Last week when I played the interactive fiction alone, I saw it was not interactive – moreover, I thought it was restricted in many ways. (See last week’s blog post) However, when Mr. Mitchell played it in class, I had a different impression. With the assistance by others, I actually found it as interesting.
What was different from Shade and the Cinderella that we played in class, was while Shade had to complete the story on our own, in Cinderella, the player needs to somehow ‘stop’ the story, and try to make it into our desired one. Cinderella told the story regardless of our (or rather, a bird) existence. In order to stop the prince from marrying the step sisters, the player has to somewhat take action as a creature with no lips. What was fun in doing these games, was that we were able to manipulate the narrative by ourselves.
I felt that I had not realized how to play the game when doing alone. I was just trying to find my way out, trying to get close to the goal. But unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to achieve the goal, and concluded that it was not interesting, and not interactive.
This reminded me about when we talked about the hypertext 253 in class. I think I said that 253 was also not really attractive to me. But there were people who liked the text too. I remember Mr. Mitchell’s words, “Playing for the story”. I didn’t really get the meaning at that time, but I think this can relate to the interactive fiction now. Both in 253 and the ZORK, I was just trying to find the goal. Of course we have to get to the goal in the end (especially in interactive fictions), but in order to fully enjoy the game, we need to find the story inside it. That is, play for the story. We need to acknowledge the story, but at the same time, create it into a more interesting one for each of us.
Though I thought that interactive narrative is restricting our actions in the game, now I think it a bit different. In order to enjoy the game, the player needs to try and find out a way to make the narrative ‘interactive’, not just try to focus on achieving the goal.
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That's a very interesting observation, that the player needs to try to make the narrative interactive. I hadn't really thought it through that far when I mentioned "playing for the story", but that's a nice way of looking at it. The player's attitude, how they approach the interaction, does really make a difference as to how they experience the game/story. If they focus on the goal, as you said, then its really the game-like aspects of the system that are emphasized. If, instead, they focus on the story, then it becomes a much different, and in this case, more satisfying, experience.
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