INTERACTIVITY IN DIGITAL NARRATIVES

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• INTERACTIVITY IN DIGITAL NARRATIVES

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CIVILIZATION CREATING A WORLD
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THE INTERACTIVE STORY

• Is there such a thing as an interactive story?
• The split condition of digital textuality
• The Holy Grail for new media

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NEW MEDIA NEW NARRATIVES

• Integration of various media to tell one story
• Fluency of the implied reader (literacy)
• spatial concept vs. the traditional plot

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NEW MEDIA NEW NARRATIVES

• eg Apartment
• Apartment is inspired by the idea of the memory
  palace. In a mnemonic technique from a
  pre-Post-It era. Cicero imagined inscribing the
  themes of a speech on a suite of rooms in a
  villa, and then reciting that speech by mentally
  walking from space to space.

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THIS IS NOT A GAME

• GAME a system in which players engage in an
  artificial conflict, defined by rules, that
  results in a quantifiable outcome

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THIS IS NOT A GAME

• borderline cases
• Façade
• The Sims
• Playable media interactive narrative
• even better than the real thing

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WHAT IS INTERACTIVITY?

• CHOICE
• MODIFICATION
• 4 TYPES OF PARTICIPATION

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WHAT IS INTERACTIVITY?
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WHAT IS INTERACTIVITY?
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DIGITAL IMMERSION

• Suspension of disbelief
• Total immersion Virtual Reality
• depth of information
• spatial immersion
• temporal immersion
• emotional immersion

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DIGITAL IMMERSION

• Grades of immersion
• concentration
• engagement
• trance
• addiction

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5 LAYERS OF INTERACTIVITY
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5 LAYERS OF INTERACTIVITY

• 1. peripheral interactivity
• The story is framed by an interactive interface,
  but neither story nor order of presentation
  (text) are affected.
• Activity books
• Cruising
• Interactive TV
• Marginal

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5 LAYERS OF INTERACTIVITY

• 2. interactivity affecting text and presentation
• Predetermined story, but variable presentation.
  Hypertext. Database.
• 3 types
• anemone
• maze
• tree

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5 LAYERS OF INTERACTIVITY

• 3. interactivity creating variations in the story
• User plays a role in the storyworld, but system
  controls the trajectory.
• prominent in games
• internal interactivity user has an avatar
• archetypical stories and characters
• cut scenes

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5 LAYERS OF INTERACTIVITY

• 4. real time story generation
• Data are generated on the spot by system and
  user.
• Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray
• Star Trek
• complete freedom of behaviour
• artificiel intelligence
• generation of different stories
• complete immersion (spatial, temporal, emotional)
• extratechnical problem
• combining top-down structure and bottom-up
  participation

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5 LAYERS OF INTERACTIVITY

• 5. meta-interactivity
• Adding extra story material by writing code.
• not consuming the onion, but looking for new ways
  to cook it.
• cliché of the user as co-author
• writing code vs. immersion

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REFERENCES

• website of Marie-Laure Ryan
• http//lamar.colostate.edu/pwryan/indml.htm
• Ryan, Marie-Laure. Immersion vs. Interactivity
  Virtual Reality and
• Literary Theory Online http//www3.iath.virgi
  nia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.994/ryan.994. 1994.
• Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative and the Split
  Condition of Digital Textuality. Online
  http//dichtung-digital.de/2005/1/. 2005.
• Ryan, Marie-Laure. Peeling the Onion Layers of
  Interactivity in Digital Narrative Texts.
  Online http//lamar.colostate.edu/pwryan/onion.h
  tm. 2005.
• Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Playable Media and Textual
  Instruments. Online http//dichtung-digital.de/2
  005/1/. 2005.