Matt Soar is a co-developer of Korsakow and writes about what makes Korsakow different from other authoring programs, addresses some of people’s issues with it and explains where digital interactive narratives are heading.

Korsakow is an open source application, meaning that the original source code is freely available and can be redistributed and modified by the general public. One of the main positives of open source is that the works made last longer because the software is usually housed in publicly shared repositories, meaning that they are able to be modified and updates to the program won’t negatively affect already published works. The program doesn’t require any programming knowledge and is very simple to use.

Another positive of K-films is that they’re self-contained, aren’t networked, and don’t depend on links to media outside itself in order to be viewed. They can be exported and viewed on a hard drive using a web browser. This ensures that problems with outside links are avoided. K-films can also be continually updated with new material, or changes to original film with ease.

However, there are still some issues with Korsakow. While you can embed part or a whole K-film into a website, you are unable to embed online content (eg; YouTube video) into a K-film. K-films also depend on the viewer’s investment in watching and paying attention to the film; therefore the ‘success’ of a K-film depends on the subjectivity of the viewer.

Soar addresses some academics’ issues with Korsakow; one saying they don’t like how basic the program and subsequent films are and if there is a way to make them more appealing or attractive.  As Soar points out, the program is simple in nature and aesthetic to make it easier for authors to create their own films without fuss. He also makes a point that the main focus of K-films is the presence of the author’s voice in the work rather than creating a spectacular show for the viewer.

An interesting observation I took from this reading was Daniel’s note that “the act of designing the interface is a form of argument.” I never thought about how the interface the maker chooses itself can present their argument, and this is something I will keep in mind for my major project. Another interesting point by Soar himself is that he doesn’t believe Korsakow radically empowers the viewer to put them in the position of editor, but still does give them creative freedom in using their own perspective to create a story from what clips they choose to watch and in what sequence. This draws on Adrian’s point that we should be making K-films for ourselves rather than for a particular audience.

Soar’s argument that the keywords a maker chooses should be based on the meaning of the clips rather than the visual appearance of them confounded me as we have discussed all semester that we should be finding patterns between the clips and using them as keywords and allowing meaning to derive organically from how Korsakow links the clips together. This is really thinking in the opposite way, by finding the meaning of the clips and the film as a whole and working backwards rather than allowing the program to create a meaning from the keywords you have picked. My question then is, “Do you think we should have a clear understanding of the story or meaning of our K-film before we look at the patterns of the clips we have created?” “Should we allow meaning to be derived from the program itself, or try to have more control over it?”

Soar also points out that works created by Adobe Flash player are reliant on Adobe’s continued investment in the application, drawing comparisons to Korsakow’s donations based funding. My question to this is, “Will the future of authoring programs rely on donations and crowd-funding rather than corporate funding? If so, will these programs (including Korsakow) be able to survive on donations?”