"Multimedia right now is a slobbering baby that is drooling all over my suit. I may love this baby, and know it is going to grow up to be something one day, but right now it's drooling on my suit." So said Michael Backes in his Saturday morning presentation at the Storytelling for the New Millennium conference.

In his commentary about the emerging creative world of multimedia, Backes mixed humor, allusions to literature and film, and his own creative experience to guide storytellers to success in this relatively new medium.

Emphasis on personal creativity versus creativity that is plagiarized or overshadowed by technological feats, was the main context of Backes' address.

He said a trend too common in Hollywood today is to remake formerly successful films, instead of relying on creativity to generate new stories. He related this to the interactive world by calling for more creativity in developing software titles, ones that truly rely on the gifts of the artist rather than showing what the tools can do. Backes said the utilization of tools to create digital materials still overrides the personal creativity of most artists using computers.

Doing only what the tool can do, in creating multimedia, is like "waiting for a novel to come out of a pencil," Backes said. "People put too much faith in the medium," he added. "Great art portrays a truth about beauty that comes from inner-creativity."

"In interactive games you have to trick them into thinking they have control," Backes commented. "The key to storytelling in writing multimedia, films or literature is based upon the relationship of content, context and conflict," he said.

Backes pointed to Virtua Fighter II, by Japanese software developer Joji Suzuki, as an interactive game that has gone beyond the stereotypical software scenarios. Suzuki's exhaustive research into various martial arts throughout the world, and mixing that knowledge with digital tools, has brought life to his games. Good interactive games must "give you an experience of perfection most people will never feel.takes you somewhere you can't (physically) go to experience a new world." He said too many interactive titles look like "a gallery filled with paintings by people from a paint company." "The spray can wouldn't have made Van Gogh a better painter," he added.

Quoting a fellow software developer, Backes said, "It's time to get away from virtual reality, to spend time in real reality, so we can do virtual reality." He said new interfaces are needed to make the experience of interaction with a computer screen more real, such as adding more audio and getting away from using just the keyboard to make contact.

"We've got a new medium, let's make some new stuff on it," Backes concluded.

Backes urged film and multimedia writers to seek out original stories about Kauai. "On Kauai, just driving in from the airport I come up with four ideas for movies," Backes said. "You could make a movie here about a plate lunch with two scoops rice and noodles."

Backes' screenwriting credits include working with Michael Crichton to bring to the screen Crichton's novels Rising Sun and Congo. He was Display Graphics Supervisor for Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and co-founded the digital media companies Rocket Science Games and Electric Communities. Currently, Backes is the special effects supervisor for Peacemaker, the first film to be produced by Dreamworks.