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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
HANDBOOK ON INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING
Discover the latest research on crafting compelling narratives in interactive entertainment
Electronic games are no longer considered “mere fluff” alongside the “real” forms of entertainment, like film, music, and television. Instead, many games have evolved into an art form in their own right, including carefully constructed stories and engaging narratives enjoyed by millions of people around the world.
In Handbook on Interactive Storytelling, readers will find a comprehensive discussion of the latest research covering the creation of interactive narratives that allow users to experience a dramatically compelling story that responds directly to their actions and choices.
Systematically organized, with extensive bibliographies and academic exercises included in each chapter, the book offers readers new perspectives on existing research and fresh avenues ripe for further study. In-depth case studies explore the challenges involved in crafting a narrative that comprises one of the main features of the gaming experience, regardless of the technical aspects of a game’s production.
Readers will also enjoy:
- A thorough introduction to interactive storytelling, including discussions of narrative, plot, story, interaction, and a history of the phenomenon, from improvisational theory to role-playing games
- A rigorous discussion of the background of storytelling, from Aristotle’s Poetics to Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey
- Compelling explorations of different perspectives in the interactive storytelling space, including different platforms, designers, and interactors, as well as an explanation of storyworlds
Perfect for game designers, developers, game and narrative researchers, academics, undergraduate and graduate students studying storytelling, game design, gamification, and multimedia systems, Handbook on Interactive Storytelling is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the deployment of compelling narratives in an interactive context.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Handbook on Interactive Storytelling
Jouni Smed
University of Turku, Finland
Tomi ‘bgt’ Suovuo
University of Turku, Finland
Natasha Skult
University of Turku, Finland
Petter Skult
Åbo Akademi University, Finland
This edition first published 2021
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Smed, Jouni, author. | Suovuo, Tomi ‘bgt’, 1974- author. | Skult, Natasha,
1984- author. | Skult, Petter, 1985- author.
Title: Handbook on interactive storytelling / Jouni Smed, Tomi ‘bgt’ Suovuo,
Natasha Skult, Petter Skult.
Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2021. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021014074 (print) | LCCN 2021014075 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119688136 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119688150 (adobe pdf) | ISBN
9781119688174 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Video games–Authorship. | Video games–Design. |
Interactive multimedia–Authorship. | Interactive multimedia–Design.
Classification: LCC GV1469.34.A97 S64 2021 (print) | LCC GV1469.34.A97
(ebook) | DDC 794.8/1535–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021014074
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021014075
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © Inna / Adobe Stock
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
1: Introduction
1.1 Interactive Storytelling
1.2 History of Interactive Storytelling
1.3 Role‐playing Games
1.4 Summary
2: Background
2.1 Analysis of Storytelling
2.2 Research on Interactive Storytelling
2.3 Summary
3: Platform
3.1 Software Development
3.2 Solving the Narrative Paradox
3.3 Implementations
3.4 Summary
4: Designer
4.1 Storyworld Types
4.2 Design Process and Tools
4.3 Relationship with the Interactor
4.4 Summary
5: Interactor
5.1 Experiencing an Interactive Story
5.2 Agency
5.3 Immersion
5.4 Transformation
5.5 Interactor Types
5.6 Summary
6: Storyworld
6.1 Characters
6.2 Elemental Building Blocks
6.3 Representation
6.4 Summary
7: Perspectives
7.1 Multiple Interactors
7.2 Extended Reality
7.3 Streaming Media
7.4 Other Technological Prospects
7.5 Ethical Considerations
7.6 Summary
Bibliography
Ludography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 2.1 A summary of Propp's narrathemes.
Table 2.2 Primary eidons.
Table 2.3 Regular expressions used in the rules.
Table 2.4 Motivating eidons determining the resolution category.
Table 2.5 Secondary eidons.
Table 2.6 Using kernels and satellites to differentiate stories and games.
Chapter 3
Table 3.1 Levels of moddability with examples.
Table 3.2 The discourse acts of
Façade
.
Chapter 4
Table 4.1 Dilemmas and their pay‐offs.
Table 4.2 Quantitative metrics for narrative conflict (n.b.
and
indicates
Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Player type data.
Chapter 6
Table 6.1 Alignment chart of
Dungeons & Dragons
.
Table 6.2 The traits and associated features in the Big Five model.
Table 6.3 Event‐appraisal theory.
Table 6.4 Elliott's emotion categories (Elliott 1992, p. 31; 2016).
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Spectrum of interactivity.
Figure 1.2 Comparison of (a) conventional storytelling and (b) interactive s...
Figure 1.3 Partakers of interactive storytelling.
Figure 1.4 Interactor's perception of the sequence of events. P marks a play...
Figure 1.5 Four types of interactivity.
Figure 1.6 Stage designs in chronological order: (a) circular arena, (b) Gre...
Figure 1.7 Classification of narrative‐centric board and card games.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 The elements of tragedy.
Figure 2.2 Changes in the plot of a tragedy.
Figure 2.3 Freytag's dramatic arc.
Figure 2.4 An example of a structure of a Hollywood movie script. A script f...
Figure 2.5 The six actants of the actantial model.
Figure 2.6 The syntactic structure of the story ‘Margie's Balloon’.
Figure 2.7 The semantic structure of the story ‘Margie's Balloon’.
Figure 2.8 Underlying structure of ‘Dog Story’. The connections ‘and’, ‘then...
Figure 2.9 The hero's journey in the monomyth.
Figure 2.10 Squares present kernels and black dots the satellites. The circl...
