I was never so sure about the metaphor of interactivity being dialogue, since it obscures the fact that the dialogue we want with an interactive works seem to be on a very specific level, within very specific parameters, whereas a conversation can roam feely, change levels, backtrack and so on.

“Dialogue: A narrative is like a discourse, it aims at conveying a message to its audience in order to impact it. So an interactive narrative is an interactive discourse… namely a dialogue, where the author and the audience exchange their point of views through characters’actions.”

This text means that the metaphor of conversation or dialog can be grounded into a theoretical framework about narrative, namely a pragmatic point of view on narrative.

Also, Michael Young, from NCSU (Liquid Narrative Group) links the research on dialog with the reserach on Interactive Narrative, through the notion of “cooperative contract” (see his paper: “The Co-operative Contract in Interactive Entertainment “, at http://liquidnarrative.csc.ncsu.edu/papers.html).

But I think we should not forget however that the dialog is asymetrical… In an ideal interactive fiction (the one Andrew is asking for!), you (the user) exchange your point of view with the author, but the very goal of the narrative is, for an author, to influence you in some way, to convince you… and the fiction is biased in that way… that’s part of the game!

May be it is because of my knowledge of the state of the art of today’s AI systems.. The first time I heard the Sprint’s agent voice, I didn’t know what to do. I knew she was limited by the words she can understand or even pick up, I stood there for two minutes thinking of a short, quick word to say that will bring a human on the phone. It was terrible.

So, no, I don’t want the ability to converse freely with agents or characters. I want to be led through an adventure where tension increases, and where characters can improvise and are designed with goals and motivations that are part of the setup that enhances the narrative and the experience.

I thought for sure that, in place of “the computer,” you were going to say “the book” or “the novel.”

“The fiction feels alive. It doesn’t have to listen to everything I say, nor I to it. But it’s got something it needs to say, and maybe I do too. We’re peers. We get to know each other, we build a relationship.”

This is a curious kind of pleasure, not one that I’d expect from a hypertext, or a work of art, or anything, really, except for another person. Maybe. (Because even then, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, “People will disappoint you.”) The only thing I can think of that comes close is Online Caroline, and even that was tightly scripted — it was easy enough to game the system and make it produce absurd responses.

I agree that’s how games are today; I’d like to think about what could be gained by opening that up, to somehow create fictions that are more organic, more generative, robustly handling open-ended input, etc. (Again, not to remove constraints altogether; see a previous post for a discussion of constraints.)

Diane Greco writes: “This is a curious kind of pleasure, not one that I’d expect from a hypertext, or a work of art, or anything, really, except for another person.”

Yes, I think this would be a new approach to art making. Sherry Turkle talks about this a bit in her study of relational artifacts. I discuss the notion in a paper called “Creating Emotional Relationships with Virtual Characters” in the book Emotions in Humans and Artifacts.