Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling
by Chris Crawford
http://www.informit.com/title/0321278909
Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling
By Chris Crawford.
Published by New Riders.
ISBN: 0321278909; Published: Oct 6, 2004; Copyright 2005;
Dimensions 7-3/8" x 9-1/8" ; Pages: 384; Edition: 1st.
Book Description
As a game designer or new media storyteller, you know that the story is everything. However, figuring out how to tell it interactively-and in a way that keeps your audience coming back for more-can be challenging. Here to help you out (and to open your mind to ever more creative ways of producing those stories) is the man who created the cult publication The Art of Computer Game Design and who has devoted much of his career to that very topic: Chris Crawford. To highlight the path for future gains in the quest for a truly interactive story, Chris provides a solid sampling of what doesn't work, contrasting unsuccessful methodologies with those that hold promise for the future. Throughout you'll find examples of contemporary games that rely on different technologies-and learn the storytelling lessons to be garnered from each of the past methodologies. Within the context of interactive storytelling, Chris explores ways of providing conflict and challenge, the difference between low- and high-interactivity designs, the necessity to move beyond purely visual thinking (so that the player is engaged on multiple levels), and more.
在 Chris Crawford 的个人网站上，有这本新书的内容简介以及目录
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/MyBooks/InteractiveStorytelling.html
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
Chris Crawford 在 2003 年的杰作 Chris Crawford on Game Design ，Dearbook的外版图书专区http://www.dearbook.com.cn/OriginalEdition/已经有售：
http://www.dearbook.com.cn/book/viewbook.aspx?pno=TS0027076