With linear stories you want to start amplifying. In Star Wars, it all comes down to these two possibilities – the rebels are crushed, or the Death Star blows up. One of the fundamental things I’ve found as an interactive storyteller is that in linear stories the director knows the future. He or she knows the minor details that are important to present to you. But we [interactive storytellers] don’t know those things. Ours are chaotic systems. Very minor initial conditions can lead to wide-ranging end conditions.

In a linear drama you can show the causal chain; in interactive drama you can’t so much. We’re playing with it in movies in interesting ways: interesting sub-plots (Magnolia); one of the things that keeps your interest is your wondering how these back stories are going to come together. This is a common thing that people do with causal change. Timecode is another version of this. It’s parallel multi-threaded storytelling.

Wonderland: SXSW: Will Wright Keynote

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