Quest Into The Unknown by Douglas Crockford Marin County, California Volume I: The Early Years Not for Sale or Trade June 24, 1985 CarWars Use the Ford Imagine exploring the vastness of space in your Olds Rocket 88. Highways in space! Happy motoring! Life in space lanes! In the 50's ( which you recall as a stupid decade) the operation of automobiles was an elective activity. Fuel was cheap. Highways were uncrowded and new. What a life. Cars were designed to look like spaceships. Fins. Speed lines. Lights that looked like rocket flames. Gas is cheap, so let's take a trip to the moon, Alice. Hey look, you don't even need seat belts. Safety? I'm protected by the steering wheel. Ok, so let's play alternate history. Suppose that after WWII, that we had bought Russia and the Mid East oil fields. With no fear of Commie aggression, and unlimited power thanks to our friend the atom, how would we take the big step into space? (Hint: It was a stupid decade.) Answer: On-Ramps to the Stars! By the year 1987, a system of super highways is constructed, connecting the inner planets. It's a V-8 powered DREAM! See the Milky Way In your Chevrolet The Galaxy is asking you to call June 24, 1985 In any sort of laser game, whether laserdisc or CDAV, there is a track. Video is a profoundly sequential medium. The problem is to find a way to live with the track. Some techniques are: 1) To present the world in a non-first person form, so that the track is not visible [Dragon's Lair]. 2) To make the background into meaningless decoration [Fire Fox]. 3) To permit simple panning [Star Rider]. 4) To permit 360 degree panning [RCA's Galactic Challenge]. None of these work. That may be one of the reasons that videodiscs did not revive the pathetic video game industry. You cannot hide the track. You must love the track. Call it by a different name, like "auto-pilot" or "cruise control". Restrict free-flight to computed material. In designing the experience, the important thing is not the flying ship. The important thing is where you are or where you are going, or what you are doing, or what you'll be doing when you get there. The same is true in real life. For most people, driving the car is just a bother that happens between places. Difficult sequences, like landing or docking, would be done entirely under computer control. Tractor beams, etc. One approach is to make traveling so difficult that folks would be glad for the track. So, the moral is that tracks must be present because of the media constraints. It is not normally possible to give the illusion of freedom while stuck to the track. If you try to exercise your freedom, you will bash you head against the wall. Instead, the track is there, it's real, and we're _glad_ it's there. It is a part of the environment like the ground we walk on. Our concern is here and there. The machine gets us there, magic carpet style. And we say "Hurray! That's just what we want. We are no longer slaves to micro-details!" June 27, 1985 FROM UP HIGH From our vantage point on a peak or a tower, we look down upon the pay field. We are manipulating a _remote_. Our point of view is fixed but we can adjust our gaze. This gives us the information content of the old 2D games, built with the greater realism that comes with video-quality images. [drawing] The POV could be in the center of an arena. 360 degree panning would permit selective views˙ of the field. [drawing] Our spaceship would fly to the POV, and from there we would control the actions of robots on the floor. Perhaps we would have to use our remotes to open a guarded door. Perhaps it is a teleportal. An interdimensional flimsy. Yes, it has the miracle of DYNAMIC ACTION[TM], the mysterious SECRET INGREDIENT! August 2, 1985 TACTILE FEEDBACK We are experimenting with tactile feedback. In our first experiment, we have a little speaker that you hold in your hand. Points to Ponder: Vibration Electric Shock Temperature Size Texture [drawing] Perhaps it would be built into your joystick or into a whoopee cushion that you could sit on. Perhaps you wear it on your head, solving the anti-aliasing problem! I want to involve more senses, in a friendly way. Not as a gimmick, but as something involving and essential. (footnote: Whenever you start talking about vibrations, people immediately suggest sexual applications. So we must be on the right track.) _Quest Into The Unknown!_ An epic space fantasy of Startling Proportions! Presented IN COMPRESSOVISION(R) It's just like real. More real than any ordinary video game has a right to be. So real that you won't believe it! So, if you want it, we've got it, with the exclusive miracle of Dynamic Action[TM]. It's about spaceships, sure. And you get computers to do the hard and dangerous parts, so all you have to do is have FUN! It's just like a movie, except you get to press buttons! And that's not all! Quest Into The Unknown! Coming to your home in 1987. Stay there and wait for it! It's already out of hand! The Future _IS_ coming. And it's going to turn out just the way you thought it was. The thing we get with CompressoVision that you don't get in computer graphics is REAL CHARACTERS that are human and you can care about them. Perhaps as you quest about, you make friends, and you bring them along via teleconferencing. You'll be like Dorothy seeking the wizard and the way back to Kansas. You'll pickup the video scarecrow, video tin woodsman, and video lion along the way. And even though they aren't really with you, they can still help you, and you can help them. Kindnesses repaid. August 5, 1985 Driving I'd like _not_ to do driving game. A driving game is THE MOST DIFFICULT thing to do with a track medium, and yet that's everyone's first idea about what to do. It is not generally possible to do fully detailed backgrounds in realtime. A track medium can. So, the reflex is to try to replace the computer rendering system with˙ a new medium. But that trick never works. Space travel is a serious business. Dangerous. Mom and Sis won't like getting wasted because of some driving mishap. It should be automatic. You select your destination and file your flight plan. Your computers and the transit authority do the rest. I see this style of space travel as being similar to traveling in your own luxury railroad car. You have your own environment. And once you make your deal with the railroad, you leave all the responsibility to the engineers. You don't switch tracks. You don't pull the throttle. You just get there. And leave the driving to us! So Dad brings home this CompressoVision box. You can be sure Mom will be thinking "This better be good or he's gonna get it." And how. So when Dad inserts the Quest into the Unknown disk into the machine, Mom had better see the dynamic action[TM]. Or else. If all you get to do is blow up aliens, Mom will say "you could do that with the VCS that's been on the shelf in the garage for 5 years. How much did this cost? How could you do this to us? The routine "but it's also a computer. It will educate the kids and balance the check book" is not going to work. Mom will not fall for that one again. In order to get Dad out of the doghouse, we must demonstrate to Mom that this CompressoVision gimmick has some value. And it must be real, because: You can fool some of the people all of the time But you can't fool Mom. It is my guess that the first wave of people to buy the CompressoVision box already bought home computers. Just because they demonstrated that they can take a chance on a new gadget. The worst thing we can do is give them something familiar. YET ANOTHER HOME COMPUTER, NO MATTER HOW POWERFUL, WILL GO NOWHERE UNTIL YOU CAN ANSWER THE QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU _DO_ WITH IT? An incremental improvement over the old systems is of little value unless that improvement is sufficient to cross a threshold. And that threshold must be defined in HUMAN terms, not TECHNOLOGICAL terms. We can't give them the same old game with more colors and better graphics. More people had a good time with the primitive VCS than will ever play the Amiga. People were excited by the early video games. The industry died out when folks asked themselves "is that it?" The game industry said "No, there's more. More color! Better graphics!" But the folks aren't interested in that. What was it that people thought they saw in Atari, only to walk away when they found it wasn't there? They got a glimpse of some thing, and unless I miss my guess, they still want it. But they won't be fooled by imitations. Not again. LUKE'S RADIO THEATER OF THE ABSURD presents QUEST INTO THE UNKNOWN The Art Deco Interactive Home Entertainment Experience Extravaganza from Beyond the Stars and Beyond ... [drawing] August 6, 1985 To travel, you need to pick a destination and file a request (reservation) with the Transit Authority. Once you are confirmed, travel will take place automatically. Of course, you have to know where you are going. And you may need a permit. That may mean pulling strings at the travel authority. There may be other government agencies that you will deal with, but none is more important than the Transit Authority. Other considerations: Does travel consume energy (fuel), or are such resources unlimited thanks to our friend the atom? Is there a fee for filing a flight plan? If so, is it significant? What can you do via transit that you can't do via radio? How safe is space travel? What happens if you attempt to fly without an authorized flight plan? August 12, 1985 H, N, and G will be out here on Thursday. This will be the first production meeting. I met N in Princeton. I've seen G several times out here. I've never seen H before, but I've spoken to her on the phone and she's pretty bright. The thing I didn't get to do in Princeton was talk to any of the video/film production people. I'm curious about her