Question 2.3

Think of an example of the use of narrative in interactive media. With reference to your example, suggest what the “peculiar nature” of interactive media may be, and which narrative effects it may specialize in.

I define “peculiar” here to having the meaning of “unique”. For this case, I choose the interactive media of computer games that have a narrative thread. I suppose what makes gaming special is the experience of “playing” a storyline through the movements and point of view of a main character, with an emphasis on YOU changing the face of the narrative world. Your mere presence and choices prompt the kernels or turning points in the narrative. Sometimes, as in the LOTR: Return of the King EA game, you are allowed to play more than one character. The near-absolute power of the user to affect a leading character’s personality, his/her surroundings, influence the fighting scenes and alter events and the other characters as a third party is the most vivid trait of interactivity in games. Without the user’s involvement the game is static and the narrative, in a sense, never happened. (if a tree falls on a mine and no one was around, is there a sound?)

Compared with the book, the LOTR games and movies contain much more visual impact and influence on the experience of enhancing the narrative. Peculiar to visual narratives, any physical element you see is specific and precise; what you see is what you get. What appears in a book as “a red shirt” can be interpreted and portrayed in the movie as a cotton-knit sweatshirt with a deep burgundy shade. The game and movie cannot offer ambiguity in how the characters, setting, props, even action is portrayed.

Because the sense of sight is the most provoked (and sound in games and movies), other senses like that of smell, taste, touch are missing from the game. Whereas the book could have a long paragraph describing Golem as a filthy, smelly, repulsive creature, the game does not have the capacity for us to feel the fullness of that disgust for Golem. Another instance is how in movies the sound of the heart beating is the best representation of the feeling of increased adrenaline. Additionally the inward thoughts and emotions of the characters are not known, and can only be inferred from limited visual cues. The furrowed brow would be automatically inferred as meaning frustration, or most of the time the faces hardly change and you can only infer from sound cues how the character feels (crying presumed to be a sad emotion, and not tears of joy or through the character’s speech).

Of course by tapping into the visual games lose little. They have no problem in holding our attention span – humans are by nature influenced most by our vision. By watching a movie or playing a game, the narrative itself takes a life of its own, and if interactive as well, we can literally see ourselves playing an active role in affecting the chain of events.

Question 2.2
Interactive media allows for choice and control on the part of the reader/user. What problem does this raise for self-regulation? What, if anything, does this suggest about designing interactive narrative?

The basic premise is that a story needs to be structured as an entity, such that whether it is told in chronological order or not sequential as in a flashback scenario, whatever transformation through events or existents, it has to still be well formed. → SELF-REGULATION. Basically, to do this the discourse and story within the narrative structure needs to prove its purpose somewhere and relate back to the narrative somehow. → RELEVANCE. Therefore, unrelated elements that do not contribute to the transformation are irregularities. See Moviemistakes revealing incongruence in movies where a car or camera was spotted in LOTR.

In interactive media where the reader/user takes control of the wheel, self-regulation is difficult. Halfway through a difficult Prince of Persia battle I can decide that I want to commit suicide to return to an Auto-saved point and retry. Although it is illogical for the hero to impale himself deliberately, this “ill-formed” narrative is possible under gameplay. And then there are cheats… Ahem…

Maintaining a logical narrative flow would be problematic in interactive media as a result of the presence of another actor in manipulating it according to his or her fancy. Self-regulation is possible though, if the new media designer places restrictions to ensure some form of control is maintained by the story even after granting the user/reader some leeway. Thus the challenge for game designers is to make game interactive enough to be engaging, yet not enough to render the narrative illogical and banal. In Neverwinter Nights I can customize my character to be evil, good-looking, and deadly in melee combat but the game does not allow me terribly much choice in making him/her having an extra mole on the right butt cheek, liking chocolate ice-cream, and inwardly a good person who only acts evil. In dialogue, I have 3 choices to choose from in answering someone's question. However, these choices were constructed by the programmer and I only have, essentially, 3 responses from an infinite number of sentences I can otherwise construct in reality. My choices are really predetermined! So that is why in most games there is no choice but limited choice. What a paradox…

Narrating in the New Media

My my... what difficult readings we have. Chatman is true to his name and while he was chatting away to himself, I was trying my best to understand his verbosity. But the module is starting to make a tiny bit of sense after an initial rusty start-up from the engines that power this brain of mine. It is a feeble start after a month of wedding ups and downs, another a trip all over 4 US states, and lastly one of inertia.

Question 2.1
1) Choosing a narrative piece, discuss how the transposition to/from interactive media has changed it. Has the structure of the narrative remained intact?

Summarizing Chatman's theory that "transposability of the story is the strongest reason for arguing that narratives are indeed structures independent of any medium”… he supports Bremond that a narrative can be transformed (transposed) from one medium to another, without being affected in its core elements, and goes further to say that this trait makes it a single, whole structure. Therefore, by right, a story can be told in as many media but essentially remain unchanged in its events and existents.

However, he does not consider the realm of interactive media, which of course is partly decided by the story-teller, and partly the reader/audience/player or what have you as we have learnt. And in games, the player is in some way the story-teller too.

An example would be the Spiderman 2 game on Xbox that derived from the movie, which in turn was sparked off by the comic genre. As the story moved from one media to the next, and even back (the Spiderman 2 MOVIE comic) to its original one, it changed subtly in story (existents and events) and discourse (structure of narrative transmission and manifestation). It is the same hero in the game as in the movie, and the same heroine and villains, but definitely there are parallel plots that distinguish the game separate from its predecessor. One instance is the introduction of Blackcat, an additional character, the playing down of the love theme through less scenes (and certainly Peter doesn’t reveal his identity to MJ and get married) and emphasing the action scenes. Furthermore, there is the possibility that the hero dies! Thus if Prof Alex decides to play the game exactly contrary to what the designers have in mind, he would kill himself in the main story, or carry on with sub missions. And of course we know that from print to screen, comic to box office, the movies are drastically different in characters, events, ordering of events etc. In other terms, the story can and does change in practice, because there is really no stopping the storyteller from telling the story differently.

Another example, this time from interactive to non-interactive media would be the Baulder’s Gate game which was written into a book. It had a linear and fixed discourse and only selected plot strands, characters and settings were employed to fit the unchanging, non-interactive narrative. Thus the structure was changed, though I can make an argument that the Themes are otherwise similar.

In conclusion: no, the structure does not remain intact UNLESS the story-teller wants it to.