Knock-knock. Who's there?

I’ll come out and admit that I wasn’t successful in getting Trip and Grace to work things out on any of my trips through Façade.  I originally saw that as the “goal” of the game, even though it’s never explicitly stated.  The lack of a clearly defined goal and method of reaching that goal were some of the things I really liked about playing Façade.  Instead of being tasked with saving this marriage, we’re simply dropped into this situation and set free.  I realized that trying to get the two to work things out, or understand the nature of their problems said much more about me as a player than it did about Façade itself.  I was surprised at how different each play through was, and how little the ‘inside information’ I picked up from earlier attempts.  After a few failed attempts at helping Trip and Grace stay together, I started to see what other options were available.  I tried deliberately taking a side and noticed that there were ways to put each character on the defensive.  Hugging/kissing Grace immediately after walking in, picking up the phone, and sitting with Grace when Trip wants to talk about his picture went a long way in changing the more assertive tone Trip had in early plays.  I got Grace to admit to painting the picture above the couch a few times. I also got thrown out of this apartment more often than any other result.  I must admit to having an unhealthy amount of fun reading through my stage plays and some of the stage plays on the InteractiveStory Forums as well as watching  YouTube videos after they popped up in the class Twitter feed.

I think Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s explanations of Façade made sense in terms of my reactions to/interactions with the game.  I thought about my frustrations with Emily Short’s Galatea hen he explained how interactivity worked in Façade.  Wardrip-Fruin notes that in Façade, “players are invited to perform more richly than in many digital fictions, which often limit interaction to the selection between a set of discrete choices (with everything else producing an error message)” (339).  I remember that when we talked about Galatea in class, asking a question or saying something that the game would recognize as a valid move were some of the hangups in moving the story forward. Galatea’s response “you cannot form your question into words” was a pretty frustrating way of saying “the question or statement you just made is not recognized by the programming as valid input,” especially considering that this game is text-based, and you were actually using words.  If you couldn’t ask/look at/say/think about something that would move the story forward, you were stuck. Wardrup-Fruin notices this shortcoming in interactive fiction, admitting that “no computer can actually ‘understand’ arbitrary human language—or even, less ambitiously consistently map human language statements to a logical model” (337).  If we’re going to use language as the main interface for interactive narrative, it’s important to recognize the fundamental difference between how human beings approach language as a medium for communication and how a given interactive piece (be it fiction, drama, etc.) recognizes language as input.

Façade manages to overcome these barriers.  Wardrip-Fruin explains that within Façade, “each beat has a default way it will play out in the absence of interaction, but Mateas and Stern are hoping for another outcome—given that the point of Façade is to pursue interactive drama” (335).  Even if I walked into the apartment, and do nothing more than sit on the couch, the drama between Trip and Grace would still play out.  Even though they allow the story to unfold without/with minimal user input, the makers of the game hoped for players to take the opportunity to participate in the storytelling.  The open-ended nature allows players to take these pieces of story and make it into just about anything.  I got thrown out of the apartment for trying to seduce Grace.  In one stage play, a player suggested a threesome.  Wardrip-Fruin notes that “there are also many transcripts featuring player characters somewhat closer to Façade’s expectations, but those that push the system are especially revealing” (339).  By taking the opportunity to explore alternatives to taking sides, playing the diplomat, or pretending to be a marriage counselor, the player can make an interesting/unexpected story using the tools provided by Mateas and Sterne. Wardrip-Fruin concedes that these other approaches to Façade “reveal something of the shape of the underlying system.  In this case, one sees the way Façade’s drama continues executing its beat goals, for the most part, even in the absence of intelligible player behavior” (339).  Instead of sticking players with the “I don’t understand your response” messages and freezing the narrative, Façade allows for creativity and freedom in the participatory narrative.