Tag Archives: interactive narrative

INTERACTIVITY IN NARRATIVES….

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The Marie-Laure Ryan reading this week was all about interactivity in narratives in the DIGITAL world.

Overall, it was really interesting and I found the reading engaging enough to gather several takeaway ideas.

The key word in this area seems to be IMMERSIVE.

Game designer Chris Crawford says digital narratives “mandate choice for the user”.

  • No choice= no interactivity
  • “This is an absolute, uncompromising principle “

SO, interactivity seems to be the BIGGEST difference between “old” and “new” media.

But there are a few problems with working out how to be interactive in a narrative as Ryan says because narratives rely on linearity and unidirectionality of time, logic and causality. But interactivity is all about a nonlinear structure!

The key is to give users a “sense of freedom” while disguising the narrative design as an “emergent story”.

It all sounds pretty complicated, but the results definitely seem worthwhile!

It includes:

– Literary hypertext fiction

– Text based adventure games

– Interactive drama

– Single-user video games

– Multiple user online role playing games

//0.5 Reconfiguring Narrative

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This week’s reading was all about DIGITAL Narrative.
Remember those “Choose your own adventure” stories where you got to create the ending?
At the end of every few pages you had the choice to make a character do one of three actions…
“Pete runs to the basement…turn to page 56” etc
SO what does a choose your own adventure narrative look like in the digital age?
These are my KEY takeaway points from the reading:
  • Every digital narrative doesn’t take form of hypertext
  • Michale Joyce  was the first major author of hypertext fiction
  • Born out of desire to create multiple stories out of relatively small amount of text
  • It uses linking to grant the author even more power
  • Takes range of forms based on:
    Reader choice, intervention and empowerment
    Inclusion of extralinguistic texts (images, motion, sound)
    Complexity of network structure
    Degrees of multiplicity and variation in literary elements (plot, setting, characterisation)

AND finally this seems to sum it all up: “A fictional text must be stretched, skewered, and sliced if it is to exploit the freedoms and accept the responsibilities offered by hypertext technology and its new writing spaces” 

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