Figure 2.11 Neo‐Aristotelian theory of interactive drama.
Figure 2.12 The flying wedge of possibilities.
Figure 2.13 The four affordances of digital media. Immersion emerges from th...
Figure 2.14 Semantic differentials in the ludonarrative field.
Figure 2.15 Protostory and its components.
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 The boundaries between the interactor, designer, and developer. T...
Figure 3.2 The basic design parts of a game.
Figure 3.3 The model–view–controller architectural pattern for an interactiv...
Figure 3.4 Storytelling engine included with the basic design parts of a gam...
Figure 3.5 Interface mapping function.
Figure 3.6 Interface mapping functions types: (a) non‐surjective or filterin...
Figure 3.7 The structure of the Oz Project's interactive drama engine.
Figure 3.8 Distributed drama management.
Figure 3.9Expressive processing.
Figure 3.10PING (passive, interactive, narrative, game) model.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 The spectrum of storyworld types.
Figure 4.2 Typical linear narrative in a video game.
Figure 4.3 Linear narrative with side branches.
Figure 4.4 In braided storylines, the different lines represent the stories ...
Figure 4.5 A full branching narrative as a tree of degree 2.
Figure 4.6 A branching narrative with pinch points forms a DAG.
Figure 4.7 A narrative graph with cycles and two exits.
Figure 4.8 Action space connects semi‐autonomous episodes together.
Figure 4.9 An open storyworld with levels and threads. A gatekeeper event op...
Figure 4.10 In a hidden story, some events in the open world are connected t...
Figure 4.11 In a landscape of possible stories, the mountains represent heig...
Figure 4.12 Storyworld comprising narrative elements (naxels). The neighbour...
Figure 4.13 Relationships between narrative events.
Figure 4.14 Transmedia radar diagram.
Figure 4.15 Model for defining an interactive storytelling experience.
Figure 4.16 Iterative design process.
Figure 4.17 Broader view to the design process.
Figure 4.18 Addresser–message–addressee scheme with emotive, conative, refer...
Figure 4.19 A graph of the progression of Little Red Riding Hood.
Figure 4.20 A graph where each episode has an alternative.
Figure 4.21 Metalepsis as a stack.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 The game experience model as a prism with six vertices and five f...
Figure 5.2 Immersion models by (a) Ermi and Mäyrä and (b) Adams.
Figure 5.3 Flow experience is a balance between the difficulty of the task a...
Figure 5.4 Bartle's four player types.
Figure 5.5 Bartle's eight player types.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Global structure of emotions types in the OCC model.
Figure 6.2 The primitive events and states originating from the world are us...
Figure 6.3 Layouts for a scene: (a) open, (b) linear, (c) parallel, (d) ring...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Traditional film environment in comparison to an XR environment....
Figure 7.2 Perception on directing the user's attention using eye contact an...
Figure 7.3 Questions for designing a streaming media programme.
Figure 7.4 Storyworld events superimposed over the real world.
Figure 7.5 Shared‐space technologies.
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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List of Figures
Figure 1.1 Spectrum of interactivity
Figure 1.2 Comparison of conventional storytelling and interactive storytelling
Figure 1.3 Partakers of interactive storytelling
Figure 1.4 Interactor's perception of the sequence of events
Figure 1.5 Four types of interactivity
Figure 1.6 Stage designs
Figure 1.7 Classification of narrative‐centric board and card games
Figure 2.1 The elements of tragedy
Figure 2.2 Changes in the plot of a tragedy
Figure 2.3 Freytag's dramatic arc
Figure 2.4 Structure of a movie script
Figure 2.5 Actantial model
Figure 2.6 Syntactic structure
Figure 2.7 Semantic structure
Figure 2.8 Structure of ‘Dog Story’
Figure 2.9 The hero's journey in the monomyth
Figure 2.10 Kernels and satellites
Figure 2.11 Neo‐Aristotelian theory of interactive drama
Figure 2.12 The flying wedge of possibilities
Figure 2.13 The four affordances of digital media
Figure 2.14 Ludonarrative field
Figure 2.15 Protostory
Figure 3.1 Boundaries between the interactor, designer, and developer
Figure 3.2 Basic design parts of a game
Figure 3.3 Model–view–controller architectural pattern
Figure 3.4 Storytelling engine
Figure 3.5 Interface mapping function
Figure 3.6 Interface mapping functions types
Figure 3.7 Interactive drama engine
Figure 3.8 Distributed drama management
Figure 3.9 Expressive processing
Figure 3.10 PING model
Figure 4.1 The spectrum of storyworld types
Figure 4.2 Linear narrative
Figure 4.3 Linear narrative with side branches
Figure 4.4 Braided storylines
Figure 4.5 Full branching narrative
Figure 4.6 Branching narrative with pinch points
Figure 4.7 Narrative graph
Figure 4.8 Action space
Figure 4.9 Open storyworld
Figure 4.10 Hidden story
Figure 4.11 Landscape of possible stories
Figure 4.12 Storyworld comprising narrative elements
Figure 4.13 Relationships between narrative events
Figure 4.14 Transmedia radar diagram
Figure 4.15 Model for defining an interactive storytelling experience
Figure 4.16 Iterative design process
Figure 4.17 Broader view to the design process
Figure 4.18 Addresser–message–addressee scheme
Figure 4.19 A graph of the progression of Little Red Riding Hood
Figure 4.20 A graph where each episode has an alternative
Figure 4.21 Metalepsis as a stack
Figure 5.1 Game experience model
Figure 5.2 Immersion models
Figure 5.3 Flow experience
Figure 5.4 Bartle's four player types
Figure 5.5 Bartle's eight player types
Figure 6.1 OCC model
Figure 6.2 Pattern recognition and decision-making
Figure 6.3 Layouts for a scene
Figure 7.1 Film and XR environments
Figure 7.2 Perception using eye contact and gaze
Figure 7.3 Designing streaming media
Figure 7.4 Storyworld events superimposed over the real world
Figure 7.5 Shared‐space technologies
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Propp's narrathemes
Table 2.2 Primary eidons
Table 2.3 Regular expressions
Table 2.4 Motivating eidons
Table 2.5 Secondary eidons
Table 2.6 Kernels and satellites
Table 3.1 Levels of moddability
Table 3.2 The discourse acts of Façade
Table 4.1 Dilemmas and their pay‐offs
Table 4.2 Quantitative metrics for narrative conflict
Table 5.1 Player type data
Table 6.1 Alignment chart of Dungeons & Dragons
Table 6.2 Big Five model
Table 6.3 Event‐appraisal theory
Table 6.4 Elliott's emotion categories
Preface
Imagine a group sitting by a campfire. The evening sky is getting dark and the first stars begin to appear. Everybody is getting cosy and warm, but something is missing. Then somebody starts telling a story.
