This week we’re going to look a bit further into participatory practices and the history of participation in art, media and documentary. This site gives a bit of an overview of participation over the last century.

YOUR TASK
Flipped lecture: come to the tutorial with an example of a participatory project that you find interesting, successful, problematic or inspiring for your own project.

Please read at least one of the following – making notes of any interesting points or questions you have.
Strategies of Participation: Sandra Guadenzi
Documentary Ecosystems: Collaboration and Exploitation: Jon Dovey
Toward a Theory of Participatory New Media Documentary: Patricia Zimmermann

And for a manifesto on the importance of collaborative and participatory documentary practices, this list by Reece Auguiste, Helen De Michiel, Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz, and Patricia R. Zimmermann outlines a number of considerations and questions about these practices and spaces.

Participatory art

Art that involves some kind of audience participation or collaboration is not a new phenomenon. In 1910 the Italian Futurists began holding art performances in which they confronted audiences with inflammatory political texts, poetry, music and visual art. At the Teatro Lirico in Milan one evening in February 1910, the author of the Futurist Manifesto, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, provoked the audience into throwing fruit at him by crying ‘Long live war, sole hygiene of the world!’.

Gerardo Dottori’s ink-sketch Futurist Serata in Perugia (1914)

The French Dadaists held similar events where they attempted to provoke audiences into hurling food at them. These artists sought to engage the working classes in artistic performances in order to break the aristocracy’s monopoly on culture. They also wanted to devalue the art object as a marketable commodity.

YARD (1961), Allan Kaprow

In the 1960s in Europe and the US artists held less overtly political performances that demanded audience participation, known as ‘Happenings’. These events were designed to challenge conventional views of art and everyday life. For instance, Allan Kaprow made YARD (1961) in the sculpture garden of the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. It consisted of hundreds of used tyres covering the ground in no particular order. Visitors were encouraged to walk on the tyres, and to throw them around as they pleased.

In the past two decades, collaborative art practices have both undergone significant development. Whilst participatory art practices traditionally occurred on the fringes of the art world, since the 1990s they have become a fully-fledged art genre. The art historian Claire Bishop writes that public participation in art projects is now a near global phenomenon, reaching from the Americas to Asia and Europe (2012).

Some recent examples of participatory art:

They shoot horses (2004), Phil Collins

Collins held a disco-dancing marathon for teenagers in Ramallah. “Collins paid nine teenagers to dance continuously for eight hours, on two consecutive days, in front of a garish pink wall to an unrelentingly cheesy compilation of pop hits from the past four decades. The teenagers are mesmerizing and irresistible as they move from exuberant partying to boredom and finally exhaustion.” (Bishop 2005)

References

Bishop, C. 2005. The social turn: Collaboration and its discontents. Artforum.

Bishop, C. 2012, Artificial Hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, Verso Books, New York.

Dottori, G. 1914, Futurist Serata in Perugia

Kaprow, A. 1961, YARD (installation)

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WEB 2.0

Just as audience members have moved from observing to participating in art works, online users have moved from viewing web pages to actively generating web content. The term Web 2.0 describes those websites that:

• allow users add their own data
• collect user data as a side-effect of their use of the site (O’Reilly 2005).

The phenomenon of audience participation in web publishing has been described as the ‘network society’ (Castells 2000) and ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins 2009). This new culture encourages online participation by having:

• “relatively low barriers to artistic expression”
• “strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations”
• and cultivating social connections amongst its members (Jenkins 2009, p. xi).

Web 2.0 sites are designed to make publishing text, photos, videos or tags both easy and socially rewarding. Users socially reward others for publishing material by:

• commenting
• tagging (labelling)
• liking
• linking (making a connection between personal web pages)
• retweeting or reposting (republishing with attribution) their contributions.

The Wisdom of Crowds

When a large group of people participate in an online activity, they are thought to form a collective intelligence that is superior, in terms of problem-solving and creativity, to the intelligence of any single group member. This concept is described as ‘the wisdom of crowds‘ (Surowiecki 2004), and the ‘hive mind’ (Kroski 2005). Crowdsourcing, which can be described as the request for ideas, content and labour from a large group of online participants, is thought to harness this superior collective intelligence and has become a commonplace feature of the web.

