Jeremy Mattocks

In my previous post, I addressed what I believe are the two main problems for story endings in interactive fiction. In this continuation, I’ll propose two satisfying alternative forms IF can take.

The First Alternative: The Never-Ending Story

I posit the two pitfalls of ending IF I (addressed in my previous post) arise from a failing to make a critical distinction between player-as-writer games and player-as-reader fiction.

A story that truly incorporates a significant amount of freedom, perhaps, is one that involves the player on the level of a writer rather than a reader. After all, if I’m really going to feel like I’m writing my own story, the last thing I want is to be forced into someone else’s ending.

Of course, it may be impossible to ever give a player total freedom. But video games like Oblivion, Fallout, and Mass Effect seem to allow enough freedom for us to feel that we’re not just playing out someone else’s story, but really writing your own, unique experience. In these cases, the best thing to do is obviously to create a full, immersive world enough world in which players can actively participate instead of merely observing.

Whether they choose to do so or not, I think a good rule of thumb is that players should be able to act in these games as they would in real life. This allows a player to closely identify with their character, emotionally placing them inside the story instead of casting them as some sort of external, godlike force. In other words, the relationship is player-avatar rather than reader-character. And since the experience is nevertheless fictitious and therefore safe from negative consequences, players can enjoy behaving in ways they never could in real life. I think this is where such a degree of freedom becomes truly satisfying. In these cases, perhaps the best ending is no ending at all.

The Second Alternative: Interactive Reading

On the other end of the IF spectrum, the freedom to reach more than one ending may be completely unnecessary. If your goal is to tell a compelling interactive story, not just to create a sort of narrative playground, then interactivity and player freedom should be at the level of the reading experience and not the level of the narrative itself. This type of story would follow a predetermined path with a predetermined ending, but the process by which the reader may explore this path is open. Here the participant’s role in the story is primarily that of reader, not writer.

A useful non-IF comparison might be that of a painting. While a painter may utilize his or her skills in such a way as to gently guide the eye along a particular path, (s)he hasn’t the means to limit the observer to that path. In fact, doing so would likely diminish the experience. The painter creates his work in two spatial dimensions and allows the observer to move freely in the dimension of time.

For IF in particular, this may mean there are multiple interwoven plot threads that one may read in a non-predetermined order, or perhaps a reader may select one of many vantage points from which to observe some shared event. I imagine, for example, a 3-dimensional rendering of some story with the reader given control over the camera. The experience would be akin to a play performed upon a stage through which the reader to wander without disturbing the actors.

Conclusion

A good novel makes a bad game and vice-versa. The act of trying to turn one form into the other without exercising creative license considerably is like alchemy; no one has ever proven it can produce gold.

Wait, let me try another one.

Making a novel digital and interactive may involve splicing in some video game DNA, but trying to breed the two naturally probably won’t produce viable offspring. They’re too far apart on the Storytelling Tree of Life.

While I do enjoy playing the type of games I listed under the former alternative, and I have played out some fantastic stories, I’m most interested in writing the latter alternative. I can’t predict what literary revolutions we’ll see in the future, but my instincts tell me this new type of story is the true heir of the novel. I believe so-called “visual novels” (currently more popular in Japan than the United States) comprise the beginning stages of this form’s development. I consider myself one of many writers interested in carrying this young form forward into the next stages of its evolution.