This set‐up could have happened at any time and anywhere in human history – it might have included even our hominid ancestors. There is something inherently human in the scene. The story and the process of telling it – they cannot be separated from each other. Telling stories is how we construct our memories, how we pass on our values, and how we communicate our experiences. It allows us to have a glimpse into another person's mind.
Just us, and the story.
This book tells a story, a story of how stories could be told using digital media. In many occasions, digital media is said to revolutionize or disrupt the way things have been done before. This is not what we are claiming here. Digital storytelling is not about disruption, breaking, or replacing old order. How could it? Stories will remain stories as before. Rather, this will bring stories back to where they once were. They will become alive and include our digital world in them. Someone will tell the story – human or computer – to somebody else – human or computer. This will be the new digital campfire.
Turku/Åbo, FinlandNovember 2020
Jouni SmedTomi ‘bgt’ SuovuoNatasha SkultPetter Skult
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, the authors would like to thank Harri Hakonen for his early involvement and initial work in analysing the material and his sharp views and insights into essential matters.
We would like to thank the team at Wiley for their efforts, especially our Editor Sandra Grayson and Managing Editor Juliet Booker. We are grateful to them for their flexibility during the trying times of the COVID‐19 pandemic, which has also rattled our writing process.
Jouni. I want to acknowledge the important role that my late friend and colleague Timo Kaukoranta played 20 years ago in launching this expedition in the world of interactive storytelling. I would like to express my gratitude to the valuable inputs from my students over the years, and I am indebted to everybody who has attended my courses on interactive storytelling at the University of Turku in the period 2004–2020. My special greetings go to Lilia and Julian: I am always amazed at your fantastical storyworlds, and, now that I am done writing (at least for a while), I will be happy to spend more time hanging out there with Lord Kanther, D'opa, Härpats, and your other marvellous creations. And Iris, thank you for being there – living, laughing, and loving.
BGT. I wish to thank the hobbyist associations of Turun science fiction seura, Turun yliopiston tieteiskulttuurikabinetti, and Turun yliopiston rooli‐ ja strategiapeliseura for providing inspiration and insightful discussions related to storytelling and games. I also wish to thank everyone I have played role‐playing games and live‐action‐role‐playing games with, especially those who endured the most ridiculous and embarrassing clumsy experiments of mine in this field of interactive storytelling. Loving thanks also to my dearest wife and role‐playing company, Riikka.
Natasha. I wish to thank fellow authors of this book; it has been an amazing journey and inspiring collaboration, which is one of many to come. I also want to thank IGDA Finland, Turku Game Hub, and MiTale teams for all the support and tireless discussions on the topics of interactive storytelling and ‘industry’ views. I wish to dedicate special gratitude to my family, Petter and Sara, for their endless support and inspiration.
Petter. I want to thank Åbo Akademi University for having me as a researcher after finishing my PhD during the writing of this book, my fellow authors for their patience and expertise, and, of course, my family and friends for their support.
1Introduction
Humans are storytelling animals. We crave hearing stories at an early age, and as soon as we start telling them ourselves. The simplest life forms carry their legacy to their children as genetic instincts. More complex animals take this further by teaching their young through play and concrete examples. Humans are the only known species to bring up their young also with stories of imaginary and abstract examples. Take away stories and you would reduce humans to something else. As Barbara Hardy (1968) observes ‘[in] order really to live, we make up stories about ourselves and others, about the personal as well as the social past and future.’ Alasdair MacIntyre (1981, p. 201) echoes this sentiment by concluding that ‘man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story‐telling animal’ because ‘we all live our narratives in our lives and because we understand our lives in terms of narratives’ (MacIntyre 1981, p. 197). Simply put, a human being is homo narrans, the ‘storytelling human’ (Fisher 1984).
When storytellers begin their story, there is a sense of wonder that the audience has. Out of a sudden, a new world is created in front of their eyes with characters and events that, at the same time, are relatable and familiar but are also new and strange. Who of us has not had that feeling when starting a book or a movie, a television series or video game – or simply hearing someone reiterate a story of what happened to them in the previous day. Story is a human way to connect with other people over the barriers of language, culture, or even time. Epic of Gilgamesh is almost 5000‐year‐old story, but we can still understand and relate its protagonist as he struggles through trials and tribulations.