Crowdsourcing is frequently used to invite and enable the public to participate in art projects (Howe 2006) and is a strategy employed by a number of high-profile artists (Jenkins 2014). Online crowdsourced art has emerged as “a significant development across the entire artistic spectrum, from visual arts to music to creative writing” (Literat 2012).

A prominent example of a visual artwork that utilises crowdsourcing is The Johnny Cash Project (Milk 2010). The project website invites people to trace, by hand, a single frame of the film clip for the Johnny Cash song “Ain’t No Grave”. People rate the most popular frames and these are joined together to form an ever-evolving animation.

Using a similar approach the composer Eric Whitacre has crowdsourced several choral compositions as part of his Virtual Choir project (Whitacre 2009-2014). Utilising the video-sharing platform, Youtube, Whitacre sent out a call for participation in his composition Lux Aurumque. Participants filmed their own performances, uploaded them, and Whitacre edited them together. The finished composition comprised individual recordings by 185 singers from 12 countries.

The avant-garde artists who created participatory artworks in the previous century have strongly influenced those producing crowdsourced art. As Bishop explains, the authors of participatory artworks tend to have a common desire to subvert traditional relationships between the art object, the artist and the audience (2012). Crowdsourced artworks are also seen as a means of challenging traditional ideas about authorship and creativity (Literat 2012) and democratising art production (Stoddart 2009). Like offline participatory artworks, crowdsourced art works aim to build community through collaboration and sharing (Xiao 2009a) and to offer participants liberating vehicles for self-expression (Literat 2012).

Further research:

Examine audience engagement strategies in the following Idfa DOCLAB winners:

Serial (2014): http://serialpodcast.org/

Alma – the webdocumentary (2013): http://alma.arte.tv/en/webdoc/

Examine models of audience support examples in the following crowdfunding sites: Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/), Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/) – search for ‘documentary’, ‘webseries’ etc.

References

Bishop, C 2012, Artificial Hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, Verso Books, New York.

Castells, M 2000, The Rise of The Network Society, Blackwell Publishing, Hoboken, N.J.

Howe, J 2006, ‘The rise of crowdsourcing’, Wired magazine, issue 14.06, pp.1-4.

Jenkins, H 2009, Confronting the challenges of participatory culture, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Jenkins, H 2014, ‘Rethinking “Rethinking Convergence/Culture”‘, Cultural Studies, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 1–31

Kroski, E 2005, ‘The hive mind: Folksonomies and user-based tagging’, InfoTangle Blog, accessed April 2, 2014, from <http://web20bp.com/13z2a6019/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The-Hive-Mind-Folksonomies-2005.pdf>

Literat, I 2012, ‘The work of art in the age of mediated participation: Crowdsourced art and collective creativity’, International Journal of Communication, vol. 6, p. 23.

Milk, C 2010, The Johnny Cash Project, accessed April 2, 2014, from <http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/‎>

OReilly, T 2005, ‘What Is Web 2.0’, O’Reilly Network, accessed April 29, 2014, from <http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html>

Whitacre, E 2009-2014, Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir, accessed April 2, 2014, from <http://ericwhitacre.com/the-virtual-choir>

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AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION 

Storytelling is no longer just about transmission, it is also about engagement. We are all competing for attention in an information saturated society. According to some reports you have less that eight seconds to engage someone online before they click away. Storytelling for the 21st century has to include a narrative that draws our attention and a strategy of community engagement.

Advertising, public relations, marketing and journalism are converging. Traditional advertising doesn’t work any more. The world is saturated with advertising images and the public are highly suspicious of any company making unsubstantiated claims about their products. Public relations and marketing are now about opening a conversation with consumers and connecting with them in a more honest, transparent and authentic manner. In this regard, marketers can learn a lot from storytellers and journalists.

On the other hand, storytellers and journalists now have to think more like businesses and seek new ways to get a return on their investment (ROI). In other words, they need to find new ways to capitalise on the time, energy and resources they expend creating their content. In finding, engaging their audience and profiting from their audience, they need to think more like marketers.

