unforum

[rose]

Yeah, as I said, the only reason I was mentioning the concept of "persistence" with Chaotic Fiction is because Space explained it to me as part of the criteria required for a game to be Chaotic Fiction.

I don't think it is the same thing as you explained cath. I think that it is more the sense of persistent, as in lasting, because the game is being played and discussed on the forums.. And I'm fairly confident, even certain, that TINAG has nothing to do with Chaotic Fiction, based on my reading of Space's definition.

Sorry to keep bringing up a point I don't understand very well myself.

I'm sure we'll get clarification in due course.

[Caterpillar]

wow. brainhurt.

I'm not quite latching onto the definition completely either Rose, but I'm trying .

I'm one of those people who resist change [even though I know it's a good thing at times] and not having been about for a while, I was quite surprised to find the forums renamed....so went looking for the reasoning.

So I found it, and I'm trying really hard to understand it, but it's definition feels rather "large" and seems to encompass many more renderings than have ever, or [I assume] will ever be covered here. [Unless I'm not really understanding it].

Of course I can see how it would definitely quell the debate over what constitutes an ARG, but it's kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater [I think]. Does Unfiction then only support/nuture certain types of CF? Only those creations that exist on the spectra from point A to Point B? Or does it become a repository for all CF?

Gah...maybe I better wait until I truly understand it before offering an opinion on the subject.

Any help would be truly 100% appreciated.

ETA: Would CF then be a subtype of Fiction, and - what we used to define as an ARG - then a subtype of CF? If the way I'm understanding it is correct [which I'm not at all sure it is] - then wouldn't there still have to be lines drawn somewhere? If so, what is the benefit of changing where that line exists? Wouldn't it just be easier to expand the definition of an ARG, or include subtypes under the ARG umbrella?

Thanks for the patience in advance

[Rekidk]

That's the way I understand it: CF is a catch-all term for ARGs, Extended Realities, and AREs (Alternate Reality Experiences).

Please correct me if I'm wrong (which I probably am).

[mapmaker]

Absolutely wrong. Totally incorrect. Woefully mistaken. Here's the real deal.

[colin]

[Rekidk]

[SpaceBass]

I'm really enjoying this discussion, especially mapmaker's bang-on chart.

I want to quickly try to simplify the definition into key points and see if it helps to clarify things.

The initial premise is that we're defining a way to create and experience a story at the same time, through a collaborative process between the audience and producers, in which the production of the story and the experience of it are inextricably intertwined.

Okay, that was not the simplification part but the premise is important.

Chaotic Play is what happens while the story is being created and experienced. It has three components (the Story ARC):

Authorship: Both the Architects (authors, producers, men behind the curtain, etc.) and Audience (players, observers, lurkers, vpisteve, etc.) are responsible for creation of story assets (content, timelines, histories, archives, speculation, etc.)

Ruleset: A framework for metaconversation has been created by the Architects which allows the Audience to interact/affect the story/universe.

Coherence: There is a plot.

In order for Chaotic Play to produce Chaotic Fiction, it must provide a persistent history of itself that exists beyond the duration of the production and which is available to third parties.

I have been calling this Persistence but perhaps History would be a better term since it allows me to spell ARCH instead of CRAP. The key is that it is a history of the experience of production as well as the story produced (inextricable) and it really only matters after the fact.

Chaotic Play that does not produce a persistent history is Chaotic Theatre. Whether or not the History quality has been satisfied is mainly a question left for after the production ends (but if we're talking about it on uF, chances are the condition will be satisfied).

Note that the first three qualities are defined so that they should be easily answerable with respect to a given production, even given little information about it, as "yes or no" questions.

Let's try some examples from the thread:

Halo3/Iris
Authorship - Are both the Architects and the Audience creating story? Yes.
Ruleset - Did the Architects create a framework for the process? Yes. (Note that intent to create the framework for this particular purpose was not required).
Coherence - Is there a plot? Yes. (Is there much of one? That's probably debatable.)

Since we've answered yes to all three, then Halo3/Iris qualifies as Chaotic Play. Will there be a persistent history? Probably, since we're talking about it on uF (where we keep everything), there's thebruce's wiki, other discussion boards, google cache, wayback machine, etc. So yes, it's probably Chaotic Fiction.

