Via Dennis Jerz, found this new weblog, Progression: Following Myself by a new media enthusiast who has experience in the evolution of story games, and may well provide some good insight into the questions I have been concerned with in my own unaccredited research.
Can interactivity measure up to the standards of literature enough to make it not only "fun," but meaningful, or do we necessarily lose that quality of the novel amid the technicalities of driving the program? Will the average reader/user be allowed–and have the ability–to create a story that gives the same satisfaction of reading Faulkner?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Thanks for the compliments. As far as the questions that you pose in your above post, I don’t think that meaning has to be lost. Some of the best games – and I stress that they were games – that I have ever played have marvellous and meaningful stories that I have willed along, and happily allowed myself to be told. The first game I think I ever finished was The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy on the Spectrum. That was how I first ‘read’ the book, I suppose. And I read it, through the medium of the game, long before I even contemplated picking up a novel. How odd that is to consider; that I was old enough (skills wise – I’m sure many of the jokes sailed over my young head) to read it, but wouldn’t have thought to pick up the novel itself. Yet, present it as a fun game, where I have choices (and yet, actually, no choice at all) and I am desperate to get through it. Did it have the same impact? I can’t really say. But I felt as though I had read the novel, and when I did actually read it, it felt vaguely deja-vu-esque. Of course, I didn’t create the story – I merely felt that I did, such was the linearity of the game. That’s not to say that a created text (via interactive media) can’t be unlinear – it’s more a suggestion that control, in my opinion, will always be needed to reign in the story if it spills out of control. After all, is the story not the most important thing?
Yes, story above all, I agree. (Have you done anything with Storytron yet? Check it out if you haven’t–link is http://storytron.com. I’d be very interested in your thoughts on it.) For almost all of us, we’ve experienced the difference in novel versus movie format of story, and how one has enhanced the other and still we debate which is the better medium–but, for me, it truly depends on the story itself as to which presentation may be the overall best.
There’s no doubt that once the initial awe of gaming is over, the goal being sought loses a bit of its luster in knowing that it is predetermined. It’s how we get there that’s controllable, not if or what that end will be.