Storytron - News

–posted by Laura

Here’s an interview on Storytronics I gave back in May to writer/ blogger/ podcaster/ awesome person Mur Lafferty. Enjoy!

–posted by Laura

“Into the Night with…” is a web-based German show that features interesting characters conversing at night. The latest episode is up. In it, Chris Crawford and up-and-comer Jason Rohrer discuss Storytronics, Jason’s independent games, and the state of the industry, while strolling through the exhibition and hallways at the 2009 GDC, a submarine, and other San Francisco locales. Well worth watching.

CoreGaming: dieubussy reviews the show and provides a link to download for viewing, here.

Chris will travel to New Mexico during the week of June 8, and has two public appearances scheduled:

Chris will join two (or three) other speakers in Santa Fe on Wednesday evening, June 10 to discuss three views of the human-machine-storytelling nexus. The others presenting are Steve Smith (and/ or Stephen Guerin), researchers in advanced computing; and science fiction writer Steven Gould, author of NY Times bestseller JUMPER.

Then, on Saturday afternoon, June 13, the Rio Grande IGDA will host an afternoon of Crawford on interactive storytelling.

Both events promise to be a lot of fun. Join us if you are in the neighborhood!

–posted by Laura

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JACKSONVILLE, Oregon, 23 March 2009 – World renowned game designer Chris Crawford has created a sequel to his blockbuster, Balance of Power, Storytron, Inc. announced today. The original Balance of Power took the computer gaming world by storm in 1985. Now Balance of Power 21st Century, re-imagined for modern times, launches a new computer entertainment medium.

Balance of Power 21st Century opens with the 9-11 attacks. The player is the president of the U.S., and must match wits with other world leaders to defeat terrorism and keep the world safe. The product is not a traditional game; rather, it showcases Storytron Inc.’s technology, Storytron 1.0, also available for public use.

“Balance of Power 21st Century is the Pong of storyplay,” Crawford says. “It is the first of its kind, and is still a little rough around the edges. This is a feasibility demonstration, not a commercial product. But it demonstrates the power of this new medium.”

Storyplay (also known as interactive storytelling) is an art form that combines the strengths of games with those of traditional narrative. Storyworlds, which realize this new art form, are highly interactive, like games. Like stories, though, events center on the people. The computer-generated characters whom the player meets are emotionally aware, each with their own personalities, relationships, moods, and personal agendas. They are in essence primitive “AIs.”

The player interface, Storyteller, uses a linguistic user interface, or LUI, crafted specifically for Storytronics, which permits the player to communicate with the non-human characters in a much richer way than any other product out there. It elevates the written word into an interactive form, based on extensive research into linguistics and the nature of human verbal communication.

Storytronics has been in development for over fifteen years. Crawford has teamed with writer Laura J. Mixon and a small group of programmers, artists, storytellers, and other pioneers to create this new software, which allows people to create a new kind of online storytelling experience.

The authoring tool is free for download at Storytron.com. Anyone can use it to create storyworlds of their own design. Storytron publishes authors’ completed works on its website, where players play them, rate them, and discuss them in Storytron’s online forum.

Additional storyworlds are under development, including Mixon’s Vanity and Vexation, a Regency romance inspired by Jane Austen’s works, and several efforts by independent authors. The technology is compatible with Windows, Mac OS/X, and Linux operating systems. People with a broadband internet connection can run the Java-based software using a variety of web browsers.

Play Balance of Power 21st Century here. Download the authoring tool, SWAT, and test drive it here. Storytron’s online community can be found here.

Storytron, Inc. is a privately-held Delaware company incorporated in 2007 to commercialize storyplay technology. For more information contact Chris Crawford. Storytron, Inc., P.O. Box 425, Jacksonville, OR, 97530. Website: www.storytron.com.

Cross posted to the StoryBoard. Join the discussion!

