Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling

Interactive storytelling will succeed games as the next big development in entertainment software. Everybody knows it's coming, and plenty of people are trying to make it happen. Although a variety of people have attempted to inject storytelling into their products, the sad fact is, for all the talk about interactive storytelling, nobody has yet produced a viable commercial interactive storytelling product, but Chris Crawford has struggled farther down that path than anybody else. Here he offers the results of 12 years of effort dedicated solely to solving the problem of interactive storytelling. Crawford proceeds in a straight line from clean, simple fundamentals of interactivity and storytelling to their direct consequences for designing interactive storytelling technologies. Along the way, he resolves misleading dilemmas, such as the feckless debate over plot versus interactivity, and then offers detailed descriptions of technologies for implementing interactive storytelling. Herein lies the meat of the book. Instead of vague, hand-waving wishlists, Crawford gives workable solutions. Instead of intellectually pretentious gobbledygook, Crawford explains in plain English what works and what doesn't. This is the real thing.

Some of the key concepts explained herein:
Verbs: the core concept of interactive storytelling
How to assemble verbs into events
How to build useful personality models
Gossip and the flow of information in drama
Anticipation: how characters modulate their behavior toward others
Inclination formulae: how characters make choices
Sequencing character behavior in dramatically rational ways
Development environments for interactive storytelling

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: From Story to Interactive Storytelling
1 Story
2 Interactivity
3 Interactive Storytelling
Part II: Styles of Thinking
4 Two Cultures, No Hits, No Runs
5 Abstraction
6 Verb Thinking
Part III: Strategies for Interactive Storytelling
7 Simple Strategies That Don't Work
8 Environmental Strategies
9 Data-Driven Strategies
10 Language-Based Strategies
Part IV: Core Technologies for Interactive Storytelling
11 Personality Models
12 Drama Managers
13 Verbs and Events
14 HistoryBooks and Gossip
15 Anticipation
16 Sequencing
17 Development Environments
Part V: Applications
18 The Erasmatron
19 Research
20 Distant Relatives
21 Prognostications