Tracy Hickman Interview
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Most of all, the way that he talks about storytelling and advancement in gaming is refreshing. They're not old ideas or, like he insists, maybe they are and they've just been forgotten. Seeing them realized could very well be the next evolution in the ongoing fusion of narrative and gameplay. But first some things will have to change. We'll have to rethink the way that games are made from the ground up.
Hickman blames Dungeons & Dragons for a lot of that.
(Look,) he says, (D&D made us think that leveling is the point of the game but it's stifling in terms of actual play and no one's really doing anything about that. So many video games are more video than game. Oblivion was beautiful, but [it's] not a game.)
(So what would you do differently?)
Hickman pauses to collect his thoughts and when he speaks it's obvious that he has a plan. This isn't improv. He has a clear and definite idea as to how he believes that games should tell stories and by all accounts he should. He's been doing this for almost thirty years.
(I want someplace where I can visit and be part of a story,) he says. (Electronic games have no idea how to interface a player into a story. I find MMORPGs lacking in any real sense of play. Role-playing games in general are too complicated, too filled with minutiae, and they've forgotten how to be fun. Most of it is just chrome, spinning wheels and pinwheels that you tape to the antenna, and who cares?)
