Entry 1

9-2-12

RTF 344M Blog Prompt #1

I came into this interactive narrative class with the mindset that I would witness more of what I'm used to seeing. That is, I was expecting something like a video game; a clear goal in mind for the player, and a means of conveying a malleable story. I'm reminded of video games like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on the Nintendo DS, which are reminiscent of the old Encyclopedia Brown novels where a mystery is presented and the interacting party is encouraged to solve that mystery using clues. Or The Walking Dead, an interactive story based on a comic book series revolving around the protagonist's hard moral decisions during a zombie apocalypse. These games tend to be on a more of a linear track, always reaching the same destination regardless of the path taken to get there. Through a series of puzzles, critical moments, and button pressing, a story is wrapped up neatly and sometimes takes on a new shape according to user input. This is the non-linear storytelling of video games; stretching it's content as far as it can while minimizing the chances of the player to go off on a tangent unrelated to the overall setting of the game.

The Korsakow projects definitely changed my perspective on the methods of delivering an interactive narrative to a participant. It's format begs for more non-linearity, almost completely doing away with structure in favor of abstraction. In the process, the project gains an almost dream-like quality, presenting no consequences for a 'wrong' choice yet still raising the stakes with the eventual exclusion of content. This type of project has no overt reaction or judgment based on a user selection, except the fact that 'the road not taken' is now barred from the user unless it happens to pop up again or the narrative is replayed. This is radically different from the video game method of delivery, which always remembers a critical decision point and will not hesitate to lock out content permanently during the course of a play-through. For example, the project “The Way I Saw It” gave a great impression of the powerful influence of big corporations without being too direct, almost passing it off as an objective view while being in a biased perspective. The user, after choosing keywords of interest, is presented with related voice-over and video that builds a perception of the corporate anatomy otherwise obscured by the customer/service employee relationship.

In this way, Korsakow projects feel even less linear than the most non-linear video games, casually mixing and weaving scenes together in seemingly unrelated sequence yet building on a common idea. Almost every game I have played had a clear beginning, middle, and end, regardless of the amount of fluff in between phases. “The Way I Saw It” has a similar structure, however, the boundaries between the phases are more obscured. There is a clear beginning and end (accounting for the retro 'intro' hook and the 'quit' monologues), but where the beginning becomes the middle and the middle becomes the end is up to the user. But the parallels between “The Way I Saw It” and gaming are clearer with the 'quit' sequence in two ways: One is with the way the selection is handled; 'quit' being an almost obvious signifier of the closing of the story in title alone, and two is with the delivery of the ending, simultaneously presenting the tail of the narrative, crediting the labor, and inviting further investigation with more keywords to move forward with. In non-linear games, there is often some sort of warning or sign of a point of closure, where the player will no longer be able to explore in the context of freedom, but instead will be locked onto a course with an immediate destination. This is also the case with the 'quit' sequence, which brings closure to the narrator's nagging animosity toward the corporations with which he was employed. The second similarity is at the crux of gaming: wrapping up the story while at the same time contradicting itself by encouraging further engagement. In a video game, the story will come to a close but beg a replay with various end-of-game unlocks that change game-play or branching narratives promising more content. In the same way, Korsakow closes a narrative while presenting possibly undiscovered keywords and previews that might further shade the story, if the participant is willing to engage. Because of this similarity, I think that the element of re-playability is a key feature of non-linear storytelling.