Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling (22 page)

Does anybody remember the multimedia craze of the early 1990s? It all started when CD-ROM drives became standard equipment on personal computers, and software developers could take advantage of the storage capacity of these babies.
It might be hard to believe, but the average personal computer back then had only about 4MB of RAM and 100MB of hard disk storage. The floppy disk was the standard means of distributing software, and its capacity was only 1.4MB. By contrast, a CD-ROM boasted 650MB of storage. The transition from floppy disk to CD-ROM increased delivery capacity by a factor of more than 400! To make a similar-sized jump from CD-ROM to something bigger, that bigger medium would need to hold about 260GB—bigger than most hard disks these days.

Freed from the constraints of floppy disks, software developers began stuffing huge quantities of data onto CD-ROMs. That data took the form of graphics. Because most personal computers in those days had 640×480 8-bit displays, requiring only 307KB of data per screen, developers could stuff about 2,000 screen images onto a single CD-ROM. Overnight, the demand for artists to prepare all this artwork exploded.

Joy reigned throughout Software Development Land. The old constraints had been lifted; the sky was the limit. Artists who had previously been discouraged by computers because they required so much programming could now create lots of dumb software with great graphics, and that’s exactly what they did. The floodgates opened and out gushed a tidal wave of software called “multimedia.” In design terms, all multimedia software was pretty much the same: a big pile of images and sounds presided over by a tiny little program that did little more than shuffle bytes from the CD-ROM to the screen and speakers.

Amid the cheering masses at the grand parade stood one scowling curmudgeon: me. I rained all over their parade, dismissing CD-ROMs and multimedia as a waste of time. After all, I pointed out, the CD-ROM is a data technology, not a processing technology. It gives a huge boost to the noun side of the interactivity, but that’s useless: What matters is the verb side. Therefore, CD-ROMs and multimedia weren’t going to do much to advance the software revolution.

Nobody believed me; they thought I was crazy. And certainly the sales figures made me look like an idiot. People made millions and millions of dollars creating multimedia. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and multimedia people were eating quite well.

I had seen it all before. Around 1983, a similar fad swept the world of arcade games: Dragon’s Lair. It was the first arcade game to use an optical disk, a precursor to the CD-ROM that was bigger, clumsier, and more expensive. The makers of this game stuffed actual animated video (from Don Bluth, no less!) onto
the optical disk with a simple branching system that permitted the internal computer to shunt different video snippets to the screen. The structure of the game was simple (
see
Figure 6.1
).

FIGURE
6.1: Game structure of Dragon’s Lair.

The game was a huge hit because nobody had ever seen such glorious graphics in an arcade game. Naturally, every other arcade game maker rushed to deliver its own optical disk game. Within a year, arcades were full of optical disk games, which promptly flopped. Optical disk games were a fad, a flash in the pan, because they really weren’t fun to play. Sure, they looked great, but they didn’t
do
anything interesting. And play, as well as any form of interactivity, succeeds or fails on what the user
does
.

Getting back to the 1990s and multimedia, I saw that the whole thing was a fad, just like Dragon’s Lair. The multimedia craze would climb a little higher and last a bit longer, but it had no staying power. And that’s exactly what happened. The
craze lasted three, maybe five years, depending on how you measure it. By the late 1990s, multimedia was dead. The CD-ROM lived on. After all, it was a better distribution medium than the floppy disk. But people stopped selling software on the size of its multimedia content.

It is instructive that, in the games industry, multimedia was killed by 3D graphics. The distinction is lost on most observers, who figure that one graphics medium is pretty much the same as any other. In fact, there’s a huge difference between CD-ROM-based multimedia and software-based 3D graphics rendering: The former is data intensive, and the latter is process intensive. Multimedia merely shovels bytes from the CD-ROM onto the screen; multimedia designers sweat data capacity. But 3D graphics software calculates its imagery using the CPU; its designers sweat machine cycles. Because 3D graphics software is processed rather than shoveled, it’s far more responsive to the user. The interaction is tighter and more intimate because it’s process intensive. Remember, data intensity is noun based; process intensity is verb based.

