Real time manifesto (after the Tales of Tales)_part4

Reject dehumanisation: tell stories.
Stories ground people in culture,
(and remove the alienation that causes aggression)
stimulate their imagination,
(and therefore improve the capability to change)
teach them about themselves
and connect them with each other.
Stories are a vital element of society.
Embrace non-linearity.
Let go of the idea of plot.
Realtime is non-linear.
Tell the story through interaction.
Do not use in-game movies or other non-realtime devices to tell the story.
Do not create a “drama manager”: let go of plot!
Plot is not compatible with realtime.
Think “poetry”, not “prose”.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle recognized six elements in Drama.
PLOT
what happens in a play, the order of events,is only one of them.
Next to plot we have
THEME
or the main idea in the work
CHARACTER
or the personality or role played by an actor
DICTION
the choice and delivery of words
MUSIC/RHYTHM
the sound, rhythm and melody of what is being said
SPECTACLE
the visual elements of the work.
All of these can be useful in non-linear realtime experiences. Except plot.
But the realtime medium offers additional elements that easily augment or replace plot.
INTERACTIVITY
the direct influence of the viewer on the work
IMMERSION
the presence of the viewer in the work
AN AUDIENCE OF ONE
every staging of the work is done for an audience of a single person in the privacy of his
or her
home.
These new elements add the viewer as an active participant to the experience.
This is not a reduction of the idea of story but an enrichment.
Realtime media allow us to tell stories that could not be told before.
Many of the mythical fantasies about art can now be made real.
Now we can step into paintings and become part of them.
Now sculptures can come alive and talk to us.
Now we walk onto the stage and take part in the action.
We can live the lives of romance characters.
Be the poet or the muse.
Do not reject stortelling in realtime because it is not straightforward.
Realtime media allow us to make ambiguity and imagination active parts of the experience.
Embrace the ambiguity:
it is enriching.
The realtime medium allows for telling stories that canot be told in any other language.
But realtime is not suitable for linear stories:
Embrace non-linearity!
Reject plot!
Realtime is a poetic technology.
Populate the virtual world with narrative elements that allow the player to make up his or her
own story.
Imagination moves the story into the user’s mind.
It allows the story to penetrate the surface and take its place amongst the user’s thoughts &
memories.
The bulk of your story should be told in realtime, through interaction.
Do not use in-game movies or other devices.
Do not fall back on a machine to create plot on the fly:
let go of plot,plot is not compatible with realtime.
Do not squeeze the realtime medium into a linear frame.
Stories in games are not impossible or irrelevant, even if “all that matters is gameplay”
Humans need stories and will find stories in everything.
Use this to your advantage.
Yes, “all that matters is gameplay”,
if you extend gameplay to mean all interaction in the game.
Because it is through this interaction that the realtime medium will tell its stories.
The situation is the story.
Choose your characters and environment carefully
so that the situation immediately triggers narrative associations in the mind of the user.