Building an Anthology of "Interactive Fiction

2005

Simulation & Gaming, 2003

There is a potential conflict in the design of interactive narratives. The exercise of interaction in digital environments, including games, may interfere with the experience of story. The article uses the interactive CD-ROM CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE as a case study in the resolution of this potential conflict. It frames the design of this interactive narrative as the reconciliation of two independent design domains: the design of narrative and interactive design. Narrative design seeks a state of immersive surrender to the work. In contrast, interaction privileges choice and its consequences according to the logic of the interactive world. CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE uses two tactics to overcome this disjuncture. The first is the broad infusion of narrative sensibilities in the detailed design of the work's subsidiary craft (sound, graphics, moving images, and text). The second tactic is to suborn certain design specifics of the interactive interface to the goals of narrative design.

2020

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Anastasia Salter's syllabus for a course on interactive narrative, published in Syllabus, approaches interactivity both creatively and critically, focusing on narrative structure as well as technological infrastructure. Each unit includes a mini-project created with a different tool—namely, Twine, Scratch, and Inform 7. These units culminate in the creation of a final project, a multimedia interactive narrative, which has clearly articulated goals and outcomes. The use of freeware and easy-to-learn tools makes this a viable approach for those who lack access to expensive production tools and who do not have advanced media skills. Although designed for upper-level classes in game design, the syllabus emphasizes the conceptual aspect of game mechanics and interactivity, making the syllabus customizable as it forms a bridge between analysis and production.

silentblade.com, 2012

The focus of interactive storytelling should not only be on the attributes of the technology or characteristics of the medium, such as the AI techniques, planning formalisms, story representations, etc. but also on the computer-mediated communication processes, such as the relatedness of transmitted messages with previous exchanges of information, the number of attributes to be manipulated by the player, or the level of player control on the messages. This article argues that an approach to maximize player enjoyment in a computer game is to customize/personalize the gaming experience and the associated computer-mediated communication processes. To this aim and to provide answers to "how" and "what" should be customized, first the problematic notions of interactivity are explored and then the discussion is framed in the context of interactive storytelling systems. Secondly, table-top role-playing games (RPGs) -the live counterpart of computerized interactive storytelling systems -were analysed in an attempt to find "what" to customize. In particular, the article focuses on the Dungeon Master whose role in co-ordinating human-to-human communication process of interactive storytelling provides valuable insights into how to handle the humanto-machine/game communication process. Finally, the article proposes a framework to explain "how" to customize for maximum player enjoyment and optimal game experience within an interactive storytelling system.

International Journal of Arts and Technology, 2014

Stories are an important part of children's social and cognitive development and can be an integral part of their lives. In this paper, we share a short synopsis of Mobile Stories, one of the narrative systems we have developed with and for children. We also share lessons we have learned while designing, developing, and evaluating Mobile Stories. In designing and developing narrative systems for children, we advocate using iterative co-design (specifically cooperative inquiry). While designing a product, it is important to keep in mind key characteristics of interactive storytelling systems; such systems should encourage and enable creativity, interactivity with the environment via movement and mobility, and interactivity between users. When evaluating interactive storytelling systems, evaluators should consider the different story tasks of reading, creating, and sharing.

5

2009

Adventure game development systems are platforms from the developer's perspective. This paper investigates several subtle differences between these platforms, focusing on two systems for interactive fiction development. We consider how these platform differences may have influenced authors as they developed systems for simulation and storytelling. Through close readings of Dan Shiovitz's Bad Machine (1998), written in TADS 2, and Emily Short's Savoir-Faire (2002), written in Inform 6, we discuss how these two interactive fiction authoring systems may have influenced the structure of simulated story worlds that were built in them. We extend this comparative approach to larger sets of games, looking at interactive wordplay and the presentation of information within the story. In concluding, we describe how critics, scholars, and developers may be able to more usefully consider the platform level in discussions of games, electronic literature, and digital art.

This paper presents a method for analysing an aspect of interaction that can help us understand how users can feel that they are part of a work. I argue that interaction can be a form of depiction, causing the user to imagine both her perceptual actions and her manipulation of the work as being fictional as well as actual. This produces an ontological fusion between the actual and the fictional. In brief analyses of three interactive works, I suggest how this framework can enable a better understanding of some aspects of interactive art and literature.

2017

Art and technology in the twenty-first century are no longer segregated, as they were in the past. The increase in artistic activities using computers, the Internet and other areas of technological interest shows the impossibility of understanding the future of the arts without attending to technology. Such activities are apparent in Estonia, as can be seen in creative works by a number of artists and designers who attempt to bridge the physical and virtual worlds. These worlds are where humans have always lived, for example through two of the oldest art forms: storytelling and myth. Storytelling helps us understand our environment and personal experience... The craftsmanship of storytelling is an aspect present in all of the creative projects discussed in this article. The three projects are: Kärt Ojavee’s and Johanna Ulfsak’s Live Streams (2016), Varvara Guljajeva’s and Mar Canet’s Chameleon (2016), and Kristi Kuusk’s Textales (2015). These projects deal with the creation of interactive screens and tell particular stories about our environment, national identity, and imaginative world, using storytelling as a strategy for connecting physical material and technology with the meaning of the creation. A position shared among these projects’ designers is their aim of making the spectator and/or user understand the surrounding environment and generating personal experience with their work. An artifact that tells a particular story seems to possess a power to captivate and maintain the attention of its viewer and/or user for a long time. The term “interactive screens” in this article refers not only to digital screens such as computers, tablets and mobiles, but also physical screens that are specifically designed and created for particular purposes. The traces of the designers who are the storytellers of the three projects are present in both the physical and the virtual screens.