Interactive story has a long history and like most things it sounds easy in principle but proves difficult in practice. The same can be said for just trying to devise a definition for 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

How I define interactive story

interactive story

A form of real-time storytelling that reacts to input from the player within a rich environment.

I like to think of it as using the same technology that powers video games to tell a story. Games have incorporated story ever since Space Invaders, arguably the first – you either save the world or you don’t. Space Invaders is also clearly a game, that is what engages the audience. On the other end of the spectrum 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. If we lay it out on a spectrum it becomes easier to see, especially if we add Grand Theft Auto and the upcoming game Heavy Rain.

It’s all about the storyline?

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 can turn all this on it’s head in many different ways. I like to think of these as the techniques for creating interactive story.

Techniques for creating interactive story

An artist has a few techniques they can employ to create an interactive story. It’s like an artist’s pallet which they can mix and match to do the same thing as a movie – elicit emotion.

1. Interactive
2. Immersive
3. Story world
4. Challenge vs. mastery

Interactive technique

I know it might be confusing to use the term” interactive” as an all-encompasing term as well as for a specific technique, but I don’t want to get too caught up in nomenclature. This is also a nod to Chris Crawford who argued in his book that interactive implies more than most think.

Anyhow, this technique is where the Player is able to choose the events and/or their sequence albeit from a universe of possibilities constrained by the artist.

Immersive technique

Immersive story on the other hand doesn’t place the burden on being truly interactive but tricking the Player to think it’s interactive. An experiment in physically interactive story environments showed that this technique has a lot of potential.

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

Story world technique

This technique 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.

Challenge vs. mastery technique

This technique is what powers most video games. It’s where a challenge blocks the Player from progressing to the next story event.

Genres

Like movies, interactive story has it’s own genres – dating sims, training simulations, visual novels, narrative games, etc. Just as horror movies rely on suspense more, a dating sim may lean on the interactive technique. A game obviously would lean heavily on the challenge vs. mastery technique.

The future of interactive story may be interactive drama

With the explosion in mobile devices and the Hollywood model dieing, the time might be right for interactive story to stretch beyond it’s beachhead of games and move more into interactive drama. Follow the path of movies – stretching beyond filming Vaudeville acts to filming Westerns, then to the variety we see today.