Different levels and types of participation

Elan Lee, of 42 Entertainment and Fourth Wall Studios, was one of the earliest designers of alternate reality games (ARGs). An ARG is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, and often involves multiple types of media and game elements. In 2004 he created I Love Bees, an ARG designed to promote the Xbox game Halo 2 (2004). I Love Bees was modelled on Orson Welles 1938 radio play, War of the Worlds. It was a six-hour radio drama broadcast over thousands of payphones around the world. Every time a phone was answered, that portion of the audio was then unlocked on the I Love Bees website.

Lee groups users into three categories: Casual, Active and Enthusiastic. The group at the bottom of the pyramid (Enthusiastic) are the ones who participate wholeheartedly in Lee’s alternate reality games. The Casual and Active groups watch from the sidelines and are occasionally inspired to join the Enthusiastic group. As Lee puts it: “Cause they’re watching, like ‘Oh my god, these guys are going out in hurricanes and answering payphones!’ And you have all that insanity. And what happens is that triangle grows, because people from the top, every once in a while they trickle down to the middle. And people at the middle level start to trickle down to the bottom level. And that bottom level grows when there’s more core players doing more and more and more, the whole triangle grows because now there’s more to be entertained by.”

Here is a chart of different types of online participators, put together by Forrester Research (2008):

Forrester’s Social Technographics data classifies consumers by country, gender and age via this social technology profile tool.

Videogame players

The game designer Tracy Fullerton identifies the following types of player:

1. The Competitor: Plays to best other players, regardless of the game
2. The Explorer: Curious about the world, loves to go adventuring; seeks outside boundaries – physical or mental
3. The Collector: Acquires items, trophies, or knowledge; likes to create sets, organize history, etc.
4. The Achiever: Plays for varying levels of achievement; ladders and levels incentivize the achiever
5. The Joker: Doesn’t take the game seriously – plays for the fun of playing; there’s a potential for jokers to annoy serious players, but on the other hand, jokers can make the game more social than competitive
6. The Artist: Driven by creativity, creation, design
7. The Director: Loves to be in charge, direct the play
8. The Storyteller: Loves to create or live in worlds of fantasy and imagination
9. The Performer: Loves to put on a show for others
10. The Craftsman: Wants to build, craft, engineer, or puzzle things out (Fullerton 2008, p.90)

As Fullerton points out, there are many other types of player not mentioned in this list, some of whom are not well served by today’s video games.

Not every player likes the same challenges or experiences. People have a variety of needs and interests and it is important to consider the type of person you are designing for. For instance, what types of interactivity might you design for your user? Here are some characteristics of interactive activities that you could experiment with:

1. Tests of skill – users like to test how good they are at something.
2. Competition – users like to test their skills or wits against others.
3. Cause and Effect – users like to find out what will happen when they perform a certain action. This allows them to work out the answer to a question through trial and error.
4. Feedback – using a simulation is like having a conversation: you perform an action and you receive immediate feedback on how you went.
5. Incentives and Rewards – users like achievable goals and payoffs.
6. Levels of Difficulty – users like the focused tension they experience when attempting a difficult challenge. When they overcome the challenge they experience a feeling of achievement and release. It’s a bit like climbing a high mountain.
7. Repeatability – when aspects of a simulation are repeatable, users feels in control. You could undermine this feeling of control by introducing elements of randomness.
8. Level of Randomness – users know what will happen but not where or when. This builds a sense of tension.

Profiling your ideal audience

Can you characterise the ideal viewer/user of your digital narrative? Here are some (but by no means all) user/viewer characteristics that may be relevant to your audience:

