unforum

[dposse]

A call for Hyperfiction

[imbri]

Actually, ARGs are just one sort of hyperfiction and some wouldn't consider it hyperfiction at all (which was a great source of frustration for me back in the grad school days).

ARGs have real people guiding the experience as it plays out (the puppetmasters) and hyperfiction (according to some? most?) is purely driven by the programming behind it. It's existed for years and there are several platforms, one of the oldest being Storyscape which was used for Afternoon, A Story in the late 80s. Some people like to believe that the idealized video games are or will be hyperfiction and Chris Crawford, who made quite a name for himself (love him or hate him) in the video game world, has spent his time for the last however many years on creating Storytron which is, essentially/arguably, a hyperfiction platform. Of course, those are single platform sorts of things and hyperfiction could go beyond that, which is what that call for submissions points out.

[dposse]

[imbri]

And.... nothing more than the irregularly scheduled definition debate.

In the case of hyperfiction, I find myself in reverse of my usual position (that ARGs are too broadly defined), because, like you I think "it describes exactly what it is" but I know (many? most?) hyperfiction folk don't see it that way because, like the call for submissions says: "artificial intelligence in response to interaction". ARGs aren't driven by AIs, they have puppetmasters triggering the interaction. They aren't "procedural" or any of that jazz. I think, that's an "ideal" and I don't know that we're there yet. In the meantime, ARGs allow for some great exploration of things that could be done while we wait for AI to catch up to us and allow for easier programming of some of the more complex interactions that we see in ARGs.

Perhaps I'm jaded from my experience with the hyperfiction community, I dunno. But I figured it was worth pointing out to folks that wish to submit something. I wasn't meaning to discourage anyone, but just wanted to put it out there something they may want to keep in mind throughout the design process. It doesn't mean something more human driven wouldn't be accepted, but I think it would have to be stronger than something that wasn't.

(and, yes, I do realize that not all CF is human driven, but most of what we talk about on unfiction is)

[PinkCloud]

interesting CFS - I am curious to see how people will "deliver" AI driven hyperfiction which allow collaborative authoring and might include RL events. adding on more ARGish elements seems like a way to "sexy up" the hyperfiction genre with its inherent structural problems.