I was once watching my brother play an action RPG game (unfortunately, I don’t remember what the title was). It was a war game - the character was in the opponent’s field, and probably trying to kill the bad guys. The point of the game was, by contacting his companions on the wireless and obtaining information, the main character must fight by himself.
My brother was doing a pretty good job, until he got to an area where he had no idea which way to in the forest. So he called his companions with his wireless. However, the answer didn’t match to my brothers question. We were puzzled. Later, we found out that we should have contacted the companion a little later, because the answer was prepared for the next stage.
The positive part about interactive media is that the reader/user can create their own stories in their own way. It is possible for them to have their own choice, and end up in a totally different place. For the readers/users, they can have the feeling that they are actually having an interactive communication/action with the media.
However, because of the freeness in interactive media, it is possible for the reader/user to ignore the notion of the author, and act around vigorously. This may lead to the corruption of the self-regulation of the author. It is like the RPG game I mentioned above. Because we (players) had mistakenly questioned the companions too much, the game became an ill-formed one. This was not intentionally done, but what if someone kept on pushing the button when they are not supposed to do so? Wouldn’t the self-regulation get damaged?
In order to maintain the self-regulation of the author, they should give some instructions to the readers/users in order to convey his original narrative to them. However, I think this is a tough job to do, because too much restriction will mean that the game (or any media) is not interactive at all. But at the same time, too much relying on the reader/user may end up in a different subject too.I think interactive media has some kind of dilemma. In order to be always interactive, there should be much work to do.
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This is exactly the dilemma that is raised by adding interactivity to a narrative - how can the author let the reader/user to feel that they have choice and control, but at the same time avoid the problem that your brother ran into? One possibility is to give the computer some understanding of where the user is in the narrative, and only allow appropriate actions, ie. don't let your brother call his companion until its the appropriate moment in the story. But doing this without it being to obvious that the game is trying to "force" the player to take actions at certain times is very difficult...
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