• Age – children, teenagers, baby-boomers, young adults, over 65, in their thirties
• Gender – mostly male, mostly female or both in equal numbers
• Social group – family with young children, seniors
• Language – English as first language, English as a second language
• Education – school, college, university, post-graduate
• Expectations – what they expect based on their experience with similar websites or games
• Existing knowledge – If non-fiction, how much they already know about the content? If a game, what similar games are they familiar with? If an animation, what other animations are they familiar with?
• Web and computer experience – low, medium, high
• Device – Mac/PC, mobile, console, small/large monitor, other?
• Software – OS, latest software updates, browser software and version
• Internet speed – slow, standard, fast
• Location – local, national, international, urban, regional, remote
• Where – home, school, work, library, public spaces, in transit (car/plane/train)
• When – during work hours, during a lunch-break, after the children are in bed, weekends, at night, early morning
• Why – to be informed, complete a task, seek an answer, buy something, entertainment, training
• Learning preferences – visual (learns by reading and watching), auditory (learns by listening and speaking), kinaesthetic (learns by doing)
• Income – what can they afford to buy? what are they willing to pay for?
• Work attributes – employee, home duties, shift-worker, academic, professional, business owner, executive, carer, unemployed, volunteer, specific industry sector

References

Fullerton, T 2008, Game Design Workshop, Second Edition: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games (Gama Network Series), Morgan Kaufmann, Massachusetts.

Forrester Research 2008, Forrester’s North American Media & Marketing Online Survey, http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2007-06-10/chart-who-participates-and-what-people-are-doing-online

Ipsos MediaCT 2015, 2015 Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry, Entertainment Software Association. Available: http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ESA-Essential-Facts-2015.pdf

Phoebe 2010, Elan Lee wants you to convert part of your life into the storytelling experience, http://workbookproject.com/culturehacker/2010/07/27/elan-lee-the-rolling-stone-interview-part-ii/

Further reading:

Morse T 2014, ‘All Together Now: Artists and Crowdsourcing’, ARTNEWS, http://www.artnews.com/2014/09/02/artists-and-crowdsourcing/

Situationist International: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SvdWk8zRrI

Lots coming out of the theatre tradition, Jason Mailing et al: http://www.jasonmaling.com/#

Live art: http://www.triageliveartcollective.com/

Festival of Live art: http://fola.com.au/

http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/about/what-is-live-art/

DATABASE NARRATIVES

As you’ll remember from the Rose reading last week, under the influence of the internet “a new type of narrative is emerging – one that’s told through many media at once in a way that’s nonlinear, that’s participatory and often gamelike, and that’s designed above all to be immersive” (2011, p. 3).

As you work towards pitching your own ‘new direction in narrative’, we offer another nonlinear narrative theory, that of the database narrative.

In his discussion of the principle of variability, Lev Manovich suggests a form of nonlinear narrative, which he calls a database narrative. In this model a narrative is fragmented into self-contained records and stored in a database. These self-contained records are called chunks, narremes or modules and could be text passages, individual images, or video clips. In theory, the database contains a collection of items or story fragments that the user can put back together in different orders and combinations to generate a wide variety of narratives.

According to Manovich’s theory, the variability of a database narrative is only possible because of its modularity. In other words, because the narrative modules are not hard-wired together they can be arranged into many different sequences. It is the user, in collaboration with the automated software, who performs this arrangement of narrative modules into a variety of sequences. To describe how the variability of a database narrative works, Manovich offers the following analogy of a film editor who creates a narrative from a database of film footage. Usually the editor is working under the instruction of the film’s director, so both are responsible for the narrative of the film. Manovich writes, “During editing the editor constructs a film narrative out of this database, creating a unique trajectory through the conceptual space of all possible films which could have been constructed” (2001, p. 208). Similarly, the user of a database narrative constructs a sequence from its database of narrative modules. In doing so, the user performs one of the tasks traditionally performed by the storyteller, namely, re-ordering narrative elements into a sequence.

Whilst Manovich calls some films ‘database cinema’  – most notably Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera (1929) –  he defines the database narrative as a purely digital phenomenon. For other theorists, however, database narrative can also be found in literature and cinema (Kinder 2002; Kinder 2003; Bizzocchi 2005). The new media theorist, Marsha Kinder, defines database narrative as “narratives whose structure exposes or thematizes the dual processes of selection and combination that lie at the heart of all stories” (2003, p. 6). She sees such narratives “throughout the entire history of cinema, from the early cinema of attractions to the present” (2003, p. 4). Some of the films she terms database narratives are Groundhog Day (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), Memento (2000), and Run Lola Run (1998). To this list the media theorist Jim Bizzocchi adds Rashomon (1950), Timecode (2000), and the BBC adaptation of The Norman Conquests (1977).