It is not only that stories are used for entertainment or pastime but they are also records of our past, collections of wisdom and knowledge. They are a way to teach culture, values, norms, history, science to our children, to educate them to be a part of our bigger pack.
At the heart of this is the storyteller, the one who composes and collects the material into a presentable form to the public. In the beginning, they were doing all this by themself, but with time and technological advances they could use the latest inventions – writing, painting, printing, filming, computing – as an extension. Such advancements allowed them to store the stories, help to disseminate them, and bring them to the masses even on a global scale.
But this is not a story of the storyteller alone, because they would be nothing without the audience, the ones to whom the story is being told, who make the storyteller, lift them up or bring them down. Such popularity has become an essential aspect for many whose livelihood depends on the audience's goodwill.
The relationship between them has been a struggle of control. The storyteller cannot live in a vacuum and cut ties to the audience. Although there might be exceptions, many of them are now forgotten. There is interaction between the two that can take many forms. In oral storytelling, the bards would adapt to the audience's reactions and change the presentation whilst keeping the formula – the structure of the story. An author of a novel seems isolated from interactions, writing in solitude, a work that gets them printed and distributed, or a game designer working with a computer. None of them is working in a vacuum, but there is feedback, albeit slow and from a limited set. They have time to react and make changes. But what if the need for change is immediate and the range of possible choices is vast?
Digital media allows us to tell stories as well as any of the traditional ones. When we think about what is special about digital media, we have
the possibility of combining different formats;
the reproducibility (i.e. getting perfect copies in unlimited numbers);
the ease, scale, and speed of distribution (e.g. by eliminating middlemen such as publishers); and
permanence (at least in the short term).
The greatest concern with digital media is the long‐term permanence. How many of today's digital stories will last as long as Epic of Gilgamesh? We are already witnessing deprecation or ‘digital rust’ due to outdated formats or devices. For example, the original assets and source codes of the video game Blade Runner (Westwood Studios 1997) were lost and had to be reverse engineered with great effort (GOG.com 2019).
New medium means that we have to refine our concepts. Traditionally, storytelling is seen as the author conveying the story to an audience via a medium. The author's story can be conveyed as a book to the reader, a film to the spectators, a play to an audience. Digital stories are not different, but digital devices are another medium. However, what is different is the possibility of interactivity. This allows the audience to affect the story being told. This is not anything new per se, but many non‐digital storytelling situations retain this aspect. Imagine a bard telling a story orally, observing the audience's reactions and adapting the story accordingly. The same happens when a parent is inventing a good‐night story to a child: the story changes and adapts. This requires a second‐person insight. It is something that good teachers or tour guides can cultivate to capture their audience. The topics of a historical sight remain the same, but what the guide tells can be totally different for a group of bored teenagers than for a senior citizen on a holiday trip.
Computers thrive from interaction. The pace has got faster until we now expect to have a real‐time response, the range is getting wider so that we can choose freely within the context, and interfaces have been getting clearer so that the users know what they are getting. This does sound like a perfect solution to the problem of providing interaction to storytelling – a storytelling machine. The idea is not that new but Ramon Llull proposed in Ars Magna from 1305 a machine to study the aspect of God with words, which influenced many thinkers such as Gottfried Leibniz to ponder the possibilities of a logical machine. Having left the analogue behind story generation became an aspect of study and creation. Since the 1990s there has been steady progress in research and development of interactive storytelling as a digital media.
The idea of interactive storytelling is an appealing one: what if I could change the flow of the story. Instead of being a passive recipient, what if I could actually have an impact on the way the story proceeds – but without the need of being the one who does the hard work and carries on the story. It is easy to see the lure of interactive storytelling because authoring itself is cumbersome and requires a lot of work and skills. It would be easier to just affect the story whenever one feels like, make little twists and changes so that the events would turn out how one wishes for.
This lost interaction is the key ingredient in the mix. We have become so accustomed to the ready‐made worlds that many are craving an outlet for participatory action. It can be fanfic or cosplay or going to a themepark of our favourite storyverse. What if the story and its world (i.e. the storyworld) would be manageable enough to let you change it to your own liking. Naturally, you would say that we already have video games that allow us to fulfil our dreams (Adams 2014, p. 47). But think bigger. Instead of going through somebody's authored narrative, what if you could be the one in control, co‐authoring (if you like) the story. This is the call of digital interactive storytelling where technology (i.e. algorithms) would be your tireless guide and bard leading you to a world that was designed to be experienced. You could play it, but you could have something else. Within these pages, we will get to know this world.
Before recounting that this chapter presents the basic terms and structure of interactive storytelling and how it differs from conventional (i.e. non‐interactive) storytelling, we see how the four partakers – platform, designer, interactor and storyworld – are connected to one another, and in the subsequent chapter we look at each of them more closely. We also go through the history of interactive storytelling from non‐digital to digital in various media to provide a historical perspective about the roles of interaction in storytelling. First, we need to clarify the terminology and basic concepts in Section 1.1. We provide a cursory glance on storytelling, narratives, interactivity, which we deepen throughout this book. Then, we take a look at examples of this in Section 1.2.
1.1 Interactive Storytelling
Storytelling is always interactive. Even an author working alone on an isolated island has the potential readers in their mind, and this interactive thought process affects how the story is being constructed. But we do not have to go so far because the sounding board is generally close to the author – family members, colleagues, the editor. Also, the reader of any book is not just passively having the same experience every other reader: there are personal contexts that make individual differences to the reading experience, and even those contexts change over time, so no two read‐throughs are exactly the same (Falk and Dierking 2016; Mäyrä 2007).