point of view. I think I understand the engineers. They are trying to do 3 things at once, and are making the tradeoffs in a responsible fashion: an IBM-PC compatible, a video game machine, a branching laserdisc game player. The machine they are building will be very powerful. I don't think that it will be great at doing what they think they want, but it will be great at something. I see my job as figuring out what that something is, and making a couple of them. Flying Suppose that we compress a sequence in which we fly over a mysterious landscape. A compressed frame can be considered to be a program that tells how to translate one picture into a closer picture. By messing with the frames and telling lies to the firmware, we could very inexpensively be able to fly through fantastic locales. In particular, I want to fly through dreamspace. I'd like to take us through new, unknown places that are somehow familiar. This is a real-time trip that only CompressoVision can deliver. You can't get there with a laser disk. But... I DON'T want to then matte some aliens into the dreamspace and give you a target scope. So... You are lucid flying in the dreamspace. What then? Stars The truth about stars is that, at normal speeds, they don't move. The moving star field in Star Trek was there because the audience wouldn't know they were moving otherwise. In 2001, Kubrick didn't care what audiences thought. Even if the Discovery looked like it was standing still, he did the stars right. In StarWars, Lucas does care, but he doesn't move the stars. Instead, he moves the camera. We don't get many looking-out- the-window shots. In a conventional first person game, the camera is stuck in the nose of the spaceship. The stars do not move with acceleration. They only move with pitch, yaw, and roll. Boring. Can we do the cinematic trick of having an independent camera(s)? We accept it in movies. We can see ourselves in our dreams. (At least some of us can.) You shop electronically with your Spacy's Card. August 13, 1985 Crockford's Theories of Computers The first programmers were mathematicians. They thought that programming was a mathematical problem. In the late 60's, the software crisis was discovered. It was found that programs of arbitrary complexity were _very_ expensive, and in many cases impossible to write. Centuries ago there were similar problems in the construction of buildings, so it was imagined that an architectural solution must exist. So, programming became an engineering problem, with tools like Structured Programming and Software Engineering. While it is clear that it improved things, the engineering approach in no way solved the software crisis. So what next. Several approaches are being followed at once. the mathematicians are trying to take programming back with "Proofs of Program Correctness"*. The engineers are trying to avoid programming altogether with "premature standardization"**. That is what finished the Computer Revolution. * This is like the drunk looking under the lightpost for his keys. ** UNIX is a trademark of AT&T I believe that the problem is not mathematical or technological. It is psychological. Which is a problem because psychologists lack the tools or language to do anything about it. (Look at the misguided Human Factors work for proof of that.) But the problem still remains one of humanity, not technology. The construction of computer hardware is now just an economic problem. It has more to do with good shopping than with engineering discoveries. Given enough money, you can build any sort of computer. This is NOT true about software. There a˙re needed programs which cannot be successfully produced for any amount of money, for no other reason than WE DON'T KNOW HOW. The software crisis is still with us. The solution to the software crisis is a psychological solution, which is a problem because psychology is such a bogus science. But it's all we've got. August 14, 1985 We had a brief meeting yesterday with C and K of ILM. We discussed the miracle of CompressoVision, and the model shop's participation in the construction of a couple of models. The models will be used in doing items 5 & 6 of the July 12 proposal. They may also find a place in the Quest into the Unknown production, should it take off in January. There's a guy on PBS, I think his name is Bill Alexander. His thing is doing landscapes in oils. It's the kind of stuff that hangs in hotel rooms. He can knock one of these things out in a half hour (even faster, I think, if he was in a hurry). A couple swipes with a palette knife and a wet brush, and he has mountains and clouds, and they look convincing. He reminds me of the difference between practical artists and computer graphics. The CG guys do everything the hard way from a firm mathematical foundation. The artists have bags of techniques. The dreamspace technique has more in common with real art than it does with computer graphics. But, viewing VDP1 as an electronic palette knife is a useful notion. If we ever want to get off the TRACK, then that is exactly the kind of stuff we should do. August 16, 1985 From some of the people who brought you Quest into the Unknown Comes TOUCH IT AND DIE! You are in a world full of aliens. Each one has the true secret of the universe, the meaning of life, and the key to everlasting happiness. And all they want to do is kill you! So you kill them back! Wow! It's just like anything you've ever seen before! It killed the whole video game industry, now it's your turn. TOUCH IT AND DIE! Presented in CompressoVision [drawing] August 19, 1985 Thursday we had our first review meeting and it went well, I thought. The next minor meeting is September 6. The next major meeting is September 19. N wants to have digitized images that he can play with himself. How will he get the images? Here's the deal: [drawing] I want to try out a low budget technique for removing transparent regions from a shot. The key is LAMP-X. We digitize the model twice, once with LAMP-X on. We then digitally compare the two images. Pixels with major differences are transparent. Minor differences show edges and will contain anti-aliasing information. Mattes can be created from this. No blue screen or chromakey machines are needed, and there are no restrictions on the color of the model. Cheap! We are required to develop plans for 3 productions: A) A floppy-based shoot'em up B) A bigger space adventure C) Something else Item A will be TOUCH IT AND DIE Item B will be one of Transit Authority CarWars Dreamspace Item C will either be another one from the B list, or Guys Oz Item B must be a space game. The proposal calls for a shoot'em up, but I think we can get past that if we can offer something better instead. I'd like C to not be a space game. My favorites are CarWars and Dreamspace. I Like CarWars. If we have to have a shoot'em up, it should at least be funny. August 20, 1985 Hey, baby boomers and bomerettes! Here's what you've been waiting your whole lives for! You want style? You want escape? You want meaning? You want value _and_ change back from your dollar? I'll bet you a quarter that you'll get all that AND MORE when you "Quest into the Unknown!" It still isn't too late. Presented in CompressoVision. [drawing] August 21, 1985 There are two approaches to this: A Program You Go Through _Once_ -or- A Program You Go Through Again and _Again_ The economics of the deal have always favored AGAIN. So, videogames are skill-building activities (where the skill is whatever it takes to play that particular game. The unfortunate thing is there's never been a game that provided you with a skill that you could take into the world. There have been many tedious attempts at "educational games". I don't know if any have been successful). Popular music is an AGAIN medium. The other lively farts (TV, FILM, THEATER, etc.) are ONCE media. (Of course, people have the right to do a once experience more than once. That does not make it an AGAIN medium. The distinguishing characteristic is in the design of the experience. Are most spectators/participants expected to "get it" and be done with it in a single dose?) So what kind of medium is CompressoVision? It could do either. Simple economics suggests that it is an AGAIN medium, because you get the most entertainment hours per dollar that way. I think that is misleading, though, because if hours/dollar were an important concern, then videogames would be hot now with VCS's under $50 and cartridges under $5. Another way to look at it is: Do we want to be more like movies (ONCE) or videogames (AGAIN)? If you had asked that 4 or 8 years ago, you might have been tempted to say "videogames", particularly when arcades were booming and theaters were closing and subdividing all over the country. Today, however, arcades are dead. Movies are better than ever. I work for a film company. (I previously worked at the giant that created the video game industry. It collapsed.) What does it mean? I suggested on August 5 that people saw a promise in videogames, but gave up on it when they discovered that what they wanted wasn't there. Maybe that was because you can't deliver the compelling experience in an AGAIN medium. I don't want to be say that ONCE is always better than AGAIN. There is no truth in that at all. Food and sex are AGAIN experiences. I just want to be open to different possibilities, and to understand the consequences of my decisions. In reviewing the implementations of the 4 Lucasfilm games, I think it would be fair to say that 95% of the effort went into graphic and presentation, and 5% into play and experience. I like CompressoVision because getting great images is relatively effortless. Perhaps we could spend 50% on play and experience. Maybe people would like it. Maybe Dynamic Action[TM] is what they've been waiting for. August 22, 1985 Yes, America, it _is_ a workaday world. But now it is time to relax. Go to the fridge, crack open a cold hard can of Guy Fruit Punch Drink with Actual Juice from Concentrate, and then setcherself down in your Lay-Z-Guy recliner/rocker. And don't forget your Life-in-the-Future You-R-There vibrating seat and joybrator. Yeah! That's the life! Now, switch on the CompressoVision box, and slip in your "Quest into the Unknown" Compact Dynamic Action[TM] playdisk. Now you are ready for the experience of a lifetime. And it can be the same each and every night as long as you live! Presented in CompressoVision. [drawing] This joystick looks like a guy. It is made of soft, flexible plastic. Inside it has sensors which report the amount of bending of each limb. An umbilical cord comes out of it's belly button for connection to the CompressoVision box. You manipulate this guy like a voodoo doll. To make your persona move, you move the guys legs like he's walking, etc. A more general purpose guy might be more rectangular. You'd twist and flex it, manipulating the video environment with your bare hands. [drawing] JOYBRATOR Vibrating Joystick operated by your thumb There could be other switches as well, like a squeeze grip or buttons and twists operated by the other hand. "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit, one day, when they were lying side-by-side near the nursery fender, before Nan came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" -- The Velveteen Rabbit QUEST INTO THE UNKNOWN: WHAT DOES IT MEAN? What is it all about? Here's the deal. Each QITU blurb contains an important clue. Collect them all, and you may find how you can design your own CompressoVision adventure. It's just hen you get new stuff like _The Great Train Robbery_, which are made with a better understanding of the language of the medium. So, my job is to do CompressoVision's _Great Train Robbery_. _Touch It and Die_ is like the filmed stage play, the old message simply translated to the new medium. I want to skip that step. August 23, 1985 Quest Into The Unknown! At last, a software program that fits you as comfortably as your trouser pants. B U T S O F T "But soft-- " --W. Shakespeare Makers of fine industry-standard user-friendly software programs, like: ButWord - word processing ButSpread - electronomatic spread sheet ButFun - computerized video game ButReally - relational data base Now! Integrated with user interfaces! And don't forget, ButTrivia! August 26, 1985 Crimestopper's Notebook Rookies take note! Know your medium: How is CompressoVision different from Videodisc? [drawing] A Videodisc is a file of frames. It is a random access device, so you can display any frame. You can get about 1/2 hour's worth of frames on a side. The frames come off the disc in analog form. It is possible to do some effects with it (by Genlock) but basically you take the frames as they are given. Interactive Videodisc is having a computer dictate the sequence in which the frames are played out. (Standard Videodisc: the frames are played out sequentially.) [drawing] In CompressoVision, the images are in digital form, and are placed in a frame buffer from which an analog video image is finally generated. Effects are done digitally by a computer. The main thing is that the images are in digital form, and are therefore easily manipulated. It is also possible to present multiple images simultaneously. DARE TO COMPARE Image Quality Videodisc has higher resolution. Looks like quality T.V. CompressoVision is poor quality T.V. (jaggy) Random Access Videodisc is more flexible Make Believe CompressoVision can build up synthetic images So, a different set of tradeoffs. To get CompressoVision, we give up some image quality and some random access (particularly, the ability to play random and backward sequences). Instead we get computational flexibility and Dynamic Action[TM]. In Laserdisc, the big trick is: "How far can you jump during a vertical blank interval?" In CompressoVision, there is a much larger big trick space. As a game designer, I find CompressoVision attractive because the big trick space would inspire a lot of invention. The big trick space is larger than CompressoVision's designers intended, I guess. We had a meeting today with C, E, and J, all of ILM. We talked about the models that we'll need. I think it is going to turn out real well. They will provide the models with which we'll do the experiments on what READS well. Shapes, colors, textures, etc. We gave them Gary's drawings. August 27, 1985 STORY TELLING Not competition. Not skill building. Story telling. It's not a game, it's an adventure. Every medium has it's bias, the stories it cannot tell. In CompressoVision, we will want to tell the stories that demand interaction. But what does that mean? Is it like _Peter Pan_ when you clap to announce that you DO believe in fairies? That sort of theatrical interaction, that audience participation, demands that some vocal fraction of the audience does what it expected. But if _you_ don't clap, does Tinkerbell die? If you could have saved her and didn't, is that murder? What if you honestly _don't_ believe in fairies? Why all this guilt in children's theater? Is this supposed to be fun or what? What can you as a participant do in the home interactive theatrical context? Most importantly, how are you prevented from being boring? How can your imagination be stretched (instead of constrained)? What is the story that can best be told with your meddling? What symbols do you manipulate? Which symbols will touch a general audience? Is there a human need that can only be met with CompressoVision? Can this be a tool for "good", as well as for "evil"? What does it take to make this fun? What is the miracle of Dynamic Action[TM], anyway? Who wrote the book of Love? What can stop the Duke of Earl? August 29, 1985 Tomorrow I will host the First RCA Mystery Meeting. It will be for the benefit of the other members of the Lucasfilm Games Division of Marin County, California. What should be the compelling motivation when you quest into the unknown? To score points? No! To achieve mastery? Not if it is a ONCE experience. To have FUN? Yeah, I think that's it. It is a frolic, a recreation, an escape, a good time. It is perfectly safe. Let go. Take your shoes off. Check it out. Come on, live a little. Take off. Whatever the experience turns out to be, the participant must be made to care. (If you believe that the experience (and your actions within the experiential context) is of no consequence, then it won't work.) We care the same way as in a good movie. There's more to fear than just fear itself Many people will be uncomfortable with the new medium. Even if the CompressoVision designers do their jobs properly, so that folks aren't afraid that they might break the machine when they turn it on, many people will still be anxious about what's going on. They will sit there, frozen, afraid to act, afraid they will mess things up. Intimidated by the technology, they will be unable to accept the experience. If the GameDisk Software Program is not designed properly, then we have lost that person. We must give them a gentle introduction. If they hesitate, we must wait for them. If the story unfolds by itself, then they won't buy in. If, uncontrolled, the story goes into death or danger, then they won't buy in. The opening of the show is very important. We have to do a lot of contradictory things at once: we must prove it is safe, we must show that the participant is in (apparent) control, we must show that there is no performance pressure, and yet prod them along to sustain the pace of the program. And we need to prove, right at the top, that this is going to be fun. Dead Man Switch The participant must believe that she is deeply involved in the program. To sustain this illusion, we must be able to determine that she is involved. If she puts her joybrator down to answer the phone or to fetch a cold hard one out of the fridge, then the program must know to wait for her. Maybe your agent will try to hurry you up ("Come on! They'll be here any minute! Jeez! Hurry up! Move it!"). We can do stuff like that to sustain the tension, but nothing happens without you. Or perhaps we put up an INTERMISSION sign with awful Muzak. Or "We'll be right back after this word..." and run commercials. Wow! Commercials that play only when you wan t to go to the bathroom. And now, back to Quest into the Unknown! FEAR ITSELF! It scares you with Dynamic Action[TM]. Presented in CompressoVision. September 3, 1985 Friday at the Mystery Meeting, I gave the guys the history of RCA, and explained what this CompressoVision stuff is all about. From crock Mon August 26 15:00:27 1985 Received: by kessel; 26 August 85 15:00:27 PDT From: crock (Douglas Crockford - Archetypes R Us) To: gg Subject: Friday, 2:00 P.M. The First RCA Mystery Meeting And YOU are invited! This Friday in the workroom you will have the opportunity of a lifetime to be brought up-to-date on the RCA project. You'll find out what "His Master's Voice" means. You'll discover why the Department of the Navy was scared of the American Marconi Company. Why is there no Channel 1? (Answer: Your tax dollars at work.) So, be there! Two o'clock. We'll be pounding the ground. Pedal to the metal. Your contributions will be heard. It isn't already too late. Presented in CompressoVision. (This is NOT a joke.) From crock Fri August 30 09:39:22 1985 Received: by kessel; 30 August 85 09:39:22 PDT from: crock (Douglas Crockford - Creative Discontent Since 1953) To: gdiv Subject: The First RCA Mystery Meeting You will discover how CompressoVision was a direct consequence of the sinking of the Titanic. You will thrill as President of the United States Woodrow Wilson helps to establish RCA as a quasi-official agency in order to frustrate that dreaded international conspirator, Guglielmo