The defining feature of these narratives is that they challenge the traditional mode of chronological ordering. Each of these narratives is ordered, to some extent, by point-of-view, spatial location, reverse chronology, or chronological looping.

For Manovich, the principle of variability is strongly related to the concept of customisation. He writes that the logic of new media corresponds to the logic of post-industrial society where “every citizen can construct her own custom lifestyle and “select” her ideology from a large (but not infinite) number of choices” (2001, p. 60). For instance, Manovich writes that the user of a hypertext can produce her own version of the work “by selecting a particular path through it” (2001, p. 61). For Manovich the variable work is an improvement on the one-size fits all model of traditional media. He writes, “new media technology acts as the most perfect realisation of the utopia of an ideal society composed from unique individuals” (2001, p. 61). The user doesn’t receive a ‘one-size fits all’ narrative. Instead, she is able to construct her own unique narrative and thus, she is re-assured that she, too, is unique.

Can a narrative that has been customised on the fly ever really be a genuine improvement over a narrative that has been skilfully crafted over months or years? Perhaps the real strength of a database narrative is that it allows the user can generate many unique sequences, which combine to form a very different experience of a narrative.

Rhizome narratives

In botany, a rhizome is a root or underground stem that sends out shoots from its nodes. No two rhizomes are ever identical. The philosophers Deleuze and Guattari use the term rhizome to describe a web-like, non-linear, decentralised structure that can be entered or exited at multiple points. A narrative with a rhizome structure may have a defined beginning and ending, as in this diagram, but in its centre each node may be linked to any other node.

Here are some examples of rhizome narratives.

Waterlife	Universe Within	The Whale Hunt
Content: The story of the great lakes in Canada. Text info, voice over, haunting music. Buttons animate. Links to external websites.	Content: stories about individuals living in highrises all over the world	Content: documents an Inupiat whale hunt in Barrow, Alaska.
Interface: Choose one of the 24 topics on the left side of the screen. Clicking one of the tiny images will also take you to one of these 24 topics.	Interface: click on different ‘rooms’ via world map or via face menu. Once in a room, scroll around and click different graphics to view movies.	Interface: interactive timeline, mosaic or pinwheel interface.

The challenge of this structure is to create a narrative interface that allows the user to access the rhizome structure in a systematic manner. As Marie-Laure Ryan, a digital media theorist, explains, an author can reconcile database and narrative by creating “a database design and a linking philosophy sufficiently transparent to enable the readers to aim with precision at the elements of the story that they want to expand” (2006). For Ryan, if the content of a database narrative and its interface are constructed appropriately, “the unpredictable probes and always incomplete exploration of the reader will not prevent the emergence of narrative meaning” (2006, p.149).

In The Whale Hunt users can isolate different thematic or spatial groups of images using the metadata that Harris has assigned to each image. According to Manovich, “Metadata is what allows computers to ‘see’ and retrieve data, move it from place to place, compress it and expand it, connect data with other data, and so on” (2002, p. 1). The user utilises the metadata of the work by clicking on the ‘change constraints’ button and opening the constraints panel (figure 8). This panel allows the user to find particular image groupings within the thousands of images contained in the work. The constraints are organised into four categories: ‘cast’, ‘concept’, ‘context’ and ‘cadence’. Clicking on these constraints will progressively narrow the number of images available on the main screen.

The constraints work by filtering photos according to their metadata. For instance, if the user chooses ‘Joe’ from the ‘Cast’ constraints, only the images with the metadata tag ‘Joe’ will be available on the main screen. If, in addition, the user chooses the concept ‘food’, only the images with the metadata tags ‘Joe’ and ‘food’ will be available. As the user selects each constraint, the photos without that tag disappear from the main screen. The constraints can be progressively chosen until the number of available photos decreases to zero.

YOUR TASKS

Flipped lecture: come to the tutorial with an example of a narrative that ‘challenge the traditional mode of chronological ordering’. If you can show us something on screen, even better!

Pitch preparation: come to the tutorial with a draft of your ‘logline’, or short 1-3 sentence summary of your digital narrative, for me and your peers to workshop with you.