–posted by Laura

This weekend we have been cleaning up a number of pages and adding content to others, in preparation for the BoP2k launch tomorrow. Here’s a quick punch list of substantive changes that have either been made in the past few days, or will be completed in the next day:

• Authors front page - Updated text based on input from various StoryBoard members.
• Tutorials pages - Switched website menu links over to the wiki version of the tutorials. On his own recognizance, StoryBoard member Bill Maya ported all our tutorials and Author’s Guide materials over to a pbwiki, a free wiki service, and organized them. We liked it so much we decided to use it as our “living version” of the tutorials. Our website links now point there. Our original “dead pixels” version will be the backup, in case the wiki goes down.
• BoP2k play page - Made the ratings feature live.
• Storyteller interface - Implemented a new look for Storyteller based on a suggestion from Nick, another StoryBoard member.
• Authors’ Resources ***New*** - A page with information on how to use the SWAT Copyrights Editor  to organize your storyworld’s copyright/ attribution notices, plus lots of public domain and Creative Commons image links for authors’ reference.
• Press Room ***New*** - Press materials, presentations, articles, interviews, essays. Chris’s bibliography.

• Crawford Videos ***New*** - YouTube and other videos. (Work still in progress here…pardon our tumbleweeds…)

• The StoryBoard BBS - New subforums added for discussions of:
  • the tutorials wiki, and
  • best practices (scripting techniques).
• Home page, first-tier interior pages, and BoP2k play page - Installed StatCounter, a web-based statistics app, to track page views and site usage.
• Privacy Policy page - Modified the Third Party Service Provider language to include StatCounter.com.
• SiteMap page - Updated page to reflect any changes that occurred as a result of changes to other pages.
• All relevant pages - Fixed minor coding errors and broken links. Some text edits to correct typos and increase clarity. Removed “in beta” announcement.

I think that’s it. *whew*

(Chris, that glimpse of blue off in the distance… sure doesn’t look like just another damn mountain range… could those be… whitecaps? Is that…an ocean??)

Cross-posted to the StoryBoard - Join the discussion!

–posted by Chris

Balance of Power 21st Century has been undergoing testing, modification, refinement, more testing, more modification, more refinement, in a seemingly endless cycle, but we are just about there. It’s still not perfect — I can think of a hundred ways to make it better. But there comes a time when we simply have to declare that it’s good enough, and that time is rapidly approaching. I have set Saturday, March 21st, Monday, March 23rd, as the day when we launch this thing publicly. Until now, we have always attached a warning label that BoP2K was still in beta and suffered from bugs and flaws. On March 21st 23rd, we remove that label. It’s scary, because I know perfectly well that there are still some problems with it — but the time has come to make a commitment. Cross your fingers, fasten your seatbelt, update your will, and slap a foolish grin on your face!

A copy of this post has been added to The StoryBoard. Join the discussion!

–posted by Chris

I expect that 2009 will be The Year of Nail-Biting. We have completed the technical work. The first demo, BoP2K is operational and is good enough to demonstrate the potential of the technology, but it isn’t quite fun yet. Now, you can never be sure that something will be fun until it’s finished, so I cannot promise that BoP2K will be fun. But I think I can get it there in another couple of months (assuming that less of my time is consumed by technical issues). I’ll be biting my nails over the question “Can I make it fun?”

When it’s good enough, we’ll release it publicly. So far we have made no efforts to publicize it, and we have deferred approaching journalists about it. But sometime in the spring, we’ll throw the doors open, announce it to the world, and wait to see what happens.

The next nail-biting issue will be our search for funding, which will begin soon. Our corporate attorney is handling this for us, and I expect that we’ll be meeting with investors, showing Powerpoint presentations, and jumping through hoops. I don’t know how much time this will consume, but I do know that it will consume a lot of emotional energy, and that it will not yield results anytime soon. If we’re lucky, we might have a deal by July, but fall is a more likely time — assuming we do get a deal. In this economic climate, it’s impossible to predict how investors will respond to our proposals. (And, just to be clear: this post is in no wise a solicitation for investors. If you’re interested in investing, do NOT contact us yet. We’ll make an announcement and all initial contacts will be made through our corporate attorney.)