But there is a difference between reading a book and attending a live‐action role‐playing (LARP) game. The interaction in larping is richer and more immediate than that in reading a text. In the former, the participants can affect how the story takes shape in real time, whereas a book gives you a readily formed story to enjoy.
If we look closely, we can recognize that the interactivity of storytelling forms a spectrum illustrated in Figure 1.1. On the one end, we have conventional storytelling (e.g. books or films) where the author has full control over everything that happens in the story, but the audience has no control. On the other end, we have a simulation (or a sandbox) where the audience (e.g. spectator or player) is free to choose whatever they want to do, but the author has no control over the possibly emerging stories. One could say that in this case there is no author, but a member of the audience becomes their own author typically telling a story to themself.
Figure 1.1 Spectrum of interactivity.
Figure 1.2 Comparison of (a) conventional storytelling and (b) interactive storytelling.
When people are talking about interactive storytelling, they are usually referring to something that resides in the middle of this spectrum. Leaving aside the simulation, we can compare conventional storytelling and interactive storytelling (see Figure 1.2). In conventional storytelling, the author has a special place when constructing the story. One could argue that this construction phase is only a place where interaction (between the author and the storyworld) happens. Once the story is finished, it is ready to be presented to the spectators (or readers) who will form their own experienced story individually. All in all, the story is handed down without any real feedback loop or possibility to interaction.
In contrast, interactive storytelling puts the interactor in a key role. The designer is now providing the characters, props, and external events forming the storyworld. Based on this and the interactor's choices, a story instance is generated, which the interactor then experiences.
1.1.1 Partakers
We have now introduced two key partakers in interactive storytelling: the one who creates the work and the one experiences it. In the literature on interactive storytelling, the former is often called the author but – as one can discern from Figure 1.2b – we have opted for the term designer, which is also favoured by Adams (2013, pp. 8–9). One could even argue that ‘author’ is a special case of a ‘designer’ when the situation is limited to conventional storytelling and the designer has complete authority over the presented story. Moreover, within the game industry, ‘narrative designer’ is now established as a professional title, but, for the sake of conciseness, we omit the qualifier ‘narrative’ unless we specifically refer to the profession in question.
In the case of a person experiencing an interactive story, the situation is muddier. Terms such as ‘player’, ‘actor’, ‘user’, ‘agent’, and ‘participant’ have been used in the literature without a clear consensus (Smed and Hakonen 2008). Our choice here is interactor, which emphasizes being an interactive actor in a storyworld created by a designer; we use sometimes ‘player’ when it is more convenient or customary in the context but, generally speaking, ‘interactor’ can be used more broadly (e.g. when interactive storytelling is used in teaching or guiding). The interactor is the one who principally experiences the story as it unravels. We use the term ‘audience’ when we are more generally referring to a recipient of the story in any kind of storytelling, whether it is interactive or not. The interactor typically plays the role of the main character in the story, interacting with the other characters. Consequently, the interactor is a traditional type of an actor in the play as well (without the inter‐prefix), and, as such, the interactor takes upon a role and is also a character in the storyworld.
Storyworld includes all the characters, props, scenes, and events set up by the designer for the interactor. Props are inanimate objects, which can be used in the storyworld, and events cause changes launched by fulfilling some criteria. Characters combine these two properties: they are both objects and agents of change. Scenes are the surroundings which the props and characters inhabit and where the events and characters can affect.
Although earlier the storyworld was built upon customary software, we would like to consider platform as a separate partaker. This follows the trend we have seen in other forms of software applications where the content production and the development environment get separated. For example, nowadays computer games are developed in dedicated platforms such as Unity or Unreal Engine, whereas earlier the development process included also creating the tools and runtime environment as well as the actual content.
This is in a similar fashion to how WordPress platform provides mechanisms for the user interface (UI) and visual layout for blogs. They are still versatile enough for each created site to have their own functionalities and individual appearances. The great majority of website developers no longer program everything ‘from the scratch’, but they apply pre‐existing frameworks. The most significant exception is services, whose main content is tightly linked with mechanics such as Amazon and Facebook. Another example from the film industry is Charles Chaplin – a pioneer in the field – who used to devise his own visual effects for his movies. In comparison, nowadays the most film productions use specialized companies for such purposes, which is analogous to how the software industry applies frameworks. At the moment of writing, we are seeing signs that interactive storytelling as software is maturing to this point of separation.
Figure 1.3 Partakers of interactive storytelling.
Figure 1.3 summarizes the four partakers and their interdependencies (Smed et al. 2018). Platforms provide the designer with mechanics to use with the content, and it acts as a system for running the storyworld. Designers' content fills the storyworld. The interactors agree to take part in the storyworld and play their roles in it.
1.1.2 Narrative, Plot, and Story
Narrative is a combination of story and discourse, where the story is a sequence of events (or action) and discourse is the selected events that are presented (Abbott 2002, pp. 16–17). Prince (1980) defines narrative as ‘the representation of real or fictive events and situations in a time sequence’, and according to him, the story is ‘the content plane of narrative as opposed to its expression plane or discourse; the “what” of a narrative as opposed to its “how” ’ (Prince 1987, p. 91). In other words, narrative is an actualization of the story. One could say that the ‘presented story’ in Figure 1.2a is a narrative as the ‘storyworld instance’ in Figure 1.2b. However, there is a difference regarding how these two get created (i.e. the process of storytelling).
