Interactive Fiction : What Does it Want to Be, What Can it Be¹ ?

by

Wolfgang Ruttkowski

Introduction

In an issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC² the following was written: "Technological changes in books are part of a larger change in our aesthetic sensibilities and creativity ... The novel, which began as epic poems in Homer′s era, will also evolve. In an Internet story every reader can add new material . The traditional notion of ′author′ and ′original′ , which arrived when written books replaced oral folklore, disappears."-

We must stop right here and ask: "New material"? What does that mean in this context? Is the discussion here truly about "new " subject matter, unknown to the author, or can the reader only choose amongst various possibilities presented by the author? - Doesn′t ,in the first case, the quality of the story depend all too much on the level of creativity and sophistication of the reader? Would not the plot come to a standstill or end in banalities, if s/he lacked fantasy?

We have to differentiate from the very beginning between Internet Stories to which the reader can indeed contribute his own continuations (often in the form of the epistolary novel or the diary) and completed interactive novels (usually available on disks) in which the reader can only choose between many possibilities provided by the author. Only the latter are of interest here.³
Let us also clarify the remaining related concepts, and their relationship to each other: Internet Story and Interactive Novel can together be called Hyperfiction. The latter may be counted - together with other forms of Hypertext (e.g. interactive travel guides or encyclopedias) - into the larger group of Hypermedia (which in turn includes Interactive Games and Films). The prefix "hyper" simply means: choice and flexibility in the sequence of reading/viewing , the opposite of "linear"⁴. "Interactive" obviously means that the reader/player/onlooker can actively participate in the process of reception, - to what degree, must be analyzed in each individual case.

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Obviously, three previously separate spheres are being brought together by the medium of the screen and by their interactive character: film, game⁵, and novel. Up to now, most of what has been produced for the first two must be counted as "trivial entertainment". The interactive CD-Roms which have been published since about 1993 for adults either continue the tradition of tv-games⁶ or they remain on the level of spy movies⁷, action-thrillers, science fiction⁸, horror movies⁹ or "cyberpunc"¹⁰. The theme of "futurological challenge" (Save the world!)¹¹ is popular. One frequently encounters parallel productions for film and video¹² and the film version is not always the first.

Some of the most important innovators of the entertainment media¹³ have recognized the possibilities lying within these interactive media and are busily developing computer programs of feature film quality. It is therefore not principally impossible that one day an artistically ambitioned film team will produce an interactive film of importance, maybe even a cinematographic master work. Would the same apply to the genre of the novel?

We have to return one more time to the text quoted : "At Brown University, students ... are learning how to integrate sound and visuals into stories." (In other words: They learn how to produce "Hypermedia" in our understanding of the word.) "Novelist Robert Coover, who teaches the workshop, decries ′the tyranny of the line′. He lauds the ′hypertext novel′, in which a story has no predetermined beginning, middle, or end. Readers choose among pathways within plots that form a mosaic. "- (The decisive word here is "choose", not "invent".)
However, a reservation is being voiced: "Young people may find mosaic plots exciting, but for those schooled to think in a linear fashion, hypertext novels can be tedious and confusing. No hypertext novel can achieve what the brain does naturally. "

The quote as a whole poses several questions : 1. What kind of function does our brain perform "naturally" while we are reading novels¹⁴? - At first, we will remember the terms coined by Roman Ingarden. He would have said: "While we are reading, we are "concretizing the points of indeterminacy" in the text.- 2. Is, what "hypertext novels" try to achieve, the same? Or (3) has probably a newer theory of literature, e.g. "Deconstructionalism" , stronger affinities to the possibility of choice in "interactive" genres¹⁵?- 4. How is this possibility of choice related to the ambiguity of meaning found in large portions of contemporary literature?- Is the former an extreme form of the latter, or something principally different? 5. What is being gained in "interactive fiction", and what has to forfeited? - And finally the most interesting question for us: 6. Does interactive fiction possibly find its limitations stemming from its interactive character?- Differently put: Will there be literary master works in interactive form in the future, and, if so, how will they look? - Or seen from another angle: Do our narrative genres in general and the novel in particular - as they have developed up to now - correspond to certain psychological needs of the reader and can the latter also be satisfied by interactive novels? Could it even be, that those psychological expectations (Jauss: our "horizon of expectations") have changed in the younger generation of readers and that therefore the new genres are better meeting its needs? It is, after all, the associative mode of thinking, and not the "linear" one, which is supposed to "come natural" to us. Perhaps this new generation of readers is rebelling against the "security" of passive abandonment to the author′s authority, which has been taken for, granted by us for so long?¹⁶

Precursors

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Notes

1 First presented in German as a paper on May 11th 1996 at the yearly convention of the Japanese Society of German Scholars (Japanischer Germanistenverband) in Tokyo (Meiji-University); printed in: Acta Humanistica et Scientifica Universitatis Sangio Kyotiensis, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, Humanities Series No. 24 (March 1997) 98-129.

2 188/4 (October 1995) 5-36, 8f. Joel L. Swerdlow: Information Revolution.

3 A good description of aesthetic problems inherent in "Internet Stories" we owe to Gareth Rees (see Appendix XIV).

4 See R. Coover (Appendix I), Ch. Deemer (App.V), and H.S.Becker (App.IX).

5 See Jörg-Uwe Albig: Videospiele. Die Helden aus der Kiste. In: GEO 10 (Oktober 1995) 110-135; and Rüdiger Sturm: Silberrausch in Hollywood. In: SPIEGEL EXTRA 12 (Dezember 1995) 42-43.

6 E.g. "Hollywood", which permits a choice of voice timbres and decorations as well as alteration of scenes from real films.

7 E.g. "Conspiracy" with Donald Sutherland.

8 E.g. "Wing Commander" with Mark Hamill a.o.

9 E.g. "Hell" with Dennis Hopper and Grace Jones, or the new Frankenstein-Version with Tim Curry.

10 E.g. "Johnny Mnemonic" or "Tank Girl" (comp. Albig, see above. p.129).

11 e.g. "Magic Carpet", "Doom", "SimCity" or in Germany "Aufschwung Ost".

12 e.g. "Demolition Man" with Sylvester Stallone, "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" by Georg Lukacs.

13 Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Bill Gates in their project "Dreamworks Interactive".

14 About the question of biological foundations of our syntactical systems see Jim Rosenberg (App. XI).

15 See Hilmar Schmundt (App.XII) and Robert Kendall (App.X).

16 See Alon Bochman (App.VIII), Kathleen Burnett (App.VI), Charles Deemer (App.V), Hilmar Schmundt (App.XII), negative Nancy Lin (App.XIV) and Gareth Rees (App.XIV).