In the July 2023 seminar, I presented my arguments for why we must build a new community for interactive storytelling, and why we must keep the games community, the interactive fiction community, and the academic community at arm’s length. I suggested that we should recruit from the “storytelling” community, but did not elaborate. In this essay, I shall provide more detail about the community from which we should recruit.
Wannabe writers should be our target. I’m guessing that there are more wannabe writers than wannabe game designers. Moreover, they are well-organized, with many supporting online groups. Granted, not many will be willing to go through the additional effort to learn how to build storyworlds. But even a small percentage of a huge community still amounts to a sizable group of candidates.
This target group requires an extremely simplified editor.