Marconi. You'll be amazed to find out what RCA really stands for. I know all this stuff because I majored in Radio. And you'll know too, because your invited! From 2:00 to 4:00 today, so don't be late because we're locking the doors as I rip the lid off of the behind the scenes of the biggest story since the world got taken over. From nf fri August 30 10:15:09 1985 Received: by kessel; 30 August 85 10:15:09 PDT From: nf (Noah Falstein - Koronis Kreator) To: crock, gdiv Subject: Re: The First RCA Mystery Meeting The secret is out! The new TV guide has the TRUTH about CHANNEL 1! You need not attend the meeting today unless you are gullible enough to believe that stuff about the Titanic. And Marconi. CompressoVision: Threat of Menace? The Guys, after hearing about CompressoVision, wondered why I was making a big deal about media design. "It is just a super videogame machine. Just relax and write a videogame for it. What's the big deal?" Here's the deal: The promise of CompressoVision is that we can take the evolutionary step beyond videogames, that this system will cross the threshold, allowing us to deliver truly compelling interactive experiences. We must do something beyond aimless wondering over a landscape. What do interaction and outcome mean in this context? I'm reminded of the things magicians do to make you select the thing they want. Stuff like "Say Left or Right". If you say "left" he says "that leaves right." If you say "right", he says "you picked right." Is there such a thing as free will in interactive theater? September 9, 1985 Crockford's Theories of Computers, continued There is a myth that software is easier to change than hardware. That is not true. Hardware is much better understood. The puzzling thing is the movement to run standardized software on random hardware. Well, enough of that. What we really need more of is M R . F U N He's the hero of the Interactive Video Age. Hey, Mr. Fun! Do you have a word for the folks at home? September 10, 1985 Yes, that's right! My expectations are TOO DAMN HIGH! That's because I want to bring on the next step in Humanity's social evolution with a silly-ass videogame that features _near-video quality imagery[TM]_. A PC-compatible, yet. Not to mention the even MORE DIFFICULT problem of making videogames fun and attractive to general audiences. It is my belief that CompressoVision will be a MAJOR FLOP if it is simply a better videogame machine, even if it is the world's best. It must be something more. So here I am, one of the world's foremost videogame designers, and I agree with most of the world that the whole video game thing is too boring for words. Even the Lucasfilm Games, which are technically better than any thing else, are rather hollow. And as I read the concept documents for the next batch of games, I keep asking "What is missing? Where is the dynamic action?" History Remembers June 27, 1985 Marin County "Yes, It Has The Miracle Of DYNAMIC ACTION [TM], The Mysterious SECRET INGREDIENT" Yes, those words are still as true as they were when I first put them on paper, so many days ago. But still the question: What does it mean? For the answer, let's get crazy and hand the pen over to Mr. Fun. Take it away, Mr. Fun. Mr. Fun? That's funny, he was here a minute ago. Mr. Fun? Mr. Fun? I know, he probably had to go to the bathroom. We'll just wait for him to come back... While we're waiting, let's recap what we already know about DYNAMIC ACTION[TM]. It was the thing that people thought they were getting in the first Atari Age. It was the design principle that could never be exploited... that is until CompressoVision. It is what makes all the difference. That's all we know for sure. Is Mr. Fun back yet? No? Hmm... What's he doing in there? It is not just better graphics and sound. It is not just greater storage capacity. It is not just greater computing power. It is not PC-compatibility. It is not like a standard video game. What do you mean, Mr. Fun won't be back? Well, can we get a replacement? How about Bert Convy? Speculations and Contradictions The experience should be safe. As much as possible, all technology anxiety should be relieved. Mom should be comfortable with it. Everyone should win. The experience may be an ordeal, but we only want survivors. Whatever it takes to help people along (wishing rings, friendly spirits, dumb luck) will be dispensed as needed. You should care. Even though it is fixed that you will win, there must be room for doubt (but not so much that it is not safe). You don't really affect the outcome, because the outcome is success. But you should believe that you are affecting the outcome. For example, if Indiana Jones III turns out to be a short subject because Indy gets wasted in the first reel, then you'll be real disappointed. That kind of disappointment could kill the video industry. Sure there will be setbacks and disappointments, but failure will not be tolerated! If you wish yourself into a movie, it is not to change the outcome. The screenwriter will take care of that. You go into the movie to enjoy the experience. If you replace Luke Skywalker, you will not find it very rewarding to allow, as a result of your mistakes, the Empire to destroy the Rebel fleet. If DRAMA insists on an outcome, then fate is sealed. Like Greek Lit. The Gods have already decided the outcome. But you the hero, must still go through the process and discover in what sense the prophecy was true. Can a modern audience accept this apparent lack of free will? Are there properties of the experience that are more important than the outcome? Perhaps there are several levels of outcome? Another might be some degree of self discovery or growth. But as far as immediate interaction, what is it that you do with your joybrator or whatever that makes you feel involved? Is it just piloting a vehicle over the geography? Or is there something more meaningful? What is the answer? The answer is DYNAMIC ACTION[TM]. Is Bert Convy here yet? "I know what it is. It's pixels, right?" -- Gary's Mom. FATE & PREDESTINATION Can Americans Enjoy Fate? Actually, it _has_ to always be the same, or people won't be able to talk about it. "And how about the part where they gouge your eyes out!" "That was so neat!" You can get into some deep riddles about Liberty and Freedom. Tell me when the scary part is over. I have trouble saying "You will win." It is easy to say "You will have a good time." Boy, was Art Linkletter ever right! People are funny! I'm glad I majored in T.V. You never learn this stuff in Engineering School. September 11, 1985 QUEST INTO THE UNKNOWN! It is what the home interactive theatrical context was always intended to be. The reality is _so_ complete, you can finish your life at home! And on the same program FEAR AND IGNORANCE "What you don't know is trying to kill you." Presented in CompressoVision He's here! He's here! Come and meet Mr. Fun! The hero of the interactive video age! He'll be at GEEK-O-RAMA(R) to sign autographs and answer your question, "What does it mean?" And don't forget, Every Night is "Nerd Nite"[TM] at GEEK-O-RAMA(R)! So be there or stay home! "It's been better than real." -- Mr. Fun WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Perhaps there is a clue in my methodology. Throughout this process, I have been presenting my half-formed ideas in terms of popular cultural symbols, Television-Age Advertising in particular. When I was a kid, I saw the words "Not For Sale Or Trade" on the bathroom scale. And that struck me as really unfair. I mean, it's our scale, we should be able to sell it if we want to. It's a free country. Those same words appear on the title page of this book. What does it mean? On the first page is a Star Wars-like tribute to America's Love Affair with the Automobile. What does it mean? It is like I found archetypal significance in these tired old marketing concepts and icons. These symbols were designed to invoke desire and buying frenzy. We have developed sales resistance (a survival skill), so they aren't effective anymore. But they still have power. Pvt. Bullwinkle, sir, with a message! Just in time! Is it important? Is it? Just look! (By the way, Certs is just a candy mint. That's all.) And so, this Quest into the Unknown also takes us on an interesting side trip through the popular culture of this great melting pot of ours, from the Interwoven Pair right up to the woman in the Lee Jeans who sits on a pizza. What an age we live in! Gary likes to say "In the Future, Style is Everything." But, it may turn out that "In the Future, Style is all we've got left." The First Singing Commercial: Howdya Do, Everybody, Howdya Do, Gee it's great to be back here with all of you I'm Billy Jones, I'm Ernie Hare, We're the Interwoven Pair. How do ya Doodle oodle oodle oodle ooh. September 15, 1985 The "Father of" CompressoVision reveals WHY I LAUGH AT DANGER by Mr. Fun (as told to Douglas Crockford, Marin County) [reading time: 1 minute] This book is a note book, a design aid. It does not contain finished stuff. Oh, no. Often I don't know what I'm going to write until after it is on paper. In order to be creative, I must be free to write anything, even if it might seem foolish. What makes it dangerous is that I consider this book to be a public document. Me, I'm too tough to care. I laugh at danger! Ah ha ha ah ha ha ha ha. Ha. On the following pages, I am going to try to apply the Yet- to-be-discovered Dynamic Action principles to the design of TRANSIT AUTHORITY. So, Gentle Reader, please be kind. Or don't. See if I care. Ah ha ha ha ha. TRANSIT AUTHORITY It's more than a trip to the stars. It's a trip and a half. You get to spy on people. Invade their privacy. Just like T.V., except you decide what you want to see. You search through picturephone archives, news reports, security records, home movies, eat. You learn