Interactive narrative 'began' when Michael Joyce 'published' afternoon, a story in 1987. It was offered on a floppy disk (now on CD), and was the first piece of interactive literature. There are no doubt other examples around that paved the way too, but Joyce gets the credit for really kicking off the development of an interactive form of fiction that wasn't based on game playing conventions. When you read afternoon you are not an avatar, there are no levels to move through, there is no simulated world, and when someone comes a cropper they stay that way - you can't go back and replay the scene for a different result. The reader/interactor/user is an audience, but a more active audience than usual because he/she must make choices, via the interface, as to which bits of the story to read next.
The author, Michael Joyce, was also a co-developer of the Storyspace writing software (which also provides the reading platform), and is thus justifiably highly regarded in the literature around hypertext/digi-lit/interactive narrative. But in my research, and in some the critical literature, problems have been identified for readers of afternoon and other Storyspace based works. Many interactive narratives using different platforms, for example available online, suffer similar negative reaction from readers. These problems I pursued in more depth, in a systematic way, in my PhD research, and I looked at a range of interactive narratives : the same problems for readers emerge again and again. Here are some of the issues I have identified:
1 If the reader's sense of context in the story is lost, absorption and engagement quickly vanish;
2 If a sense of context in the site is lost, a similar thing happens - i.e. reader walks away;
3 If links don't advance the story in some interesting way, 'reading' soon turns into 'playing', .ie. just trying out the interface to see what it will do;
4 If the navigation system does not allow movement in any direction (compare the freedom of movement in a printed book, for example), interest in the story is soon lost;
5 If something on the screen is interactive, it should be meaningfully interactive, e.g. advance the story or the reader's understanding of a character;
6 Choice must be balanced with narrative movement -there's an optimum amount of choice you can offer a reader before he/she becomes distracted from the narrative;
7 Adequate control over interactive elements is needed - e.g. if there is a video clip on a screen, the user must be able to start/stop rewind, switch off. If a video has to be watched in full every time the narrative is accessed, boredom obviously sets in. The equivalent in reading would be that you have to read the first chapter every single time you open the book instead of jumping straight to where you left off.
There are other issues, but the above are quite central in thinking about the design of the narrative and its interface. We hope that the Genarrator platform (when it's built) will be able to incorporate these features, so that any writer will be 'guided' towards the effective use of them as part of the storytelling process. Good interactive narrative design meshes the narrative to the interface, seamlessly we hope.
The author, Michael Joyce, was also a co-developer of the Storyspace writing software (which also provides the reading platform), and is thus justifiably highly regarded in the literature around hypertext/digi-lit/interactive narrative. But in my research, and in some the critical literature, problems have been identified for readers of afternoon and other Storyspace based works. Many interactive narratives using different platforms, for example available online, suffer similar negative reaction from readers. These problems I pursued in more depth, in a systematic way, in my PhD research, and I looked at a range of interactive narratives : the same problems for readers emerge again and again. Here are some of the issues I have identified:
1 If the reader's sense of context in the story is lost, absorption and engagement quickly vanish;
2 If a sense of context in the site is lost, a similar thing happens - i.e. reader walks away;
3 If links don't advance the story in some interesting way, 'reading' soon turns into 'playing', .ie. just trying out the interface to see what it will do;
4 If the navigation system does not allow movement in any direction (compare the freedom of movement in a printed book, for example), interest in the story is soon lost;
5 If something on the screen is interactive, it should be meaningfully interactive, e.g. advance the story or the reader's understanding of a character;
6 Choice must be balanced with narrative movement -there's an optimum amount of choice you can offer a reader before he/she becomes distracted from the narrative;
7 Adequate control over interactive elements is needed - e.g. if there is a video clip on a screen, the user must be able to start/stop rewind, switch off. If a video has to be watched in full every time the narrative is accessed, boredom obviously sets in. The equivalent in reading would be that you have to read the first chapter every single time you open the book instead of jumping straight to where you left off.
There are other issues, but the above are quite central in thinking about the design of the narrative and its interface. We hope that the Genarrator platform (when it's built) will be able to incorporate these features, so that any writer will be 'guided' towards the effective use of them as part of the storytelling process. Good interactive narrative design meshes the narrative to the interface, seamlessly we hope.
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