Although I don’t really understand video game, I was still really interested in the discussion of the difference between hypertext and narrative whether or not a video game could be considered hypertext narrative.

Since the first days of the web people have been talking about hypertext narrative – the ability to tell stories using nonlinear text, linked together and organized through the power of HTML.

In the mid 90′s there were many experiments in hypertext storytelling. Lots of interesting and entertaining work came out of that era, but the technology and user base weren’t mature enough to truly realize the potential of hypertext media for storytelling. Those early experiments led to a deep understanding of nonlinear stories, which we can see manifest in massive video games like Fallout – games that tell a cohesive character driven story while still allowing the player freedom to explore and perform actions in their own way.

While gaming matured and learned how to tell better stories in interactive and nonlinear ways, they are still defined by the concept of competition ( aim of winning) rather than narrative even they can have very cleaver story-lines but there is still the overwhelming desire to win the game.

Gaming is currently being applied to media as Adrian ‘s perspective about reality TV show such as XFactor as ‘games’ bought into reality.