The term ‘narrative’ has different definitions, but for this book, we have adopted the naïve view promoted by Adams (2013, p. 25), where narrative refers to the unchangeable material presented to the interactor. For this reason, Adams concludes that ‘interactive narrative’ is an oxymoron and it is better to use the term ‘interactive storytelling’. However, many scholars prefer using ‘interactive narrative’ arguing that narrative can change, for example, when the interactor makes choices. This kind of terminological ambiguity is, unfortunately, quite pervasive in this field of study.
Our distinction here is that ‘narration’ belongs to traditional storytelling, whereas ‘storytelling’ is a process between the designer, platform, storyworld, and interactor – all the four partakers – that not only creates a story but also the resulting narrative that can be seen afterwards. To use another image, storytelling is like the lava pouring out of the earth – being liquid and malleable, following the surface and its contours, filling it, reacting to disturbances, whereas narrative is a solidified rock, possibly chiselled into a form.
Figure 1.4 Interactor's perception of the sequence of events. P marks a player‐generated event; C, a computer‐generated event; and N, a narrative event. Plot events, marked with PE, are dramatically significant events and their sequence forms the plot.
Within the context of interactive digital storytelling, an event is any (possibly unseen) event that the computer can demonstrate (Adams 2013, pp. 26–27). A narrated event (following the above definition) is immutable and set by the narrative designer. A computer‐generated event is the result of processing done on the underlying platform. A player‐generated event is a response to the interactor's input. It is worth noting that narrated events are not necessarily needed in an interactive storytelling system. The interactor's perception of the sequence is illustrated in Figure 1.4. Events have three functions in a story: they can set a scene, reveal a character, or be a part of the plot, which is a causal sequence of events.
If an event is dramatically significant, we call it a plot event. This means that the event creates or releases the dramatic tension and that it is related (causally or by subject matter) to other experienced events. Figure 1.4 illustrates how plot events can correspond to narrative events (e.g. cutscenes), computer‐generated events (e.g. a runtime decision by the platform to introduce a new character) or player events (e.g. the player choosing to save one of the characters from a zombie attack and letting others die). In traditional storytelling, the usual aim is to remove any insignificant events, whereas in video games – being partly a simulation of the real world – they may be included. How do we then distinguish the significance? As Adams (2013, p. 28) summarizes, it is subjective and context‐dependent on the interactor's sense, which is why we cannot have a universal rule but have to rely on convention and common sense.
The plot is advancing when the interactor is experiencing more plot events, and it is stalled when this process ceases. If the interactor deliberately stalls the plot, we can say that they are obstructing the plot. This is related to the freedom we give to the interactor. We look deeper into this in Section 2.2.4.
A plot line is a manifestation of the plot. If the plot is defined in advance by the designer, we can call it a predefined plot. If the story can be different in each play, we can call it a manifold story. We make further observations on this in Section 4.1.
A story in Adams's naïve view means now all the events that the interactor can experience in the course of playing the work (Adams 2013, p. 29). For a story to be interesting to the audience, it must have a psychological buy‐in by the audience, and the audience must engage in willing suspension of disbelief, which we address in detail in Chapter 5.
1.1.3 Interaction
Interaction can be seen as a reciprocal action, where entities' actions influence one another. Crawford (2013, p. 28) defines interaction as ‘[a] cyclic process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listens, thinks, and speaks’. Crawford uses this metaphor of a conversation to illustrate the phases through which the entities – whether they are controlled by a human or a computer – must pass in interaction. Adams (2013, pp. 29–31) agrees and sees interactivity as the user's ability to interact with any software. The interactive range (or freedom) of software – such as an interactive storytelling system – is simply the collection of choices made available to the user.
Interactivity should not be confused with agency, which means the user's ability to influence the system. In an interactive storytelling system, this could mean the interactor's ability to influence the plot line. Having a large interactive range (e.g. a vast array of options to choose from) does not imply that the interactor has also a stronger agency unless the options also have a meaningful and perceptible effect on the storyworld. We return to agency in more detail in Section 5.2.
Crawford (2013, pp. 37–41) lists that three factors affecting the degree of interactivity in storytelling are speed, depth, and choice. Speed refers to that the faster the turnaround is, the better the possibilities for interaction. For example, instant messaging has a short turnaround, whereas mailed letters can take days. Faster turnaround means that the communicating parties can react faster and see the result of their action faster. It creates a state of continuous ‘motion’ like individual film cells when played fast after one another. Depth is about the human‐likeness of interaction (i.e. the deeper, the more human‐like). Apart from simple cognitive modalities (e.g. hand–eye coordination or spatial reasoning), social reasoning would be the most important in interactive stories. Choice has a twofold focus. First, it is about the functional significance (i.e. agency) of the choices the interactor makes (i.e. how well they satisfy the interactor's wants or desires). Second, perceived completeness refers to the number of choices with respect to the possibilities the interactor can imagine. This does not mean that more is always better, but it is relative to the context.
Ryan (2006, pp. 107–116; 2015, pp. 162–164) recognizes two axes of interactivity:
Internal–external
: In
internal interactivity
, the interactor projects themself as a member of the virtual world, whereas in
external interactivity
, they are situated outside the virtual world – or to use the terms of Adams (
2013
, p. 270) the corresponding interaction model is avatar‐based or omnipresent.
Exploratory–ontological
: In
exploratory interactivity
, the interactor can navigate inside the virtual world but cannot affect it, whereas in
ontological interactivity
, the interactor's decisions can send them into different paths.