If you haven’t already emailed through your BLOG URL, it’s very important you do so ASAP.

References:

Bizzocchi, J. (2005) “Run, Lola, Run: film as narrative database” (university paper, draft available here).

Kinder, M. (2003) “Designing a Database Cinema,” in J. Shaw & P. Weibels (eds.) Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary After Film (pp. 346-353) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 348-49.

Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Rose, F. (2011) The Art of Immersion: how the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories, W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London

Ryan, M-L. (2006) Avatars of Story, Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press

Linear and Nonlinear Plot Structures

The question we’re asking in this course is: how does our idea of story and narrative need to change and adapt to other forms?

As Hudson and Zimmerman remind us, “Projects unfold across different platforms (e.g. computer screens, mobile screens, gallery spaces, open streets, public squares, private malls, social media, narrowcasting) and in different iterations (e.g. websites, downloads, videos, images, video games, performances) to convene critically engaged media users” (2015, p. 2), and that, therefore, “Digital technologies challenge us to redefine media and conventions based on analogue technologies” (2015, p. 4)

As an introduction to ways to start thinking about this, read the Prologue to The Art of Immersion: how the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories (2011), p. 1-8.

This week we will be looking at the structural complexity of some digital narratives. In particular we will look at how the modularity and variability of digital narratives can appear in a variety of different structures.

Modules, in the context of digital narrative, can also be called units, chunks, narremes, modules, clips or scenes. Structuring narrative modules can also be called recombining, ordering, linking, tagging, branching, scoring, and designing navigation or paths.

The structure we are all most familiar with is a linear order, in which each module is linked to the next one and the only choice is backwards and forwards.

But today we’re exploring branching, multilinear, and emergent narratives.

We are looking at these structures so that you can consider options for your proposed project.

LINEAR NARRATIVES IN VIDEOGAMES

Let’s think about how games are structured for a moment. Whether or not you plan to develop a game for your digital narrative proposal, thinking about their structures might help us expand our thinking beyond the traditional, linear narratives that we unpacked in the first flipped lecture.

Linear narratives are ones that move from the beginning to the end in the following fashion:

In games, linear narratives often serve as a backstory to the main activity.

Just like in traditional drama or film, the backstory establishes historical events that are relevant to the action of the game. In doing so, the backstory introduces us to the period, setting, and characters of the game. The backstory often concludes with an event that upsets the status quo and creates the conflict or the problem for the player to solve (Fullerton 2008, p. 90). This problem provides the motivation for the player to act. It also provides the objective, in other words, what the player must do to solve the problem or conflict. On the way to solving this problem the player will encounter a number of obstacles.

NONLINEAR STORIES

Some games, however, allow the player to make choices that alter the story. According to Jesse Schell, a Professor and formerly a Creative Director of the Walt Disney Imagineering VR Studio, games are not the only medium that invites the audience to make decisions. Whether we are reading a book, watching a film, or playing a video game, we are constantly making decisions: “’What will happen next?’ ‘What should the hero do?’ ‘Where did that rabbit go?’ ‘Don’t open that door!’ The difference only comes in the participant’s ability to take action” (quoted in Fullerton 2008, p.102). In a game, the decisions, choices and actions of the player can affect the events and/or the ending of the story.

Adams notes that there are three ways in which the player’s choices can affect the story or plot structure of a game:

1. The player can make a choice, or perform an action, that has an immediate impact on story events. For instance, the player can choose to either fight or flee from an enemy.
2. The player can make a choice, or perform an action, that has a deferred influence on story story. For instance, the player might choose to spare the life of a character who then comes back to attack them in a later scene.
3. The player can make a whole series of decisions that cumulatively affect the story. For instance, many role-playing games (RPGs) use cumulative influence to build up a ‘reputation’ (based on a scoring system) for the player. The player’s reputation will cause non-player characters (NPCs) to treat them differently. (Adams 2010, p.170)

NONLINEAR STORY STRUCTURES

There are three main nonlinear story structures in games: branching, multilinear, and emergent.

Branching stories


At certain points in the branching story, the player can make a choice about what happens next. Each choice leads to more choices, so that the story expands to look like a tree branch.

