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Adapting the Tools of Drama to Interactive Storytelling Lessons from Other MediaIt's worth taking a quick look at how drama has been adapted and expanded to accommodate new forms of communication over the years. The concepts behind these adaptations can and should be employed to create compelling interactive entertainment. Theatre, Film and TV can be viewed as steps in an evolution of dramatic language. Interactive drama should be seen as the next evolutionary step. Let's look at how two forms of dramatic presentation differ in how the principles of drama are applied. Stage drama,
being 'live', has the excitement of spontaneity, however well-rehearsed
it may be, and it has the feedback from the audience to the actors. The
actors on the stage are trained to be hyper aware of audience reaction.
From night to night the performers will intensify certain aspects of the
presentation and minimize others depending upon what is working, for each
audience is different. Before going on-stage, actors would agree on a basic plot and a general idea of how it should be performed. These plots were often well-known stories. But The actors had specific comic business (lazzi) that they developed (a bag of tricks). Though they knew the outline of the plot, no one, not even the actors, knew which comic bit would be pulled out. If the bit didn't work with the audience, another actor would throw out another one. If this worked well with the audience, another actor would throw out one that would play nicely against the successful bit. In this way the audience was kept in suspense in terms of what would happen next, even though they knew what the eventual outcome would be. It's spontaneous creativity, but within a structure that everyone knows and accepts. This can of course have an equivalent in interactive storytelling. If AI-driven NPC's are "aware" of their "audience" (player or experiencer) through say, an interpretation of input actions, and if the NPC's could pull from a "library" of possible actions that all serve the same dramatic and narrative intent of the moment, then these "actors" could also continuously adapt their "performance" (within reason of course) to the personality of the player. Another
analogue is to be found in jazz. Often a combo will play from musical
charts that note only the chord changes, number of beats for each chord,
and key changes. Sometimes these charts will be based on a well-known
song. Each musician improvises within this basic structure. The fun is
the spontaneous emotional creation, the playing off one another, and the
kind of mystical growth of theme. No two performances will ever be the
same. The photographic nature of the film and television mediums, on the other hand, allows a great degree of environmental realism, and gives the director an infinitely greater scope for varying the venue of the action. There is much greater flexibility in structuring the action. The camera and the microphone are extensions of the director. They enable him to choose his point of view (or hearing) and to move the audience there by varying long-shots and close-ups, by cutting from one face, one locale, to another at will. It is much easier to focus the audiences' attention on important details, however small or vast those details may be — from a John Ford sweeping Western vista to an Alfred Hitchcock bomb under a seat in the foreground of a shot. The psychological aspects of the use of lens, framing, and camera angle are worthy of a book and beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, "film language" has much to offer towards the creation of compelling interactive drama and developers would do well to become familiar with film making.
Interactive entertainment can learn something important from Japanese anime. It's novel, flashy, and often startlingly beautiful, but it is also generally more philosophical and character-oriented than American entertainment. Even in humorous anime it is the hero's struggles and lessons learned that often form the core of the story. Japanese stories often stress things that many American stories forget, such as self-sacrifice, the search for meaning, the power of helping others, and the idea of redemption for the fallen — the stuff of drama. Finally, even the most violent and well rendered action combined with an interesting plot remains without lasting impact if the audience does not know, does not like, and is therefore not sufficiently interested in the characters. How do characters become objects of affection or interest? It is true that we relate to characters who are motivated by what we are motivated by, but there is more to it than that. In theatre, films, and television casting is very important. The personality of the actors chosen to embody the characters can help a great deal. With past limitations in the quality of 3D animation and lip-synch it has been tough to employ great CGI actors. But this is changing rapidly, and soon we will have NPC's capable of communicating emotion sufficiently well. But there is more to it than this. Witness the attraction of Lara Croft. Any dramatic presentation is also a voyeuristic experience. We want to see attractive, or at least highly interesting, unique, characters. The most compelling characters are a mixture of an attractive and original look, motivated by what motivates us, and who say surprising things. Review Humans are
innately interested in conflict. Drama uses the innate human interest
in conflict, expressed as visible action, to engage an audience for the
purpose of communicating a theme. The interest in conflict is not enough
— we want to know the reason for the conflict. Conflict arises out
of wants, needs, and desires that are opposed by other wants, needs, and
desires. We identify with dramatic characters because they are driven
by the same basic motivations we are. Drama is a form of communication.
The communication must be forceful, therefore it must be concise. Drama
is structured. It has a beginning, middle, and end — equilibrium,
disequilibrium, and equilibrium. Drama is the story of getting into and
out of trouble. Suspense is used to maintain interest. Many of the basic principles used in the development of drama can be applied directly to interactive storytelling. Instead of relying on constant violent action and awesome graphic quality, we should begin think about the reason for the conflict. We should make sure that the motivation for the conflict is centered on wants, needs, and desires that we can all relate to. This will help us to identify more strongly with the protagonist(s), the theme, and the goal that has been set forth. Since drama is a form of communication, and since communication must be concise in order to be forceful, we must end reliance on busywork side quests and such to fill out a game, and instead develop dramatic activities that are not only exciting, but which also continually support the main theme without being repetitive. Puzzles should arise out of the plot complications rather than being artificially forced upon the action because "a puzzle is needed here". In general the total structure of a well wrought dramatic work depends on a very delicate balance of a multitude of elements, all of which must contribute to the total pattern, and all of which are wholly interdependent. This
has been only the briefest overview of drama and a few beginning ideas
of how drama might be applied to the interactive realm. The dramatist
has many other tools that can be employed as well to make a presentation
compelling and meaningful. If we become aware of and begin to use the
analytical and developmental tools drama provides us, it can only help
to increase the value of the interactive experience. Hopefully a discussion
will begin and other strategies for incorporating these tools will be
discovered. ______________________________________________________  [Back
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