So, this weeks reading (or at least the parts I decided to actively involve my brain in) argued the differences between interactive narratives and print narratives. Interactive narrative is a pretty broad concept though.
If we’re gonna get really convoluted and deep about it, isn’t life just an interactive narrative? And we as humans are merely actors on a stage playing our part, each action and thought leading to our ultimate demise and end of out narrative? That’s probably looking a bit too far into it.
Print narrative is really only one thing. A book. But while that is considered the opposite to the interactive narrative, you’re still interacting with it, you are physically interacting with the words on paper, and the books itself. You mentally and subconsciously interact with the words you are reading and the themes present.
This reading seemed to condemn print narratives for being too linear, and celebrates interactive narrative for its lack of a linear narrative. I prefer the linear nature of print narratives, and even interactive narratives must have some kind of linearity. Even if you are dropped into the middle of a narrative, it is still the beginning of your journey within the narrative, and whenever you finish the narrative that is it’s end, regardless of whether the narrative concluded or not.
Print narratives are just given to us with the beginning and end made explicit. And I prefer that, because if an end isn’t made explicit, there isn’t closure to the narrative.
The reading got all deep about when a narrative ends; in that, all narratives end when our life ends, regardless of what part of the narrative we were up to. The example given, is the Titanic interactive CD-ROM, in which the person going through the narrative can find themselves in a sort of limbo, where they decide not to continue the narrative, and remain in a purgatory like state within the non-linear narrative. But what good is that? Why begin a narrative t any point only to be stuck within it making no progress.
Narratives are made to begin and end, and give the audience closure.
