Interactive Drama

Interactive drama has a long history and like most things, it sounds easy in principle but proves difficult in practice. The same can be said for trying to define it.

It’s a fairly undefined and unproven thing, which makes it a lot of fun to think about, and attempt to build. Frustrating and humbling, too, of course.

- Andrew Stern

First, it’s a form of interactive story

Story is a very broad term. Interactive story is only slightly less broad.  Interactive drama is a subset of interactive story, so luckily it’s a little more refined.

I like to think of interactive story as using the same technology that powers video games to tell a story.

Interactive drama comes down to what drives the engagement

Space Invaders arguably was the first game with story – or shall we say interactive story. You either save the world or you don’t. It’s also clearly a game, the challenge of saving the earth is what engages the audience – it’s what drives the player. But what if it was the story that drove the engagement? That’s where interactive drama comes in.

It’s easier to see laid out on a spectrum. At one end you have Space Invaders, at the other end you have something like Facade, arguably the first interactive drama. More like a traditional story it relies on the characters and drama of the story to keep the audience engaged. We can also add Grand Theft Auto and the upcoming Heavy Rain.

Interactive story is all about the storyline, hence is interactive drama is too

In his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman explains that the first thing a writer needs to do is find the spine of their story – that is, the impression you want to leave with the audience, or what the story is about besides the bare events. Once you have that you can select the best events and sequence them to maximize dramatic effect – creating the storyline. Character plays an important role but as Robert McKee would yell in his seminar on Story – a character is their actions and actions take place in an event. So for our purposes it’s all about events or scenes.

Interactive story turns this model on its head in various ways:

1. True agency
2. Perceived agency
3. Story world
4. Obstruction

True agency

This is a nod to Chris Crawford who argued in his book that interactive implies more than most think. Anyhow, this method is where the Player is able to choose the events and/or their sequence albeit from a universe of possibilities constrained by the artist.

Perceived agency

This method is pretty much what you would expect, you trick the Player into thinking they have true agency, that it’s truly interactive. You might think that is crazy but movies trick us into believing that Superman just might not prevail this time – it’s more emotional but if it works, all the better. An experiment with physically interactive story environments also lends a lot of support behind this method.

Perceived agency is where the Player follows an artists created path or storyline but believes they’re choosing the events and sequence.

Story world

This is the same as sandbox mode in video games. The artist populates a rich environment for the Player to connect events, but it’s ultimately up to the Player to envision the story. This is best exemplified by Grand Theft Auto as described by David Edery and Ethan Mollick in their book Changing the Game.

These games, like a sandbox full of toys, encourage players to experiment with their environment, without being constrained to a specific plotline or course of action. In the case of GTA3 and its sequels, the “sandbox” is an entire virtual city full of realistic-looking buildings, vehicles, and people.

Obstruction

I stole the name for this from Chris Crawford. This is is also the basis behind most video games, where a challenge blocks the Player from progressing to the next story event.

Artists can use these methods to create interactive drama

An artist can use any one of these methods or any combination to create an interactive drama. However if they use mostly, or only, the obstruction method they might have a game. It’s still an interactive story but not necessarily an interactive drama. Especially if what’s driving engagement is the challenge and not the story.

It’s probably best not to get caught up in the terms (I say this after writing this whole thing) but rather see them as genres. Just as a horror movie will rely on suspense, a game will rely on the challenge and obstruction.

Don’t mix genres

Using the metaphor of movie genres we can also imbue the age old Hollywood rule – don’t mix genres. People buying games today are most likely looking for a challenge, if they see it relying on the story more they’re going to want their money back. But that’s exactly why the explosion of social gaming is so exciting – it’s opening up a whole new audience not looking for games but interactive entertainment. Combine that with the fact that the Hollywood model dieing and it’s might just be time for interactive drama.