that there is a mystery. Everyone is talking about it. So you expand your investigation. After checking flight reservation files, you begin traveling yourself, from Habitat to Habitat. History tells us that there were ecological catastrophes on ALL of the inhabitable planets. Nukes, toxic wastes, genetic mutation, natural causes. So now everybody lives in Habitats, cities in space, and the planets are used as toxic dump sites. As you unravel the plot, you find that you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys. And then you stumble onto someone's secret identity. Someone nice. But your activities don't go unnoticed. For the plot extends even into the offices of the transit authority itself. You have put that nice person in danger. What will you do now? The opening of the show requires you only you switch channels and watch (skills already acquired by most TV viewers). There is no performance pressure. The soap opera lives of the people should be interesting enough to drag you in. The action is in a series of video tape clips. You get to call them up as you like. Apparent control: The story the tapes tell is fixed. But you control the order in which they are played out. The system responds to your requests, but the outcome is fixed. The structure of the soap opera story is like this: [drawing] It won't take long to exhaust the soap opera. It is a set of dumb little stories, tightly intertwined. Eventually, you will exhaust all of the story threads except one. And that one will lead to the mystery. There are a number of simple skills you need to learn along the way. (playing a tape, requesting information, reserving travel). You learn one at a time as you become ready to take the next step. I want this story to unfold in an unfamiliar environment. Why? It's like this: If we are pretending to do this in the real world, then you will want to try real-world strategies, like talking to the characters. We can't do anything like that, so I put you into a situation where you don't have any priority notions of what choices you might have. That way, you'll be less frustrated with comments like "Why can't I just tell him to stop it." I want to travel to be automatic. (June 24, August 5, August 6) We won't do any preaching about ecological catastrophe, beyond suggesting that it can happen, and that it can render planets uninhabitable. We won't preach about rights of privacy. However, you will have opportunities to damage some people by uncovering their secrets. The potential for danger is not revealed until you are well into the program. If we can, we put you into personal danger. If we can't then the danger will be to someone in the program who you are likely to care about. This will be one of those stories about a struggle between great powers. It would have turned out the same, even if you hadn't meddled, but who can know for sure? In fact, the whole thing may balance on something that you do. And it will be something you can't avoid doing. It all reminds me of Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW with James Stewart and Grace Kelly, with Raymond Burr as the heavy. (Significantly, Burr also appears in GODZILLA 1985.) You spend the next two hours or so (I don't think it should take much longer than that) with your machine. The machine is part spaceship, part EditDroid, part computer terminal. (Question: "How many people do you know who might have an EditDroid in their spaceship?") It may look like this: [drawing] Two screens so that you can play 2 things side by side. For example, the two sides of a phone conversation might be played together. And now a few words from Dr. Technical. It may be that, to get sufficient facial detail in the little monitors, that we'll need the 512 resolution. I'd like not to use 400 vertical because it can flicker. I'd like to have enough bandwidth to play two sequences at once. That requires that one of them be completely in memory before playback begins. I'd like the frame rate to be 30Hz. That way we could shoot in video, simply. 15Hz might not be bad since we are dealing mostly with talking heads, and the sources are archive material. Whatever the rate is, we must be able to sustain it in order to synchronize the audio. I'll need to do some tests. Well, that's one style of CompressoVision. I need to propose another, more direct, more computational, more physical program. And Mr. Fun can tell us how. And now back to TRANSIT AUTHORITY The game will have a clock. Normally it ticks in real-time. During travel it goes REALLY FAST, due to speed-o-light time compression, etc. The game events will be reported on regular broadcasts, so that even if you are unable to solve the clues, you will still make progress. If you have fun solving them, then good for you. If not, then don't panic. And don't take off your shoes. Help is on the way. One annoying thing about "thinking" games is that the people who like them think that people who don't are idiots. Is that stupid or what? September 17, 1985 TRANSIT AUTHORITY, like most video games, has you operating a machine. But, instead of a rocket fighter or atomic tank, you are playing with a computer-based video database retrieval system. You have complete control of the machine, but not of the database. (Rookies take note: This machine looks a lot like the CompressoVision box itself. Does this represent a failure of imagination, that is, doing the obvious? Or is this intended to grant the device a greater aura of realness. (Would making the machine look like a rocket fighter be more imaginative?)) for quality, use TIMETRACK brand Temporal Topography "You don't have a choice." We have not found a useful definition of "interactive". As far as I can tell, the word is meaningless in this context. Certainly, "interactive" is not something which is intrinsically desirable in a machine. It has value to us here only if we can have fun with it. That is why we are looking for guidance from Mr. Fun, and not Mr. Interactive. Mr. Interactive! I'd rather talk to Mr. Radioactive! ATOMS FOR FUN! Except, here in 1987, we're talking about VIDEOACTIVE Yeah! VideoActive Debris! Fallout All Right! Radiating Fun! CompressoVision: It's the Video Isotope. September 19, 1985 If it would have been a happy ending, what happens if you change the outcome? Picturephone answering machines. That would be a terrific way to tell a story. Scan through someone's message records. You get pieces of stories, secret words, the relationships without the interactions. And because the information is sorted with a major key of character instead of time, you'll get a very interesting story structure. There might be some real emotional stuff where you hear a character going into a situation where you think you know the outcome because of the things you've already seen. Particularly interesting will be the records of the dead man. Of course he doesn't answer the phone. So he gets lots of messages. Some from people trying to find him. They keep calling back, the level of panic rising. Friends and business associates will call, looking for meetings, help, information. Maybe a boilerroom calls looking for a donation to help Jerry's kids. And bad guys will be calling to put their alibis on the record. You need two pieces of information to get in: A phone number, and an owner access code. You collect these as the program goes on. Because events are still going on during your investigation, _when_ you check a file is important. You can't see messages that haven't been recorded yet. Question: How do you get owner access codes? _That_ will be a significant plot point. People may be dying for them. We could trace this back to the highest levels of the Transit Authority. Let's talk about production. Foreign locations only require a foreign phone booth. In designing sets, we don't need to see more than you can see from the picturephone. Cheap! Sniff! Sniff! I think I smell Mr. Fun around here! Visit ALIEN SPRINGS, WYOMING See REAL aliens! Visit our gift shop! Where did they come from? Thirsty? See the giant mud torpedo! Burgers! Out of this world! Alien blankets! [3 funny drawings] September 24, 1985 Because you care... Because you dare... Always insist on CompressoVision, the Mark of Experience. _Space Invaders_ is not interactively significant. All you can really affect is elapsed time. You cannot change the environment in any significant way. Your choices are restricted to those strategies that keep the game going. Otherwise, the game ends. There are an infinite set of choice trees that all lead to the same outcome [Game Over]. I call that set $\aleph\sub d$ (pronounced Aleph Dull) It can be proved that all videogames have an equivalent infinity of boring choices. With Dynamic Action[TM], we get $\aleph\sub f$ (pronounced Aleph Fun) "Well, it's been fun. Gotta go." -- Mr. Fun to the Video Game industry (1982) September 25, 1985 COMPRESSOTEEN MAGAZINE A NERD NO MORE MR. FUN CompressoVision Makeovers The Myth behind the Man Win a dream date with CompressoDroid Speaks Out designer Douglas Crockford! in an exclusive interview Details Inside! New PlayDisk Reviews of 12 Dynamic Action Packed Features and Programs - - - - - - - - Quest into the Unknown: Terms, Trade Marks, and Definitions Douglas Crockford Marin County, California Lucasfilm Ltd. September 23, 1985 CompressoVision - A new home entertainment medium featuring computer enhanced compressed digital video and audio. CompressoVision Box - A consumer CompressoVision player. It gets attached to the home TV and Stereo. Dynamic Action - that mysterious secret ingredient. PlayDisk - the disk medium containing a CompressoVision program. Mr. Fun - Here's the man who needs no introduction. TIMETRACK brand TEMPORAL TOPOGRAPHY - The mapping of streams of images and sounds to time. Interactive - A meaningless buzzword; not applicable. Touch