Interactive storytelling: choice & narratives, and separating narratives from interaction

There's a curious phenomenon, regarding different people's views of interactive storytelling. There's quite a few works whose storytelling gets high praise from gamers. Yet it seems common, when non-gamers try some interactive storytelling, for them to be not very impressed with the storytelling, and to consider it to be lesser than what they’d find in a good movie or novel.

What's the explanation of these contrary views?

Here's some potential explanations. Maybe non-gamers are just not familiar-enough with interactive storytelling. Maybe they're biased against interactive storytelling because it's less familiar to them. Or perhaps games are (in general) targeting younger audiences, who aren’t as interested in mature storytelling. Or maybe gamers are used to a lower-quality of storytelling in games, so have lower expectations for them.

 

I think there's at least a small element of truth in all of these, but I think the main explanation is something else.

To help explain, I'll introduce the notions of 'strong' and 'loose' narratives. That was the topic of my last post. Since the distinction is central to this post, I'll quote the entire contents of that previous post here:

In a strong narrative, everything that happens in the sequence of events have a purpose that contributes to the overall details of the story. The overall story is there to create a satisfying experience for the viewer, reader, or game player (from here on I'll just use 'viewer').

The overall story details will involve elements like the following. There will be challenges put in front of the protagonists, that they will overcome. The tension may ratchet up, until the climax of the story, and there will be a resolution. The protagonist will likely experience some growth. There may be certain themes. The overall story may present unexpected surprises. There will likely be mysteries that are raised earlier in the story, that get answered later on, which serve draw the viewer (etc) through the story.

I'm not saying that all of these have to be present for the narrative to be strong. I'm saying that a strong narrative supports the overall story details, whatever they are for a particular story.

A strong narrative is a set of events, put in a deliberate sequence, in order to produce a strong set of the overall story details (a strong climax, a satisfying resolution, etc). Events that occur build on what came earlier. A strong narrative won't include superfluous events, that don't help contribute to the overall story details.

A problem for the protagonist may arise in one scene, and the events in the next scene may exacerbate those problems. Earlier scenes may have painted a certain picture of the protagonist's predicament, and a later scene may turn those appearances on their head. The sequence of events will be constructed to make the story's mysteries compelling.

In strong narratives, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts", because the parts are designed to contribute to the overall details of the story.

In loose narratives, on the other hand, there may be little or no overall story details for the sequence of events to contribute to. It's just: this happened, then this other thing happened, then something else, and so on.

The events will likely be connected -- perhaps by occurring in temporal sequence, following what happens to a protagonist, like what they did and where they went. But there won't be much to the overall story details, and thus not much for the sequence of events to contribute towards.

Everyday life is like a loose narrative. A sequence of stuff happens, but there's not the dramatic arc and so forth found in a strong narrative.

Of course, this isn't really a binary of only "very strong" narratives and "very loose" narratives. It's a spectrum, with stronger narratives at one end and looser narratives at the other end.

I believe that, generally speaking, people tend to prefer stronger narratives. There's always exceptions of course, but I think that in the majority of cases, if all else is equal, people will find a stronger narrative more compelling than a looser narrative. And if people find strong narratives more compelling, then in that sense I think it is fair to say that, generally speaking, a stronger narrative is a better narrative.

And this doesn't seem to be merely a matter of people's personal preferences or opinions. Evolution seems to have given us brains that desire and enjoy strong narratives. Brains that are suited to consuming information in the form of strong narratives.

 

With this distinction between strong and loose narratives, I think I can explain what’s going on with the divergent views about how good the narratives are in interactive storytelling.

To help illustrate, I’ll focus on Inkle’s “80 Days” (Wikipedia | Steam). It’s a souped-up “choose your own adventure”, that re-imagines Jules Vern’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”. The player's goal is to get around the world in 80 days.

It's a highly-rated story-based game. Its writing has been praised, and its storytelling has been lauded. The Guardian said it was "Interactive storytelling as its best". The game won the Independent Games Festival’s "Excellence in Narrative" award.

It’s worth noting that the game provides the player with a lot of choice. When the player has stopped at a destination, they have several choices for what to do while they are there. This might include buying items available there, or selling (hopefully at a profit) items they had previously bought elsewhere. They can talk to other characters, and make choices at various stages in the conversation.