Eldritch Errors
A:Y; R:Y; C:Y; H:Y* = Yes

A Novel
A:N; R:N; C:Y; H:Y = No

The Act of Reading a Novel
A:Y; R:Y; C:Y; H:N = Chaotic Theatre of Your Mind

Rocky Horror Picture Show
A:N; R:Y; C:Y; H:N = Dang.

Mystery Dinner Theatre
A:Y; R:Y; C:Y; H:N = Chaotic Theatre

Mystery Dinner Theatre that you Videotaped and Posted on YouTube
A:Y; R:Y; C:Y; H:Y = Yes!!

Later in a production, when we have more information about it, we are able to start defining characteristics as points on the ARC graphs, or ranges over time.

Only after a production has ended can we really begin to see the whole of its description.

===========================

Determining whether or not something is an ARG is up to you. I propose it be presented as the following question:

This Is Not A Game?

Whatever that means to you, if you answer "Yes" to the question then it is an ARG and if you answer "No" then it isn't. Then you ask all your friends what they think too and the majority rules as far as the rest of the world is concerned. But for you, whatever you think is still the correct answer, whether or not you agree with the majority. Slick, eh?

Now to be really extra-special clever, we'll take the T from TINAG and kind of overlay it on the C from Coherence, thus turning the story ARC into a story ARG! Damn, I'm good. Note that an ARG with a persistent history is clearly an ARGH. As in, "ARGH! Where was I when I Love Bees was happening?!"

[Caterpillar]

[konamouse]

I think the Audience participation in Authorships is how we, the players, influence the story. Do we change any direction, do we add any content, do we contact/interact with character(s) that creates content in the fiction (and hence makes it chaotic and not static, like a book).

History is what is kept from the content (after the game has ended) so it remains available for review in the future. During the actual gameplay, it was chaotic, but after it's over, the result is a static memory/archive of the game.

[SpaceBass]

[Rekidk]

Wow, I actually do get it now!

s for Space for being such a good explainer.

[rose]

[FLmutant]

Quake in fear, the thread killer has arrived. Muwahahahahaha!

Top-line: I love the general concept, consider me a convert with a few caveats. Because I'm just one of those people that loves to look at how to break rules. This might dig into some math for inspiration: be afraid.

I'm struggling a wee bit with the Authorship/History division. I get the distinction you're going for, but I can think of situations where "History" congeals organically without chaotic authorship and vice versa. We know these things intuitively and use phrases like "truth is stranger than fiction" or "history is written by the victors" to describe that understanding (yes, I'm horribly shortcutting.)

I think part of the solution might lay in the way Monte Carlo analysis works in statistics. Eventually, when the number of variables becomes so large, we can't actually calculate every potential, especially if that state changes over time. So we start figuring out ways to build "wanders" that explore portions of that space, and use some statistics to generalize out from those understandings.

It seems to me that sometimes this same approach is used in some chaotic fiction structures to bridge that gap between history and authorship. The individual player experiences are like chaotic wanderers across the Monte Carlo landscape of narrative potential. Communities (like UF) are like stochastic methods, responsible for the change in state in wanderers before the next time slice of the history -- usually towards the direction of optimization. PMs are like simulation developers, stacking the tendencies towards some outcome to make it more likely to be explored by random wanderers than others.

Like a Monte Carlo simulator, the real "learning" comes from the overall system of all those chaotic wanderers exploring out the potential story space. But that understanding is assembled from a pattern of random wanderers in that simulation plus the ability to share that learning with each other.

Stated another way: a piece of chaotic fiction is as much defined by the directions the story didn't go as where it did go, with a special emphasis on where it could have gone (fascination with potential in addition to actual outcome)

Stated another way: the aggregate experience depends upon the successful integration of the chaotic experiences of individual participants.

My brain is pondering where those kinds of conditions are pre-reqs for being chaotic fiction (ie, they emerge from the existing conceptual framework Space lays out) or if they are one solution under the umbrella (for example, of bridging the Authorship/History axes into further complexity.)

Which is a way of asking how much of the adaptive value of having all of the chaotic fiction attributes is about each axis or about the synergy between them. Does the chaos really matter artistically if there isn't a stochastic group method for feedback and optimization? Does it make the piece descend into the nearly random, like dogs painting?

Some of the above sounds unnecessarily geeky, but it is worth pointing out that the statistcal methods described above have been quietly revolutionizing many disciplines over the last 20 years.

So it is relative fresh geekery at least

[FLmutant]

[BubbleBoy]

History