Let’s not talk about writing for a moment.
I’m a visual person. I love graphic novels, movies, animation and art. I don’t play video games much, but that’s because I don’t like to shoot things. I don’t enjoy my personal skill levels determining whether I get to reach the next stage of the narrative, mainly because I’m bad at it and don’t really tend to get anywhere. In terms of personal appeal, graphics trump text every time.
If we consider videogames that veer away from the interactivity that defines so much of the genre and yet still manage to produce engaging and successful content, two in particular stand out to me:
The Stanley Parable, for instance, derives its entertaining qualities less from the actual gameplay (which is nothing special for a first-person adventure game and has been criticized by the gaming community for “lacking challenge”) and more from the narrator’s commentary on said gameplay – pre-emptively stating what ‘Stanley’ is ‘going’ to do and making sarcastic comments when the person at the controls decides to explore another route. Stanley-players often find themselves ‘disobeying’ the narrator just to see how the disembodied, increasingly exasperated voice will react. Contrary to most games of any sort, the player’s objective here isn’t to win as quickly as possible. Instead, the most entertaining aspect of the game is to drag out the story for as long as one can.
Similarly simple in concept and yet still in contrast, Dear Esther is barely interactive at all – it’s the digital version of a particularly beautifully illustrated storybook. Again, the narrative carries the game, but I doubt Esther would have enjoyed similar success were it not for the high quality, so-graphically-demanding-it-overloaded-my-computer breathtaking visuals.
Concepts like this – that play with the expectations of their audience, that toe the boundaries of what their genre is or is expected to be – intrigue me, particularly with respect to what kind of narrative my dissertation wants to explore. In the World of Story intensive, we addressed a number of different storytelling modes. It’s a shame the intensive’s segment on Digital Narratives couldn’t take place because those assigned and recommended readings were, for me, some of the most interesting. Particularly Perspectives on Interactive Digital Narrative (Koenitz) piqued my interest, especially the following passage:
The [Interactive Digital Narrative] vision is as much about narrative and control as it is about balance. Indeed, the quest for the right artistic measure, for equilibrium between agency and a coherent, satisfying experience, might be the ultimate challenge in the field. […] While guiding visions have been described, sometimes even heralded, in various forms for quite some time — for example, the image of Alice entering the rabbit hole or Borges’ infinite labyrinth in the form of a novel — it is only with the advent of computer technology that its realisation seems possible, and constant developments in computer technologies seem to put them ever closer to our reach.
As mentioned in the blog post for week 1, I’d like to explore opportunities to divorce stories from the printed page. Storytelling modes like Twine, which as Twine and the Question of Literature (Salter, Moulthrop) points out aren’t really literature but also aren’t really games, allow the reader to exert greater control and influence over the narrative and the reading experience, and allow the creator to play with ‘what if?’ scenarios, iteration and permutation, and experiment on a broader scope than a printed Choose Your Own Adventure book could make possible.
So far, I have come up with two concepts, based on these storytelling modes, that I’d like to explore:
1) Drawing directly from the idea of the aforementioned infinite labyrinth, an interactive digital narrative could create a reading experience that never actually comes to a close. The story has a beginning, but it has no end – it loops back in on itself at the conclusion of every arc, creating an infinite narrative that never reaches a natural endpoint. Not only does this move the reading experience away from a linear narrative, it questions its very nature. How long will it take readers to notice that they are quite literally going in circles? And how will they escape the loop? There is no ending, only the moment the reader decides to end it. The end of the ‘book’ isn’t a point the reader arrives at, but a choice.
2) Veering in the opposite direction, another possibility of playing with reader expectation would be to have reader choice not only define the plot but also the tone (→ the genre) of the narrative.
Say, for instance, our reader-players have opened the door on the right to discover a dead body – will they investigate the ominous scratching at the window, plunging themselves into a horror thriller with bloodstained clues and brilliant but emotionally unstable detectives? Or will they respond to the knock at the door to find their friendly, Murder She Wrote-style elderly neighbour ready to help them investigate, skipping off into the world of cozy crime where only jerks commit homicide and the police is thankful for witty novelists wandering all over their crime scenes? However unwittingly, readers would have a real, noticeable impact on the story they are told, and their conscious or subconscious decisions would define the experience they live through – the two wolves inside us, if you will.
Obviously, the two modes could also be combined, although I am doubtful that this would enhance either reading experience.
This concept of an audience actively immersed in and shaping the narrative, becoming players as much as readers, is something I’d very much like to explore further. Still, there are certain drawbacks and concerns I have with these ideas. For one, I am not an illustrator – my strength is the text. I find myself struggling to envision an interactive story of the likes of Twine et al. that I could realistically create that wouldn’t be visually disappointing, at least to me. On the other hand, the text I could easily create, even now – and what is the point of committing to a dissertation topic that I could satisfactorily complete while I’ve barely even begun the studies in question?
Additionally, EFI is such a hub of interdisciplinarity that I can’t help but think that I could do more. My idea so far manages to surpass traditional narrative boundaries, but it is still limited in scope and mostly inspired by ideas of the past, whereas I would like to explore the opportunities, potential and drawbacks of storytelling with my eyes on the future.
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