These two axes are illustrated in Figure 1.5. The four quadrants that they divide represent different types of interactivity:
Internal‐ontological interactivity
: The interactor creates an avatar and interacts using it, which is typical in the majority of video games (e.g. first‐person shooters, platformers, or adventure games).
External‐ontological interactivity
: The interactor observes a simulated world and has godlike controls over it (e.g. real‐time strategy games or
The Sims
).
External‐explanatory interactivity
: The interactor explores a virtual world from the outside without any agency apart from choosing one of the ready‐made paths (e.g. gamebooks or hypertext fiction).
Internal‐explanatory interactivity
: The interactor has an avatar but cannot affect anything but just observe (e.g. walking simulators or exploratory environments).
Naturally, we cannot make so discrete distinctions, but one should think of them as a continuum.
We can look at the diagonal from external‐explorative to internal‐ontological (i.e. from the bottom‐right corner to the upper‐left corner in Figure 1.5) and notice how the level of interactivity changes. Ryan (2015, pp. 175–185) differentiates these levels of interactivity. In the first level, peripheral interactivity, the interactive interface does not affect the story but rather makes the signifiers visible. The next three levels reside along the aforementioned diagonal:
Interactivity affecting the narrative discourse and the presentation of the story
: The material or content is predetermined, but the order of the story is highly variable (e.g. hypertext fiction).
Interactivity creating variations in a partly predefined story
: The interactors are typically a part of the storyworld and can alter their own story.
Interactivity leading to real‐time story generation
: The story is no longer predetermined but generated. It is replayable and offers freedom to create different narratives.
Ryan concludes that the last one is superior to peripheral interactivity. Apart from these, she recognizes a fifth level, meta‐interactivity (i.e. modding), where the platform is for modification (e.g. creating a new content, characters, or mechanics). This blurs the line between the interactor and designer, as we see in Section 3.1.4.
Figure 1.5 Four types of interactivity.
Ryan (2001, pp. 204) observes that interactivity ‘was shut off by manuscript and print writing and reintroduced into written messages by the electronic medium, together with several other features of oral communication’ such as real‐time (synchronous) exchange, spontaneity of expression, and volatility of inscription. Digital systems are interactive and reactive by nature and that interactivity actually makes a difference between old and new media (Ryan 2006, pp. 98–99).
1.2 History of Interactive Storytelling
Storytelling originally meant telling stories to an audience. Most of the initial stories are based on learning about things that can harm us, both as individuals and groups. Stories can also give explanations and finding a reason for certain phenomenon or behaviour, which can give a basis for a religion – or even science. And, naturally, entertainment has always been a big motivator for storytelling.
Storytelling included an interactive part by default because the storyteller (e.g. bard) would have to adapt the story according to the audience (Murray 1997, pp. 188–194). If the audience did not respond favourably to the story, the storyteller would have to change the approach. Even epics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey started out as bardic tales and – regardless of whether they were composed by Homer – went through several centuries and countless generations of bards before they were first written down.
The change from orally told stories to written one was drastic. For example, Plato (1925, 275a–277a) expressed a critique on written word, which he asserts to be inferior to a human as a source of information (ironically, we know all this because Plato's story has been passed on to us in a written form). Apart from being an aid to the memory preventing one from truly knowing, it is non‐dynamic and non‐personal: you cannot make questions to a written text and it does not adapt to your needs. But this resilience to change and independence from the humans to carry it on have helped to save it, and we can still experience, for example, Bronze Age stories such as the Story of Sinuhe and Epic of Gilgamesh.
The introduction of the printing press in the fifteenth century made written word the preferred medium to distribute stories faster and to a wider audience. New inventions such as film and television meant the crafted narrative that would be reproduced in the same way – providing all spectators the same presented story; see Figure 1.2a. Literacy grew slowly and for many oral storytelling remained the main form of entertainment and passing wisdom. Further, murals and allegories in architecture (e.g. religious monuments and environmental art) provided a medium for visual storytelling (see Section 2.1.2).
Although the majority of literary works have been unicursal (i.e. offering one path to follow), there have also been examples – albeit rare – of multicursal works (i.e. offering critical choices to the reader). One of the earliest examples is I Ching, which is a Chinese book on divination dating back to between the tenth and fourth century BCE. The reader uses yarrow stalks (or special coins) to get six broken or unbroken lines, which together make a hexagram. The book has text for each of the 64 possible hexagrams and additional commentary for the individual lines, which can be changing or unchanging. Although multicursal works appeared as motifs after the Renaissance (Aarseth 1997, pp. 5–7), multicursal literature started gaining a foothold during the twentieth century (see Section 1.2.2).
Similarly, interactivity remained the fringes of other art forms such as theatre (see Section 1.2.1), cinema (see Section 1.3.3), and television (see Section 1.3.4). The advent of digital media from the 1940s onwards began to bring interactive forms of storytelling back to the limelight. It appeared in hypertext fiction (see Section 1.3.1), webisodics (see Section 1.3.2) and – most importantly – in video games (see Section 1.3.5).
1.2.1 Theatre
Western theatre has its roots in ancient Greece, where the plays were performed according to scripts. Some of those scripts such as Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Aristophanes's Lysistrata have survived and are performed this day.
Interactivity and immersion are two facets of theatre, whose roles have varied throughout history. Ryan (2001, p. 295–305; 2015, pp. 216–222) recognizes four stage designs that arrange the theatrical space putting emphasis on either immersion or interactivity (see Figure 1.6):
In a circular arena, the audience are surrounding the actors in the arena from all sides (e.g. a stadium). The audience are not only spectators, but they are also taking part in the experience interactively by commenting. Sports venues are typically based on this design.