Branching narratives are difficult to produce on a large scale. They can quickly become enormous, which poses a problem for developers. They require a lot more content than linear stories and thus developing a branching narrative takes longer and costs more. Branching narratives may also require more complex storytelling engines to keep track of all the player’s decisions. As Schell puts it:

“It seems so simple to propose: I’ll give the player three choices in this scene, and three in the next, and so on. But let’s say your story is 10 choices deep — if each choice leads to a unique event, and three new choices, you will need to write 88,573 different outcomes to the choices the player will make.” (Schell 2009, p.267)

Branching stories are also difficult to write. They are prone to continuity errors (inconsistencies between past and present events), and they trade the emotional power of a linear story for the player’s freedom to choose. It is very difficult to write multiple plot lines that are all equally engaging and dramatic.

Even multiple endings can be problematic. Players want to know if the ending they experienced was the ‘real’ ending and whether they have to play the entire game again to see the other endings.

Multilinear Stories

A multilinear or foldback story is a compromise between a linear and a branching story structure. In this story, the player can make some decisions, but he or she cannot avoid certain important story events. On replaying the game, the player may notice that the apparent control she had on the first play through was an illusion (Adams 2010, p.174).

Schell, calls this a string of pearls structure:

“The idea is that a completely non-interactive narrative (the string) is presented in the form of text, a slideshow, or an animated sequence and then the player is given a period of free movement and control (the pearl) with a fixed goal in mind. When the goal is achieved, the player travels down the string via another non-interactive sequence, to the next pearl, etc. In other words, cut scene, game level, cut scene, game level…” (Schell 2009, p. 265)

Nevertheless, this model provides the player with both a certain degree of freedom and a satisfying dramatic structure. For this reason, the multilinear narrative is the most commonly used, and the most commercially successful, of the nonlinear narrative structures (Adams 2010, p.174).

Emergent stories

The final nonlinear narrative structure is the emergent story. We can define an emergent story as one where the story is generated by the interaction of the player.

This kind of story does not have predefined story sequences – the game is more like an authoring environment and stories emerge as we play with it. In games like The Sims (2000 – 2015), for instance, players can use the characters and settings provided to create their own stories. This game provides an environment that is ripe with narrative possibilities. Objects perform clear narrative functions, for instance, “newspapers communicate job information”. The characters have distinct personalities and their conflicting desires can produce interesting dramas (Jenkins 2004, p.120-122). Schell calls games such as The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon (2003) story machines because they produce new stories.

Back in 2006, two PhD students (Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern) developed Facade. It is an artificial intelligence based interactive story. In this game the player is a close friend of a couple, Grace and Trip, who are having relationship issues. The player is invited to Grace and Trip’s home for cocktails. The player can type sentences to ‘speak’ with the couple and thus determine the outcome of their conflict. Watch the trailer and/or download the game for an early example of developing an emergent narrative.

Even in an emergent narrative, however, the player is not entirely free. The player can only do what the core mechanics of the game allow him or her to do. In addition, some argue, these games do not reliably produce stories that are believable, coherent, or dramatic (Adams 2010, p.170).

Next week (week 4) we will look at another, less game-specific, non-linear structures from film, television and online, including database narratives and rhizome narratives. You will be asked to bring an example of a non-linear narrative to the tutorial next week – so start looking out for them now 🙂

References

Adams, E & Rollings, A 2010, Fundamentals of Game Design, New Riders, Berkeley, CA.

Facade, 2005, video game, Michael Mateas & Andrew Stern, Pittsburgh, PA.

Fullerton, T 2008, Game Design Workshop, Second Edition: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games (Gama Network Series), Morgan Kaufmann, Massachusetts.

Hudson D and Patricia R. Zimmerman 2015. Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places, Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan.

Jenkins, H 2004, ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’, [in] First Person : New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, (Eds, Wardrip-Fruin, N & Harrigan, P) MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 118 – 128.

Rose, F 2011, The Art of Immersion: how the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories, W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London

Schell, J 2009, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, Amsterdam, Boston.

Rollercoaster Tycoon, 2003, video game, Chris Sawyer Productions, Dunblane.

The Sims, 2000-2015, video game, Electronic Arts, California.