It and Die - the plot of the industry-standard video game. Quest into the Unknown - The Art Deco Interactive Home Entertainment Experience Extravaganza from Beyond the Stars and Beyond... Transit Authority - It's more than a trip to the stars. It's a trip and a half. GUYS - They're a lot like you, except that they are aliens who have eyes that go all the way around their heads. Their home planet is Lon Guyland. CompressoVision, CompressoVision Box, Dynamic Action, PlayDisk, Mr. Fun, TIMETRACK brand Temporal Topography, Touch It and Die, Quest into the Unknown, Transit Authority, GUYS, and the names of all the characters and program elements are trademarks of Lucasfilm Ltd. 1985 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved [drawing] September 28, 1985 "We have been talking of wild birds as symbols of release or liberation. But today we could as well speak of jet planes and space rockets, for they are the physical embodiment of the same transcendent principle, freeing us at least temporarily from gravity." -- Man and His Symbols My objection to driving games was really about death as a constraint. To be liberating, we must be free from physical danger. The mistake I made was to remove the danger by making flight automatic. That was wrong. The participant must be in active apparent control. But as we move, there cannot be "mistakes". That word is undefined in this context. When we think _flying like a bird_, we don't think "I could get a wing cramp and fall to my death", or "I could crush my skull against a skyscraper window". No. We think of freedom. Carefree. Effortless. But the August 12th question still stands: What then? September 29, 1985 Last Friday I visited RCA labs. My visit was cut short by Hurricane ("Storm of the Century") Gloria*. Before escaping with my life, I got to talk with a couple of guys, the designers of VDP1 and VDP2. * Footnote to History: Gloria passed over New Jersey without much damage (just a lot of rain). She did manage to inconvenience a lot of people in Lon Guyland. Just like our guys, they are overly concerned with the image quality. I say. "No, there's more, there's experience." But the Guys think that experience is what you see and hear. The Guys think that _StarWars_ was good and important because of the quality of the special effects. I've heard that statement on both sides of the Mighty Mississippi. And scarier, they are planning on making some changes to the machine that will wreck it for CompressoVision in favor of Word Processing. They don't know what they have. I have to teach them. H agrees with me that I should give a lecture to her Guys the next time I go out there. It's the Siggraph problem. Our own Ed and Alvy Ray defined the criteria by which computer graphics are judged. So you can get stuff like _Andre & Wally B_, in which the picture quality in technically excellent, and the story telling is extremely poor. It scores an A+ from the Siggraph crowd. It wouldn't even get an honorable mention from Mom. Because: The interesting stuff is not happening on the screen. It is happening in the viewer's head and heart. We put symbols on the screen which will touch things inside of you. It's like the secret code that lovers use. A pair can be in a group of people, and can be sending important love messages to each other that no one else can detect, by weaving bits of shared experiences and intimate conversations into their public speeches. The messages of love are not in the words, they are in the lovers. The words are only symbols. We could improve the words by amplification, equalization, improve the signal/noise ratio, etc. But that will not help an outsider to understand the lovers. This works for the Siggraph guys, too. They look at a technically good picture, and they get messages about how difficult it was to do. So they can get an emotional charge from an artistically uninteresting picture, because they are sharing with the creator the thrill of accomplishment. CompressoVision should only be judged for the messages it can share with the general audience. And those messages had better be compelling. We should not expect to be judged on how hard we worked, or on what problems we overcame. In mass media, that does not count. I think the lovers are more interesting than the engineers, and I'll bet Mom thinks so, too. Could we really do love in a computer program and make you feel it? I think anything less would mean failure. But my expectations are too damn high. Something that happens a lot in movies is when the villain comes in and explains the plot. Usually by now the hero has guessed part of it, as has the audience. The explanation is mostly independent of how much we have learned. The worst thing you can do in a mystery is let the audience guess correctly early on, because cleverness and solving skill is rewarded with tedium and contrivance. How unlike a videogame, the most skillful player can do the worst. (That is, have the most uninteresting experience.) I want to start watching more Hitchcock. I think I could learn something. He understands this stuff. September 30, 1985 DEMOGRAPHICS I don't have the figures, but I'll guess that the most important demographic group in the video market is males 13- 18. That's not to say that they make up the entire market, they're just the most important segment. In TV, it's more like females 18-35*. That's Mom. The networks expect that Mom is real important in selecting the channel. She will be as important in choosing between TV and CompressoVision tonight. * An important group to me, as well. An Alien with a Green Card: Is it a Mexican with a work permit? -or- Is it a Martian who carries American Express? Don't leave home. We'll fix it in __________ the mix (music recording) post (film/TV production) software (computer systems) the previews (theatre) the story conferences (script writing) Where do we fix CompressoVision? CROCKFORD'S THEORIES ON COMPUTERS I grew up with dreams of computers in movies, TV shows, comic books, toys. Just imagine what it can do for you. I didn't actually see one until I got to San Francisco State University to major in Radio and Television. The Computer Revolution was just getting going, just imagine what would happen when we gave computer power to the people. By the time we got to the 80's, we had already lost the computer revolution. The systems weren't expanding our imaginations, instead our expectations were drastically reduced to match the systems. The revolution was co-opted. The personal computer, which was to be an instrument of revolutionary change, is still an instrument of the establishment. That is why, at least for me, COMPUTERS ARE BORING! I want to be doing something else, something that will make good on the promise, something revolutionary, something irresistible. Until today, I had been saying, "Oh no, we're losing the computer revolution!" Today, I say "we lost." So the choices are to co-opt, to go underground, or to start a new revolution. CompressoVision has to be THAT good. I have to be THAT good. INTERACTION I may have been too harsh in saying that "INTERACTIVE" is meaningless in this context. The important thing about my statement is that it is useless to think about "interactive" in the usual videogame way. We must learn to think about this in a new way, because we have clear evidence that the old way won't take us where we want to go. October 3, 1985 CompressoVision Launch Commercial JASON AND JENNIFER Jennifer: "Jason, what's wrong?" Jason: "It's your personality, Jennifer. Your personality stinks." Jennifer: (To herself and camera) "He noticed." JENNIFER AND MR. FUN Jennifer: "Oh, Mr. Fun. It's my personality. What can I do?" Mr. Fun: "It's simple, Jennifer. You just need the miracle of CompressoVision. Here, take this Dynamic Action PlayDisk home with you..." LATER... Jason: "Great personality!" Jennifer: "Thanks to CompressoVision!" October 4, 1985 Where is this going? Here I am, the CompressoVisionary. That's me, that's my job. I want to deliver to people a box which is _so_ much fun that it will change their lives. Where have we been so far? Linear Land (Book and music) Interactive Land (The Home of tedious video games that no one wants.) Apparent Land (I discovered this one, it is a LINEAR land that looks interactive) Is this really what we want? How are we doing so far? I wanted to have two entirely different types of experience presentation. I think that something derived from Transit Authority will do for the first. But what is the other? October 8, 1985 Yesterday I bought a branching book for my daughter Jane (age 5, real cute). It was called _Dumbo's Circus_. In it, you play a boy who goes to the circus and has an adventure. Every so often the story stops and gives you a direction, like: To hit the jew over the head with a bag of sugar, turn to page 14. To beat out that rhythm on a drum, turn to page 22. So I asked Jane which it will be, and then skipped to that page. She immediately changed her mind. The reason is interesting. Her criteria were not related to story involvement or indecision. She rated her choice by how many pages we skipped. She wanted to always skip as little as possible so that she wouldn't miss anything. We reached an ending (You fall to your death from an airplane while trying a new act). Jane wasn't bothered by the unhappy ending. She was greatly bothered by the words THE END in the middle of the book. So we took a few different branches and got some different endings. Jane was frustrated because it kept stopping and because she knew she was missing stuff. So finally we went straight through, cover to cover, and found all of the tracks and all of the endings. (One happy, one neutral, sent home, pie in the face, fall, run over by a train, crash in a tree.) There was no way to predict which track led to the happy ending. You