Okay, so I’ve convinced you. You have seen the light, and you’re a True Believer in the gospel of verb thinking. Now how can you learn verb thinking?

First, you lay the foundations by shifting your outlook on the world. Here’s that list of dichotomous words again:

Every time you think about any of these topics, contrast the left-side word with the right-side word. Are you worrying about the facts of an issue when you could be thinking about the ideas behind it? Go down the street looking at shops and stores. Are they selling goods or services? Can you imagine their output solely in terms of the services that went into the merchandise?

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.

Recall my reference in
Chapter 1
, “Story,” to the image taken from the end of the movie
The Matrix
; I’m going to use it again. The protagonist, Neo, finally realizes his potential to see behind the artificial world of the matrix, to see that it’s really just numbers and algorithms. The walls dissolve into numbers, and his antagonists are stacks of numbers; everything is just numbers that he can control at will. This imagery provides the metaphor for how you must see the world. Those aren’t walls in the hallway; they’re zillions of atoms held together with atomic forces, transmitting weight from roof to floor, interacting with photons of light to bounce those photons in different directions. Things don’t just sit there—they happen, and if you can come to understand how and why they happen, you can understand the universe at a deeper level, like Neo. And like Neo, you can freeze bullets in mid-air. That’s the power of this kind of thinking.

Everything is connected in intricate webworks of cause and effect, and your goal in life is to understand as much of that webwork as you can. To do so, you must concentrate on causal relationships, on the precise nature of causality. You need a language that allows you to express with clarity and precision the exact nature of each causal relationship you discover. I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that this language has already been developed; the bad news is that it’s mathematics.

I can hear the hissing sound of your deflating balloon. The very thought of using mathematics probably repels and terrifies you, but in my experience, a willingness to embrace mathematics is the single most significant factor in success or failure in software design. Many people refuse to tackle mathematics, like debutantes unwilling to seize a greased pig, and this aversion is natural. Our brains are wired to think in associations and patterns, and mathematical thinking is sequential, step-by-step in style. It requires you to twist your mind around in knots to make it operate in a style it just isn’t built for. You have every right to balk at my suggestion that you subject yourself to this kind of mental torture.

But what, I ask you, is wrong with the idea that you have to work to accomplish wonderful things? Great artists have never shied away from unpleasant tasks in pursuit of their artistic goals. The brutal truth is that you must embrace the slobbering monster of mathematics if you are to succeed in interactive storytelling. Here’s the true test of your passion: Will you get in bed with this creature to pursue your vision?

And don’t kid yourself with the comforting self-deception that there’s just got to be another way to do interactive storytelling without mathematics. There’s no getting around this one. Lord knows, I’ve tried. In designing the Erasmatron, I have struggled to cushion the spikiness of mathematics in layers of soft verbal down. I have tried to concoct other forms of expression that skirt mathematics completely. Despite all my creative powers, I have failed to concoct any non-mathematical scheme that adequately empowers storybuilders.

So gather your courage and face the monster; I’ll keep him on a chain.

We normally think of causality in merely binary terms: Socrates is either mortal or not mortal. If X, then Y, and X is either true or false, as is Y. It’s more useful to think of causality in mathematical terms, however: Apples cost $0.60 per pound, so if I buy 2 pounds of apples, I pay $1.20, and if I buy 4 pounds of apples, I pay $2.40. There’s a direct mathematical relationship between the cause and the effect, expressed in a simple mathematical formula:

    Price = $0.60 × Weight of apples


Take this idea a half-step further: Suppose somebody discovers that a man’s weight in pounds is equal to four times his waist measurement in inches. This
isn’t actually true, but for purposes of argument, suppose that it is true. Then you could make the following mathematical statement:

    All men’s weight is equal to four times their waist measurement.


You can set this up as a kind of syllogism:

The difference between the two syllogisms is that the left-side syllogism gives mere binary results (yes or no to the question “Is Socrates mortal?”), but the right-side syllogism can have all sorts of different results, depending on the man’s waist size. The left side divides Truth into black and white, yes or no, but the right side permits shades of gray. The left side can address only the most simple-minded questions, but the right side can address far more: anything that can be quantified.