Hi everyone !

I'm a young french student, and a wannabe game designer. And to help my fellow french wannabe gamedesigners, I would like to translate the famous Dragon Speech, a lecture that Chris Crawford gave at the 1992 GDC, which still is, I think, very inspiring and interesting.

So I listened to it over and over again, patiently writing every word and every sentence I could understand, in order to translate it later.

Thanks to an essay written by Chris Crawford and based on the lecture, I even managed to fill some holes between the parts of the video recording (here it is, for those who are interested : http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/the-journal-of-computer/jcgd-volume-6/i-had-a-dream.html).

But here's the problem, the sound quality of the only recording I found isn't very good, and Chris speaks quite fast for my poor french ears. That's why I need some help from native english speakers in order to complete the entire transcription.

There is not a lot of work left to do, and I managed to make it easier by dividing the transcription into little chunks and writing the timecode for each one of them. The only parts for which in need help are the parts in bold (I wrote the words that I thought understand, but...), and maybe, if you're very brave, to re-read in order to check if I didn't make mistakes.

So, if you have a little spare time, could you take a look at it ? Even if it's only to improve one chunk, or to correct one word, it would be a lot for me.

Here is the complete speech :

And here is the transcript :

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For people who are willing to help, I thank you in advance, very very much !

And for the other people, if you don't know Chris Crawford or this lecture, or if you haven't seen it for a while, I'm pretty sure it deserve one hour of your time ! ^^

Thanks again, and please excuse my english mistakes.

Well, I don't know what a "pantomem" might be, or what he is saying at 3:41 or 7:57. But other than that I went through the first 15 minutes [I was hypnotized by Chris Crawford all but foaming at the mouth and could not stop watching] and corrected everything I could find to correct. Cool lecture, I never actually heard it before.

BTW I laughed so hard at "there are lots of people who can duck? eyes? and frosties?" (dot “i”s and cross “t”s) "Siblings" (kidneys) was entertaining too.

Also, in the translation you might want to add a footnote to the part about the kittens learning by playing. It is not Chris Crawford's original idea. This idea, memetic play, goes back to Aristotle's Poetics.

Thank you very much for your help, and glad I made you laugh :p

Thanks for the idea of memetic play too, I didn't knew that the idea was that old.

You're welcome, and I enjoyed listening to the speech. If you have any questions about what a figure of speech or piece of slang means, I'm happy to explain that kind of thing. I myself was curious about the context of the end, where Mr. Crawford says he's leaving town but going to keep pursuing the dragon. Was he making a career change when he gave that lecture?

Exactly. After he gave this lecture, he left his game design career (that's why he don't come back in the room at the end), and worked full-time on interactive storytelling. All he did after was researching on, writing about and making interactive storytelling games (or must we say works ?).

His book "Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling" is very interesting, and describe well what is this new medium, what he did, and give ideas and tips to build your own crafts if you're interested.

Thanks for the proposal, if I'm stuck on something, I'll think of you ^^

This is slightly off topic, but for anyone who haven't seen this I strongly recommend watching the lecture. The passion Mr. Crawford puts into the presentation is mind boggling.

It would be interesting topic of conversation to discuss whether his conclusion that interactive storytelling is (was) the future is really true. From a business point of view, I think all his attempts to create such games are failures. However, I would classify a recent game such as Beyond Two Souls as Interactive story telling. Maybe not in the way Chris Crawford envisioned, but similar. Is there a whole new genre of games, which potential is not fully discovered yet?

This is slightly off topic, but for anyone who haven't seen this I strongly recommend watching the lecture. The passion Mr. Crawford puts into the presentation is mind boggling.

It would be interesting topic of conversation to discuss whether his conclusion that interactive storytelling is (was) the future is really true. From a business point of view, I think all his attempts to create such games are failures. However, I would classify a recent game such as Beyond Two Souls as Interactive story telling. Maybe not in the way Chris Crawford envisioned, but similar. Is there a whole new genre of games, which potential is not fully discovered yet?

I was very surprised by the concept "quit game design to do interactive storytelling" since I normally consider interactive storytelling to be a subfield within game design. I consider Skyrim and similar recent RPG/FPS games in the Fable tradition to be at least rudimentary interactive story games. I also think that adult gamers now, people in the 30 and up demographic, are getting tired of the classic game type Mr. Crawford was saying everyone wanted more of. I think older gamers are divided into those who think the only worthwhile gameplay comes from interacting with other players, especially in PvP, vs. those who are primarily interested in sandbox-sim play. Neither of these are story-focused game genres. Classic RPGs and MMOs are some of the most story-focused game genres, but they have established a bad reputation for themselves by often having poor quality stories, and until recently, almost always having stories that that player can impact in any way except triggering it to move ahead. At the same time in our culture, we have been in a period where writing fiction has become less of a narrow professional field and more of a wide amateur one; we have more free fiction available than ever, with a corresponding decrease in perceived $ value of stories; it's generally agreed that quests are more expensive per hour of resulting gameplay than other types of content creation, and players aren't willing to pay more for story-rich hours of gameplay than story-poor ones. Cinematics are much, much more expensive per hour of play. The companies that have recently made a big profit off of a story-rich interactive game will probably make a sequel, and some other companies will try to imitate these successful games (there might actually be some good Skyrim clones popping up in the next year or two) but currently I think we are seeing the second big age of popularity for the Sim genre.

Well, I am no way near a native but tend to believe first one is "pendulum"

Well, I don't know what a "pantomem" might be, or what he is saying at 3:41 or 7:57.

Native American-English speaker here specializing in "Deep South Twang".

(Not Native-American [Indian{1/16th Cherokee, but that's beside the point}], though)

Living in Louisville, KY but have relatives out in the boonies on both ends of the state.

I think that when he says "pantomem" he is trying (unsuccessfully) to say "potentiometer" which is a variable resistor.

(It helps that he gave the context clue of capacitor just after he said it.)

3:41 - Hard to hear because of the audience laughter, but I believe he is saying "I needed to understand graphics and key code". (Not 100% sure on the italics.)

7:57 - That's just a stutter to gather his thoughts. He stutters the word "the" twice before enunciating it clearly.

@ Luke: You want to translate all this? Wow. That's a chore for anyone, but with added complication multipliers for foreigners. (Which can include the American Northeast!)

I'll help in any way I can. Just leave the timestamps for any unclear audio you don't understand and I'll respond with my best "plain English" translation. Like I said, I can understand the "Deep South Twang" very well having grown up with friends and (distant) family speaking this way most of my life. Thankfully, I learned not to talk like this in all but the rudest company.

@meatsack Haha, yes I am from the Northeast. I've heard people speak with his accent before, of course, and I found him easy to understand where there isn't noise interference, but it's not my native accent.