make random choices, and one in seven times it comes out ok. Is that interactive fun or what? Ordinarily, in a Disney Picture book, you would expect to get a happy ending. But here, because of your choices, you fall to your death instead. (In fairness, the story ends before you actually reach the ground.) It must be your fault, but it's not clear to you exactly what you did wrong. Trial and error. Remember the pattern. Traverse the tree. Do it over and over until you get the outcome you want. If this had been a sequential story, you would have gotten the best outcome (in literary terms, at least) on the first reading. Do all the false starts make it fun? There must be a market for branching books. But I think they are doing something that is fundamentally wrong. DIAL "C" FOR COMPRESSOVISION (see September 19) Here's the deal. You have a black box that permits you to call up picturephone answering machines and view the stored messages. You know, stuff like: "Hi, Jennifer. It's Jason. Hey, give me a call, ok?" and his phone number appears on the screen. So, you start to build a referral list. You call people's machines. Spy on them. There's a story unfolding. Someone gets murdered! And you had something to do with it! Innocently, perhaps, but someone is now dead because of your meddling. And someone else is in danger. DIAL "F" FOR FUN! DIAL "D" FOR DYNAMIC ACTION! This better be good or he's gonna get it! -- Mom October 9, 1985 First thing the machine does is it puts up a picture of a Japanese girl who identifies the machine, and prompts you for the training program. Part of the procedure includes this information: "This device is not approved by the Federal Communications Commission. Use, sale, or possession of this device is a felony violation of the Communications Act of 1988. Have a nice day." The machine already has a number in the autodialer. You either call it up or the ride's over. And so your journey begins. These things always get tied up neatly in the end. Part of the mystery will hang on who gave you the machine in the first place, and why. Because we are only doing talking heads, I'm guessing that we can get about an hour of recordings on the disk. You might see 45 minutes of it in a typical presentation. If we go to lower quality, we could maybe get 2 hours. Each character would have between 1/2 to 5 minutes of recorded messages. That means in a 2 hours show, we could have between 24 and 240 characters. Say a cast of a hundred. If it took about an hour to tape the 30 to 300 seconds, then we could finish all the taping in about two weeks. We would also need about 100 sets, but we only need to see what is visible to the picturephone. Rear projection would probably do for most of it. We could go around shooting slides in furniture stores. FREEDOM FROM CHOICE. October 10, 1985 I feel good about "Dial M for Mr. Fun". I don't understand everything about it, but I know that I will. It does all the dynamic action stuff, and it should be entertaining. Am I all finished? NO, there is another. This Quest into the Unknown calls for 3 feature proposals. The first one is Touch It and Die: StarRaiders with better graphics. I really can't say much more than that without doing the model experiments. Our hardware is just arriving now. It may be weeks before it is installed and working. The second one is "Dial C for CompressoVision". It is radical in that it does not have a camera attached to a vehicle. Graphically it is primitive. It is rich in plotting and characterization. (In watching Hitchcock, I'm finding that I like his gimmick films (Rope, Rear Window) better than the more conventional films.) The third one... What is it? Quest into the Unknown... CarWars. From up high. A videogame in Oz. Transit Authority. Dreamspace. Guys. Fear itself. This is CompressoVision. Fear and Ignorance. Nerd Nite. Atoms for Fun. Alien Springs. What if we did something like the Aspen Disk, except we do it in Alien Springs, Wyoming? Or go far away, like to a village in Switzerland. Hmm, but RCA is expecting science fiction. There's a little of that in "Dial D for Dynamic Action". We get practical picturephones. No, no, they want StarWars. We can't give them StarWars. We told them that. They want it anyway. They want space ships and lasers and blowing things up. Killing aliens? Yup, killing aliens. Well, never mind that. It has to have dynamic action, that's all there is to it. I suppose I could do The Saga of the A T O M I C T A N K Nah, Mom would never go for something like that. If CompressoVision has a name, then it must be...CompressoVision! Maybe something musical. The MTV Game, or the Reactive Synthesizer. It should be something that the whole family or whatever can enjoy. It's so much fun, that you'd even invite people you don't like at all to come over and play it with you. Mr. Fun! Where are you? What are you looking at? I know what I'm doing Don't look for anything inspirational on this page. I'm just talking to myself, hoping that Mr. Fun will reveal himself. This kind of creative activity is real personal. But that's ok, because that is what audiences like. We are in many ways more alike than we could ever hope. But different, too. Well, that was amusing, now where is Mr. Fun? Could he be with Bert Convy? Now, there's an entertainer, he does it all. Maybe we should do _An Evening of CompressoVision with Bert Convy_. I've got all the pieces. I just have to make them fall into place. How hard can that be? An entertainment that is nothing like Touch It and Die of Dial "C" for CompressoVision. It is not like a video game, it is not like a video tape. This isn't working. I need to be distracted. Maybe I'll go to Mexico. No, I can't, I have to pick Jane up after school. Boy, It's never easy, is it? The tumblers are not clicking. Hmmmmmm I think I'll take a walk. I'll be back soon. With a shine on my Kung Fu shoes and a spring in my step. Mr. Clean will clean your whole house and everything that's in it. Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean. It's a happy fizzies party. I want my Maypo. A Schwinn bike is a good bike. My God! I'm doing the time warp! Let's do the time warp again! Let's do the time warp again! It's just a jump to the left. And then a step to the right with your... October 11, 1985 OK, we're back. Our next guest is a man who needs to introduction. Let's have a warm round of applause for Mr. Fun. [applause. standing ovation] "You're too kind. Don't. Please. Stop. Please, don't stop." [uncontrolled laughter] You know, we've been trying to get you on the show for a long time. You're a hard man to find. "Before you go on, I just want to say that I love your show, and I'm honored to have been invited here tonight. Did you know that Orson Wells is dead?" Is he really? No... "I heard it on the news while I was waiting to come on. Did you know that Citizen Kane was my idea?" No, I didn't, but now that you mention it, it doesn't surprise me. "Let me tell you about my latest project." Oh, alright. What is it? "I'm doing a PlayDisk for CompressoVision. We're really quite excited about it." What is CompressoVision? "Hey, come on! Don't be stupid." [uncontrolled laughter] Hmm. Don't go away, we'll be right back. Dial "D" for Dynamic Action is unexpected because it doesn't do any of the branching tricks that we have come to expect in branching games. So, let's suppose that the OTHER is more like you'd expect, and that this is the show in which a 3D controller is valuable. I don't know why, but I am really resistant to that idea. I say NO WEAPONS on spaceships, because if you have them, you will shoot at other spaceships, and if you do that, then it's just a videogame and I'M TIRED OF VIDEOGAMES. So I go over to ILM to see how J is doing, and he's built the thing out of CAR PARTS! Hurray! That's it! Or if it isn't it, it's at least great! I asked him to paint it blue, like a Buick. Wouldn't you really rather have a Buick? It's great because you don't build weapons into cars. That forces us to find other ways to resolve conflicts, even if it's only Get Me Outta Here! CAR PARTS OF THE GODS? October 14, 1985 FROM THE PRODUCERS OF QUEST INTO THE UNKNOWN COMES ANOTHER KIND OF QUEST. THE FIRST DOCUMENTARY PRODUCED IN COMPRESSOVISION, STUFFED WITH STARTLING NEW FACTS THAT ARE SO TRUE THAT _YOU_ CAN'T DISPROVE THEM. CAR PARTS OF THE GODS? The Automobiles of the Ancient Astronauts. O Best Beloved, What am I going to do with Car Parts of the Gods? I have the sense that something is right about it. It is not _as_ hokey as CarWars. The Gods stuff lets us bring in the Jungian symbols without apology. It works with the ILM models, and it is space. Thinking is the best way to travel -- The Moody Blues Where is this Quest into the Unknown taking me? We have touch it and die. We have Dial I for Invasion of Privacy from Kwai Dan Heavy Industries. And now, Mystic Fast Cars to the Stars. If it had a good beat I'd give it a 10. DYNAMIC ACTION is what makes it fun and lets us believe. To understand what I mean, here is the straight poop: Let's talk about your car. Remember when you first learned to drive? It was dangerous. You weren't really there, you were too removed from driving as a process to feel comfortable about being in control, and so you weren't. But now, it is all automatic, the danger is gone (which for some people is too bad). If you step into Luke's X-Wing, what will it be like? Are you flying it like a hardened combat veteran, or like a novice? It makes a _big_ delta. Maybe that's one of the things that happened to coin-op. Each new game assumed that you'd played the earlier ones, and that's what the focus testing confirmed. And that went on until the novices stopped trying. And it goes on even after the vets retire. But, ah, you might be wondering, what does that have to do with Dynamic Action? And now back to