Digital games appear to be very different from other media that it is commonly compared to. The obvious difference is that digital games require active participation for it to work. Other media does not require this participation for it to continue, the only obvious exception is Pantomime, where the audience shout “It’s behind you!” It could also be augured that a pantomime production could easily continue without audience participation. Other media text is made for an audience to observe or read or watch and digital games are made for a participant to play.
Jesse Schell states “The idea that the mechanics of traditional storytelling, which are innate to the human ability to communicate, are somehow nullified by interactivity is absurd.” Jesse Schell’s quote from the titled “The 2 great myths of interactive story telling”. Schell is saying that new games designs usually argue a large difference between interactive and non interactive narrative, he is also saying that an audience participates with a story, asking themselves questions about the story as it unfolds “What should the hero do” or “where did that rabbit go” are given as examples, showing that there is little difference between them’. To summarise Schell is arguing that despite the coherent differences between interactive and non-interactive narrative, a lot can be learnt from traditional or non interactive story telling that can be translated and used contextually within interactive story telling.
Schell’s view on interactivity and the mechanics of traditional story telling can be augured. Schell states that the audience ask themselves questions like “What should the Hero do?”, this is correct however the questions that are asked, are never put into a context of action or consequence; the audience are never shown the consequences of their narrative decisions, only the ones that have already been made by the playwright, author or film producers. You could argue that an interactive narrative can offer more for the player than a play can for an audience.
I agree with Schell’s view on interactive narrative as the narrative in many games are directly influenced by popular stories that have already been told, many of these games are popular. The only interactive element is the way in which the player chooses to complete set objectives. The player doesn’t have the choice on what the narrative is, two players may complete objectives in different ways but the cut scenes that are viewed will be exactly the same, when the game shows a cut scene, it stops being a system of interactivity and becomes a device for viewing narrative. Thus the player has no impact on the game narrative; the end result will still be the same. This by no means determines the popularity of the game despite seeming like an obvious draw back within most digital games.
There are games where decisions made, during the game directly affect the narrative outcome and following abilities /objectives.
Video of Fable 2: shot by myself 03/01/10
This Video is a good example of utilizing the interactive element in Digital Games.
http://www.lionhead.com/ has more information about Lionhead games – site visited 04/01/10
Video of GTA4:
This video depicts the playable character “Niko Bellic” arriving at a mission and the cut scene which is a conversation between “Niko” and “Bernie”. The cut scene explains the reason for the mission; some back ground narrative and Niko’s feelings about what has happened in the narrative so far.
In “Rules of Play” GTA3 (the predecessor to GTA4) is used as an example to explain “fictive worlds, which represent narrative context, and story events, the actual game incidents that take place within the fictive world.” The Narrative context in GTA3 and GTA4 is well developed, if you are not on a mission and you decide to shoot someone on the street, eventually the police will come after you. The story events are also as developed with a wide variety of missions which include, shooting, chasing and driving.
It is said that GTA4 is a “sandbox” game where you could go anywhere and do anything but for the game to be completed, the player must do all the main story line missions where the motivation for the mission comes from the set piece before-hand not the players decision to do something. There are other side missions that the player can decide to do at any time.
To conclude it seems that the GTA series has a developed interactive narrative context but the main story is non-interactive, where as Fable 2 has a more interactive narrative as the player can decide how they want to complete a mission and how the main story-line ends rather than follow a strict narrative rail.
Interactive narrative isn’t only exclusive to digital games. It already exists in children’s “turn the page” books. This is a story written for children, when the narrative reaches a point of possible options, the reader is asked what path the protagonist should take, this creates a more immersive narrative as the reader has some degree of control over the protagonist, in the same way that the player in fable 2 has control over the narrative.
Video of Peter Griffin from family guy reading a “turn to page” book:
Here you can see Peter and Lois Griffin in bed. Peter is reading a children’s turn the page book and when his decision to follow the knight ends the narrative story he acts juvenile and uses an excuse to choose a different path that allows him to continue the story.
This sketch could make the audience think; that peters character has juvenile tendencies and that turn the page books as well as interactive narrative is only for children or should be seen as childish. This sketch may well just be a quick gag, but it could also be showing the underling prejudice towards interactive narrative, relating it to a type of children’s book
Turn the page books do have significant differences to digital games digital games give the player the opportunity to make split second decisions as well as a long term strategy, making the interaction between the player and the character within the game world seem seamless. Where as in turn the page books, for the narrative to continue, the reader is asked to choose from the set of options that are available to them, then the physical process of turning to the correct page takes up time and leaves the reader feeling more like they are reading a book, rather than following a knight into a castle for example.
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