In a classical Greek stage design, the actors and audience are separated by the stage and the seats leading to a compromise of immersion and interactivity. The audience can still participate in the play, but it is becoming more a spectacle to be immersed in.
In an Italian stage design of the Baroque era (the seventeenth century), the actors play on a lit and decorated stage, whereas the audience is seated in darkness, and they are further divided by the proscenium and an orchestral pit. All this leads to an immersive design that emphasizes spectacle and discourages interaction.
In avant‐garde theatre of the 1950s–1960s, the actors and audience were often intermingled, with some members appearing on the stage (possibly taking part in disciplined action) and some actors being outside of the focus among the spectators. This leads to high interactivity.
Interaction with the audience requires the actors to improvise. An early example of this is commedia dell'arte (‘comedy of craft’), which started out in sixteenth‐century Italy as a form of improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. A typical commedia dell'arte performance would include characters from a roster including stereotypical features (some of which later evolved into modern‐day circus characters).
Modern‐day improvisational theatre formed in the 1970s from the improv theatre scene with likes of ‘Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind’, followed later by the Frantic Assembly and the Viewpoints movement. Improvisational theatre is an intricate collaboration between the actors and audience. The actor should react believably and in an emotionally engaging way at every point of the performance. Based on the character‐defining goal or drive, the actor should also create story opportunities that have an emotional impact. The other actors then strengthen or contradict this and offer new opportunities. The audience can also affect the performance by providing the actors cues on the situation, style, and their character's attributes.
Figure 1.6 Stage designs in chronological order: (a) circular arena, (b) Greek stage design, (c) Italian stage design of the Baroque era, and (d) avant‐garde theatre. The black circles represent the actors and open circles the members of the audience.
Another, more serious, strand of improvisational theatre is Forum Theatre, which aims at helping the audience to solve social problems through performances (Boal 1979). A typical Forum Theatre performance includes a preselected theme where first the actors begin an improvisational situation. At any point, members of the audience can shout and change the story – or even step on the stage to replace one of the actors.
Bertolt Brecht's epic theatre in the early twentieth century challenged the classical theatre (Ryan 2001, pp. 301–302). Brecht tried to prevent immersion and encourage interaction and critical thinking by applying a distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt), where the play has a minimalistic stage and gets interrupted by songs and abstracts. Moreover, the actors can step out of their roles and engage the audience in a critical discussion.
1.2.2 Multicursal Literature
The twentieth‐century literature explored the possibilities of multicursal storytelling. A list of some of these works includes the following:
Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins's
Consider the Consequences!
(1930) offers the reader a possibility to choose how the stories turn at various points. It is an early example of a genre that was later labelled gamebook.
Ayn Rand's
Night of January 16th
(1936) is a play about a trial where the members of the audience are picked to be a jury. The work has two endings depending on the jury's verdict.
Raymond Queneau's
Cent mille milliards de poèmes
(1961) includes 10 poems printed on cards, which allow to interchange the individual lines with any other card. Queneau was part of the Oulipo movement, which was interested in combining mathematics and literature and experiment with the form.
Marc Saporta's
Composition No. 1, Roman
(1962) is a novel with pages like a deck of cards to be shuffled and read in any sequence.
Vladimir Nabokov's
Pale Fire
(1962) uses footnotes for multicursal storytelling.
Julio Cortázar's
Hopscotch
(originally in Spanish
Rayuela
, 1963; English translation 1966) is a novel that can be read following two different sequences of chapters intended by the author or uniquely by the readers making their own sequence.
Raymond Queneau's short story ‘Un conte à votre façon’ (1967) comprises 21 segments, of which 19 segments offer two alternatives for the readers to choose from (Queneau
1981
, pp. 253–259).
B.S. Johnson's
The Unfortunates
(1969) has 27 chapters where only the first and the last chapters are indicated, leaving the reader to choose the order for the remaining 25 chapters.
Gamebooks represent a genre of printed books that are not to read linearly but making jumps based on the reader's selection. One of the most known gamebook series is Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) series by Bantam Book. Between its launch in 1979 and 1998, they sold over 250 million copies. Three typical mechanisms are used in gamebooks:
Branching plot novels include textual passages followed by a branch point where the reader has to decide the next move. Based on the selection, the reader is then referred to another page in the book.
Role‐playing game (RPG) solitaire adventures are based on the rule set of a pre‐existing RPG (e.g.
Dungeons & Dragons
). This allows the player to play alone as the book acts as the game master by maintaining the story and controlling the non‐player characters (NPCs).
Adventure gamebooks use their own RPG system specially customized for the book.
The popularity of gamebooks started to dwindle in the 1990s as digital media (especially hypertext) allowed to implement them more easily.
1.3 Role‐playing Games
Although many games include role‐playing elements, the RPGs in their modern form evolved from fantasy wargames in the 1970s. One of the most influential RPGs is Dungeons & Dragons designed by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax and published first in 1974. The subsequent RPGs are often variants or improvements of the original Dungeons & Dragons with more complex or simpler rule sets and themes varying from dystopian futures to everyday real life.
What is common to RPGs is the promotion of one of the participants into the role of a game master. The game master acts partly as a proxy for the original designers and partly as the author creating new content for the players. The game master maintains rules and leads the players through the game. Often, this includes using various storytelling devices to keep the players focused on the scenario as well as move them forward. The game master also controls the NPCs. Consequently, much of the entertainment value of RPGs relies on the game master.