CAR PARTS OF THE GODS? You have to love a show that has a question mark in the title. We should go somewhere. Where do we go, and how do we get there? Do we arrive in a rocket powered car? Or is the car just a symbol? I have this image of folks at home, full of excitement, quivering with anticipation, glancing at each other, winking, grinning, waiting for the fun to start. Oh boy, when this starts getting fun, it's gonna be just something! Waiting for the fun to start. What's wrong with me? I've got this thing called CAR PARTS OF THE GODS?, and I can't tell if it has any fun to it. How could anything called CAR PARTS OF THE GODS? _not_ have some fun to it? Meanwhile I've been working (thinking, really) about some of the technical problems. Perhaps now would be a time to report on some of that. - How do you get random communication out? Have the ONSCREEN character refer to an off screen character, which reduces the problem to voice synthesis: Boss: You're way over budget! (punching intercom button) Clerk! How much over budget? Clerk's voice: [computer synthesized] 120,556 dollars Boss: What! Now, I'm mad! What are we going to do about it? - Film a character who says the vocabulary in a very stiff posture. We can then use some of our compression analysis tricks to seamlessly assemble the pieces. It will sound like the phone number announcement that the phone company uses. It will look like a Talking Heads video. - How to assemble a disk. It was painful to watch the final phases of the Eidolon and Kronis Rift. They had lots of problems, but one of them was just getting all of the material onto a floppy disk. They were just 64K programs. There were no real-time constraints on the accessing of the disk.. No synchronization problems. What happens when we have a gigabyte of material? And real- time constraints and synchronization problems? Obviously, we need a CompressoDroid. That's the only authoring system facility that we MUST have. One of the things that CompressoVision will do is compare the disk layout with the script and the performance characteristics, and predict whether or not the layout works. October 21, 1995 Sorry I've been gone so long, dear diary. I've been working on the other reports for the impending review meeting. And I've been thinking about Alien Springs. We'll find a ghost town. We'll make a ton of signs and tack them up all over. Then it's Lights! Camera! Dynamic Action! Let's say you drive a cab. It's not exactly like an earth vehicle, there's no steering wheel or anything, but hey! It's a job. So mostly you take fares between the landing pad and the Hotel Q. But there's something funny going on in Alien Springs: Fact: That Giant Mud Torpedo is really only about as tall as your knee cap. Just a tourist trap ripoff? Fact: Alien Springs is the home of the biggest foam rubber warehouse in North America. Fact: There aren't many humans around. Most of the tourists come via the spaceport. Fact: The Aliens are dumber than they look. Or are they? What is going on here? Why is the foam rubber warehouse called FOAM HOME? Why are you here? Are these really aliens, or are they really earthlings wearing FOAM RUBBER alien suits? October 22, 1985 From the producers of Quest into the Unknown comes the absolute best surrogate travel experience opportunity of a lifetime ever offered on a Dynamic Action PlayDisk. Welcome to ALIEN SPRINGS, WYOMING There's something funny going on in Alien Springs. What's the big mystery? Don't do anything stupid, and nobody gets hurt. Presented in CompressoVision. "It's as good as it gets." [drawing] A big dial. You turn it to select things from screen menus. Or you put an overlay over the controller. And two big buttons: GO and STOP. Their labels can be changed with an overlay, too. Maybe we can light them up. Some people might want lots of buttons. I'd like to keep it simple. The dial produces 8 bits of Gray Binary. Crockford's Paradox There are some unsettling contradictions which we must struggle with in the new interactive medium. They have to do with constraints on interactivity. This class of contradictions is known as Crockford's Paradox. It is the video equivalent of wanting to go to heaven, but not wanting to die. We establish a video environment for the participant to play around in. We _want_ to promise that the player can do anything he wants, but he _can't_. And the failing in that promise leads us into deception and trickery. More important than the moral dilemma: If they figure out our tricks (and they will) then they won't be fooled again. Sure, blame the technology. Limited storage means that we must keep them on a tight track.. We cannot store the track for all possible excursions. OK, let's assume infinite storage. Now the problem is that we can't afford to do production on all possible excursions. OK, let's assume that computer graphics is brought to such perfection that any scene can be rendered in real-time. Now you must script all possible excursions. But it isn't possible to enumerate all possibilities. So, you construct a computer program that can generate the variations as the player selects them. (That is what videogames do.) But we want MEANINGFUL interaction. We want to be able to change the story in random ways. And that is something a computer cannot do. It cannot maintain the structure and integrity of the _story_. That is difficult enough for novelists to do. It is not a technology problem, it is an ART problem. Success is measured not in engineering terms, but in show biz terms. A computer _can_ do a shaggy dog story. The way that works is you have an opening, a set closing, and a lot of stuff in between that doesn't matter. But that's really trickery again, isn't it? OK, so what if you throw out plot and structure. Well, I'm not ready to do that. I have never enjoyed a plotless movie as well as a plotted one. The biggest trick in making a documentary is finding the plot and structure in a set of facts and events and observations which are naturally plotless and structureless. These have been in our culture for so long. I am not willing to throw them out just to make my paradox easier to live with. There must be a pattern in the drama. The thing we can do that general audiences have never been able to do before* is to give a little bit of slack, a little bit of room for self expression within the context of some interesting events. * unless you consider the participants in tribal rituals as general audiences. I like to vote. I don't believe that the votes I cast are significant. Sometimes, the people and issues I vote for lose. BUT, I believe that the act of voting is extremely significant, even if it makes no apparent difference in the outcome. The fact that my candidate would/wouldn't have won anyway does not make it a trick. Maybe someday I'll do a CompressoLove Story. Suppose that my goal is to marry her. I can do all the right things with my little joystick, and still it might not work out in the long run, because even if I could be perfect, the outcome depends on at least one other person. If those two people are star- crossed, then there is nothing you can do to win. And it is not a trick. It is not a deception. Not all stories should have happy endings. But those stories that should have happy endings should end happily. The muses demand it, and by golly, I'm not about to let them down. And the audiences are just going to have to accept that. My hunch is that they already have. All we really have left is the Tinkerbell problem. (August 22) If they play it again, and try to change the outcome, they may discover the man behind the curtain. And they may feel such a deep sense of shock and moral outrage that they would never consent to an interactive media experience for the rest of their tortured lives. But on the other hand, maybe they'd get over it, shrug and say "oh, that's how they do it." Audiences didn't demand their money back when they discovered that the spaceships in StarWars were really models, or that the forests of Endor were matte paintings. They may even recognize Indiana Jones's stunt double when they see it for the second or third time. The audience wants the experience to be good, too. You have to trust them. New Topic I'm going to do Alien Springs as a comedy. (What, you thought I was going to play it straight?) Ron and Gary and Chip are real excited about it. We're brainstorming about it and coming up with some funny gags. The best ones are mine. We don't have a story yet. I'm going to have to watch to make sure that this doesn't turn into a GEEK SHOW. Oops, they're going to be reading this and I just called them a bunch of geeks. And they're real sensitive about that. Sorry, guys, it's 4:14 am and I've been up all night working on my paradox. Diminished capacity. I never asked to be born. Not my fault. We'll build a model town, use a motion controlled camera, really do the ASPEN part right. For the first time ever. And while you're driving around, aliens keep climbing in and out of the back seat. Some of them may be humans in foam rubber suits. Maybe they all are, I don't know. There's got to be a way to get OUT OF THE CAB! Well, here we are at the end of Volume I: The Early Years. Be sure to look for Volume II: The Gathering Storm. Thanks for coming along on the Quest with me this far. Now that I have some idea of where it's going, things should start to get... Well, I don't know. But be sure to read about my adventures in Volume II: The Gathering Storm. Maybe this doesn't need saying. This is the CompressoVision story, but it's not my story. There are things going on in my life that are not in the book. I only mention this for the benefit of future biographers. My only hope is that this record proves useful to CompressoVision scholars some day. Douglas Crockford Marin County October 23, 1985 4:59 am End of Volume I