“Warren [Spector] would have us believe that it's easier to adapt a linear narrative to an interactive medium, than to adapt one form of linear narrative (say, print) to another (say, film). This is a load of horseshit. As an example, consider the hoops that poor Raph Koster and his team have had to jump through; they know full well that every player of Star Wars Galaxies is going to want to be a Jedi (well, except for me--I want to be Jabba the Hutt, or possibly one of the clone traders), yet they're forced by the nature of the universe to make Jedi powers scarce--frustrating the desires of their players in order to kowtow to the Sacred Vision of George. Linear narrative forces you to make decisions (he is the only Klingon in Starfleet; he is the last of the Jedi; he alone defends the bridge to Helms Deep; if she does not marry now she will be an old maid of 26 and unmarriageable; if he does not defy his stepfather now the Kingdom of Denmark is lost; under the force of Soviet oppression, what is a intellectual forced to paint houses to do but despair and fuck as many women as possible even at the expense of his own marriage) that are simply untenable in an interactive product where alternative decisions must be equally tenable.”