, in which Chris offers many pages of wisdom gained from years of experience working towards building a grand vision of what interactive stories could be. Chris considers this the most important book he’s ever written; my initial quick-read of the manuscript can testify to this. More on this excellent new resource in a future post.
(Another book briefly discussed at Phrontisterion was Andrew Glassner’s newly published Interactive Storytelling, which I also have a copy of, and also plan to write about in a future post.)
November 8th, 2004 at 11:59 pm
I was wondering if anyone read Interactive Storytelling by Andrew Glassner. I am still reading it, but I think that he brings about many interesting points. I am especially interested in the idea of ‘flow’ and how everyone is handling that, because I struggled with to balance this issue in Mirage. I think we had a pretty good solution to get the user into the flow of the story and get him/her to interact without setting back the pace or cutting the flow.
I am just curious how everyone else found the book.
-Magy
November 9th, 2004 at 9:41 am
Hi Magy! I have Glassner’s book, but like most things I want to read or play — the Sims 2, Rob’s Breakup Conversation, GTA:SA, Fable, Glassner’s book, Crawford’s book — I’m too busy finishing Facade to get to them yet…
Speaking of which, it looks like Crawford’s book is now available! Once I have free time, I’m probably going to try to write about that before Glassner’s, because (after having skimmed both) Crawford’s is more focused on generative, deeply interactive techniques, whereas Glassner I speculated is more design-heavy, tech-lite.
Recently, Clive Thompson of collision detection got a lot out of Glassner’s book, and points to a Slashdot review.
November 9th, 2004 at 10:49 am
Is the Breakup Conversation available? I’d wanted to take a look, and possibly assign it to my students, but wasn’t able to find it on Rob’s website.
November 9th, 2004 at 11:13 am
Here’s The Breakup Conversation, which apparently has a recently updated build available.