We’ll also be approaching corporate training software companies in search of partners for applications of our technology in that market. Again, this will generate lots of activity, lots of nail-biting, and who knows what results. My hunch — and it is only a hunch — is that we’ll have some sort of deal for corporate training work nailed down by June.

My crystal ball goes from muddy to opaque for the second half of the year. I believe that we’ll have money and will be operating more like a real business by then (i.e., paying people!), but I can’t rule out the possibility of gloom, doom, despair, and oblivion by then. It’s even possible we will join the ranks of some of the world’s great financial institutions by then. But I don’t think it will be that bad.

A copy of this post has been added to The StoryBoard. Join the discussion!

–posted by Chris

It’s been far too long since we’ve posted news here; that’s certainly not due to lack of activity. Indeed, the problem is the reverse; with so much happening, it’s hard to step back, take stock of the situation, and summarize it for your interest. However, the turn of the year is a good time to look back and look forward, as implied by the name of the month, January, after Janus, the Roman god of doorways, who looked both ways. I cannot imagine why the Romans thought that doorways needed a god, and I wonder if they similarly sanctified windows (”Tomas Speculus”?), roofs (”Drippus Drippus”?) and floors (”Pedoferus”?).

2006 was The Year of Beginnings: we launched the company, laid out the basic plans, and began working on SWAT.

2007 was The Year of Great Leaps: we got SWAT, Storyteller, and the first storyworld operational. It was a dizzying time, with pieces coming into place and major developments every month.

But 2008 was The Year of Sweat and Blood. It’s easy to get the first 90% of anything working, but that last 10% can be hell. We spent all of 2008 working on that last 10% for every one of our efforts.

Take, for example, the business plan, a central component of any gestating business. One year ago today, we had a large and thorough business plan. But there were changes in the company that required major rewritings of the business plan. Then, when we thought it was perfect, we send it to our Corporate Attorney, who ripped it to shreds. There followed cycles of rewriting, criticism, and more rewriting. But just last week, he finally pronounced it acceptable.

SWAT was in great shape at the dawn of 2008. But more people started to use it, and they discovered flaws that had escaped our notice. New ideas arose for better ways of designing storyworlds. The discussions in the technical section of the blog spewed forth a cavalcade of suggestions. And Facundo, our SWAT programmer, kept coming up with lots of great ideas on his own. Even though SWAT was a perfectly good tool a year ago today, we kept improving it. And today, it is such a good tool that we have terminated new feature development on it. From today forward, our only work on SWAT will be fixing bugs or obvious design goofs. If you know how easy it is for features to creep forward, I think you’ll appreciate just how significant this is.

During 2008, we did a major upgrade to our website and our BBS, the StoryBoard. Our website programmer, Louis, created several nifty web tools, and our visual design team, Patricia Nagle working with the artists at Birdo Studios, overhauled our artwork, layout, and graphic design. We created loads of new and updated content. We created tutorials to give storyworld authors a good head start with SWAT and our scripting language, Sappho. We also began exhaustive beta testing of Chris’s storyworld, Balance of Power 21st Century.

But the biggest development of 2008 was the transition from 2D Deikto to 1D Deikto. It all started with a novel experiment: I set my chat-cam to record, brought in a complete novice to playtest BoP2K, and then left the room. Afterwards, we talked about her impressions of BoP2K, and she was very impressed. But then I sat down and watched the recording of her efforts. The expressions of confusion and frustration on her face were worth a hundred formal feedback reports. I realized that we were in big trouble, so I went back to the drawing board with Deikto. And that’s when I realized that the formal 2-dimensional structure of Deikto was not as expressive as I had thought, and that the conventional 1-dimensional structure of language would work better because that’s what people are used to. My problem here is a common one with creatives: once you get a really clever idea in your head, it’s really hard to let go of it. 2D Deikto was a brilliant idea because it replaced syntactic complexity with clear geometric structures. By graphically connecting words to their referents, I eliminated the whole problem of confusing references in language. I was so proud of that idea that I nearly destroyed Storytron with it. But somehow I managed to see a way to make linear structures that would still be computable.

