Spector strikes again. I admit, I am biased... against Spector as well as The Escapist. Both of them found their very own ways to talk about one of most entertaining things that exist as if it were the most boring thing on earth. The Escapist is constantly publishing pseudo-scientific articles (Gygax-Model - I still have a grin on my face) presenting piss easy aspects of computer gaming as if they could only discussed in an academic context.
Always willing to throw in his two cents: Warren "I made great games - Players all suck" Spector. And let's face it - who else than Spector could tell us dumbass players that finally the time has come for - tatatata: Next Gen Story Telling! And hey, it's Dr. Deus Ex that's talking here, a man of whom many think he should be worshipped like a god just because he made one or two good games in the past (legend goes he did it all on his own - there were no other people involved; he just made up that other people were involved in the creative process, because he is such a humble man).
And so Spector begins his six page long discourse about next gen storytelling to finally come up with an absolute groundbreaking conclusion:
At the very least, we have an obligation to offer players stories that have a bit of subtext, stories that are about something.
Yo! Awsome!
But hey Spector would not be Spector if he came up with only one conclusion - he's offering five - yes five(!!!) - ladies and gentlemen, not one, not two, not three, nor four, but five conclusions!!! What a god among men...
One of these conclusions includes getting those people to play video games that so far were totally ignorant of such things (translation: GiEv $$$ plx plx). And somehow, and that's remarkable, Spector even manages to bring in Thief: Deadly Shadows - a game that the medium [guess he means pcs and consoles] can "boast of having produced" (translation: Thief 3 was such a fucking good game, but the idiotic players just did not understand how great it was and therefore did not buy enough copies).
And so Spector goes on, telling us one joke after the other. For example that changes in gaming have to come from the outside - predominantly indie developers and academics. Because, you know, the big commercial developers can't do anything. Since years they are slaves to the publishers that hold their families hostage and force them to create games for the mass market.
Now, on a more serious note: Of course not everything that Spector writes in his article is wrong or rubbish. But it's also nothing really new. Artificial intelligence is not something new. Experts and academics are working on it since years. Scripting is indeed not an ideal thing, but if we are honest - very often it seems more natural than dynamic solutions. And Spector knows that... he even admits in the end that everything he just wrote is not that easy to put into practice (talking about AI - someone tell Spector that AI in Thief 3 sucked). He's talking about a future that is quite a bit away. If you look at games like Facade then you have admit it's certainly not the peak of AI. It gives you the impression of an adventure running in real-time... we've seen these before in scripted form, and they were much more entertaining.
I have to admit that I cannot hear the term "next gen" anymore. Today everything is "next gen" - the term has become meaningless. Development is not a straight line - if that were true the new would alwadys replace the old, but as we know, that is just not true. The radio would have replaced newspapers and books, the television would have replaced the radio, and the computer would have replaced the television. Fact is however that they co-exist.
I'm sure that even in 100 years people will enjoy games like Tetris. People do not always want story. They also do not always want to write their own stories.
Spector is looking at a far future, and he's presenting it as if that is the only way to improve story-telling. But I would think that there are easier ways, which can actually put into practice - one of them would be to tell better stories. Non-linearity and freedom inside the game world could also help alot...