After having read Chris Crawford’s book on Interactive Storytelling he tells of a definite upward struggle to get the genre of Interactive Storytelling off the ground. Indeed for the amount of time he has been working on this topic it seems as if it will never take off.
In contemplating how to make a living off of Interactive Storytelling I came to the quick realization that indeed there is no market. The field is just in its infancy. What the field really needs is a vehicle that demonstrates that Interactive Storytelling to be an economically viable field. That has not happened yet. When that does however, I believe there be an enormous landslide of attention devoted to the development and expansion. There is a lot of ground to cover. The idealistic dreams of pioneer is still a pipe dream away.
One possible way of demonstrating the economic viability of Interactive Storytelling is to marry the interactive experience with social media. The story of the actual experience is enjoyable. In fact, escapism may be underlying goal of many of the participants. However this is only an first person experience. The emotional experience is contained only within the individual. However, as Chris Crawford mentioned, storytelling arose from the interaction of the language and social nodes trying to rationalize the visio-spatial and environmental understanding of reality. Thus the storytelling experience calls out to be shared socially. The stories about the stories are what will give life to the genre and act as the vehicle which will transport it to its future incarnations.
The Raconteur engine will be a juxtaposition of the classical Story Telling Engine and an interface to the on-line social media which so predominates our current society. Its hard to tell how long this social media boom will last. Regardless, like it or not, it is here and it must be considered as a vehicle for almost all social interaction. (Gen X’ers and older may argue.) Thus it is my hope to exploit the social media aspect in order to help drive and fund the Interactive Storytelling elements. Regardless of the longevity of social media, storytelling is part of what it means to be human and will be with us for as long as we exist.
