Interactive Drama

Highlights

the spectators are not placed in front of a narrative unfolding in a linear progression.
The narrative premise is to actively explore the extents of the playing area in an attempt to reach its edges and unravel the story.
In that regard the story is presented to you as a puzzle, and it is for you the participant to piece it together in your own unique way. You experience the story as though you are part of the story, following the protagonist on a pathway to achieving their goal.
The use of suspense and anxiety can be used to guide an audience member through the narrative. By removing the participant from their comfort zone, their actions and reactions become influenced by both their instincts and the prompts that the storytelling experience gives them, creating a profound sense of non-cognitive ‘phenomenological’ immersion. Meanwhile the act of experimentation with the narrative structure and the temporal order of reception leaves the participant questioning their own subjective conclusion of the events they just experienced.

context sensitive gameplay in which the player performs actions on the control device shortly after the appearance of an on screen instruction
- "They are the key method of interaction within all story-driven games."
- t.2024.09.24.12 ugh

Until Dawn introduced an emerging social concept: people were no longer exclusively playing these games, they were now willing to watch the gameplay as the moment to moment narrative and interaction was so compelling
- Bear in mind too that this immersive video game experience was underpinned by a 10,000 page script.
Death Stranding (2019) is a hugely immersive story-driven game, blending the genres of Interactive Drama and RPG playability simultaneously to great effect. This is certainly the early signals of a new era of advanced narrative interaction occurring across video game genres.

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Highlights