Once we got started on Linear Deikto, new ideas came tumbling out: arbitrarily long phrases, suffixes for adding clarifying material, scriptable text (that was a big one!), and the most recent, the mobile DirObject (permitting adverbs to be placed adjacent to the verbs they modify). The end result is much better than what we had a year ago today.

To keep this acceptably short, I’ll write up “Looking Forward” as a separate news item.

A copy of this has been posted in the BBS. Join the discussion!

Austin Game Developers’ Conference

Here’s a complete rundown on what happened during our trip to the Austin Game Developers’ Conference:

Laura and I flew into Austin on Sunday, September 14th. We went to our hotel and then met some of Laura’s writer friends at a restaurant for dinner. I sat across from Maureen McHugh, a successful writer. She was curious about Storytron, so I started explaining it — and something very strange happened: she got it! I was astounded; usually I spend most of my time in such discussions disabusing people of their misconceptions. But Maureen instantly grasped the concepts without making any of the common errors. When I expressed my mystification at her entirely unexpected grasp of fundamentals, she attributed it to her own experiences with related problems. I definitely want to entice this woman onto our team as soon as we have some money.

The next morning we showed up at registration early, because we expected problems. I had been asked to speak just three weeks earlier, and I doubted that the conference organization was adept enough to provide properly for my badge and Laura’s. Well, they did manage to have my badge in order, but they had nothing for Laura. No surprise there. Fortunately, Gordon Walton showed up at just that moment and put in a kind word for us. Between that and their walkie-talkie conversations, they worked something out for Laura. Badge in hand, we walked the thirty feet to our lecture room and started setting up.

Perhaps 50 to 60 people showed up for the lecture. I spoke for 30 minutes and Laura for 13; everything went perfectly. The audience seemed appreciative and asked plenty of good questions; I had to cut it off when our time ran out. Afterwards a lot of people clustered around me asking further questions for another 15 minutes. I was so distracted that I overlooked the power adapter for my Mac laptop. The next morning I came to retrieve it, but it had been taken. Lost and found didn’t have it and advised me that Mac power adaptors were seldom turned in; apparently they are prime targets for theft. So I had to get a replacement, costing me $92. It seems that the games industry has its share of crooks.

Laura noticed Bruce Sterling sitting in the audience and went over to see him after the lecture; the three of us went out to lunch together. Bruce is quite the raconteur and truly brilliant; his discussions of Serbian politics and Italian social structure revealed an acute observer of human behavior. I have met few true geniuses in my lifetime, and I rank Bruce Sterling among them.

Later in the day, Laura and I met with Eric Goldberg and Brian Moriarty, two old friends from the good old days of the games industry. In the evening, we spent a couple of hours with Gordon Walton, one of the founders of Bioware, who gave us much good advice on dealing with investors. He didn’t have much to say about his work at Bioware, but he proudly showed off a PowerPoint presentation of his 95 acres of land 50 miles from Austin. It is an impressive place: it has a big lake with plenty of fish, and lots of wildlife. He had great pictures of birds, bugs, and other critters. I especially liked the armadillo. He’s putting down roots.

On Tuesday we checked out the Expo. Laura vacuumed up lots of swag, and in the process spoke with a few vendors who might be of interest to Storytron at some point in the future. Several of these are full-service ISPs who specialize in hosting game companies. They provide systems for collecting payments and some of the other special needs of game companies. We collected brochures and business cards.

All in all, the conference was worth the time and expense. I think we made some useful contacts and learned some useful things.

Join our discussion of this conference!

We have several new tutorials up for our authors. Check them out, starting here.

We want to know what you think of them. Do they tell you what you need to know? Let us know in this topic.

Join the discussion!