When they are ready to leave, they have several transport options, to different destinations. And some will be faster than others, but might be more expensive. So the player needs to manage their funds, to ensure they get around the world in time but also don’t run out of money.

(Disclaimer: it has been several years since I have played it, so I apologise for any inaccuracies in my description of how it works).

To get a sense of the degree of choice, “The developers estimate that on one complete circumnavigation of the globe players will see approximately 2% of the game's 750,000 words of textual content” (from the game’s Wikipedia entry).

80 Days has a fairly loose narrative. There are some overall details to the story, that are contributed to by events that happen. But a lot of what you’ll encounter in a playthrough is more just: this happened, then this other thing happened, then something else happened.

This is not because the developers and writer are unable to write a strong narrative! It’s because of all the choice and freedom the player has. I would guess that there are thousands of different (but interrelated) possible playthroughs. Some of these would only vary from each other in fairly minor ways, but other ones would vary from each other in fairly major ways. So lets imagine that there are a couple of hundred possible different playthroughs (that vary in non-trivial ways from each other). It’s just not feasible to write hundreds of different strong narratives for a single game.

It’s not simply that it’s difficult to construct that many different strong narratives. The fact that all of those different playthroughs are related to each other, and overlap to some extent, actually makes it even more challenging. It would be harder to construct X number of inter-related strong narratives than to simply write X completely-distinct strong narratives. This is because strong narratives don't "live close together" in "narrative space".

So I think this is the explanation for why non-gamers who might try out a game like 80 Days may come away not terribly impressed by the storytelling.

But then, why is it that a game like this is lauded by gamers? I think the distinction between strong and loose narratives can help us here.

 

Gamers like 80 Days as a combination of that storytelling with the interactivity.

What interactivity brings is that the player gets to feel, to some extent, like they have been on an adventure, with ups and downs, and some interesting happenings along the way. They might feel good about having made some good choices along the way. Since there is so much choice, they can feel that they truly shaped what happened in their adventure. There is also the puzzle-like element to the game of trying to find good routes while also managing your finances well, which some people will enjoy.

And while the narrative is fairly loose, that doesn’t mean it’s bad, nor does that mean it can't contain small pockets of stronger narrative scattered through it. Also, narrative is separate from the writing in the story. The writing in a story with a loose narrative can obviously still be good.

It’s the overall package that the gamers like.

But there’s a lack of precision in how they evaluate the work. They don’t distinguish precisely enough between the qualities of the overall package and the storytelling component of that.

If the overall package is great, and that overall package is “interactive storytelling”, then it seems that the storytelling must be great. But just because someone finds the overall package great, that doesn’t mean that all the components of that package are great, in absolute terms. If a person really likes interactivity and choice and freedom, they may still really like the overall package, even if the narrative isn’t terribly strong. In absolute terms, you have to compare the narrative to those in other media, such as the strong narratives such as in movies and novels.

Can you actually separate the storytelling from the interactivity? Not totally. But, in general, I think you can to a large extent. It depends on the nature of the interaction in the particular work. You can definitely separate out narrative from the interactivity. The interaction determines what happens, and thus what specific narrative the player experiences. The narrative is the result of the interactions, which aren't part of it.

Any particular screen of text that you see in the game will seem like what could appear in a novel with a strong narrative. So the lack of a strong narrative is far from obvious. A strong narrative is more “abstract”. It concerns much larger-scale details in the story than any individual passage of text. And unless you already have an appreciation of the distinction between strong and loose narratives, you won’t be well equipped to be aware of that component of the story. I would imagine that the majority of people playing games don’t have a clear idea of that distinction. This isn’t a criticism of them, just what I think is the case, without making any judgements of the people.

So I think the non-gamers are right about the storytelling in a lot of the interactive storytelling. The interactivity is used to give the player freedom and choice, which necessitates a looser narrative. And this is the case even in beloved interactive storytelling works, that are widely lauded for their storytelling.

A question raised by this is, is all interactivity at odds with having a strong narrative? That’s something I’d like to write about more in the future.