ANIMATED INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES: An exploration Matthew Stringer ...

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ANIMATED INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES: An exploration Matthew Stringer ...

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ANIMATED INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES:

An exploration

Matthew Stringer

Fall 2004, Interdisciplinary Studies Program

University of Southern California

Abstract: Animated interactive narratives are video games and other media story-telling endeavors. When participants take place in and therefore help to shape animated interactive narratives, a type of storytelling seen no where else occurs. This form of storytelling is nothing new at its core, for it is comparable to the features of ‘play’ and ‘games’, which have always existed. People yearn to tell stories and be told stories. Animated interactive narratives facilitate this desire, by vast numbers, in today’s day and age. Technology and design concepts will continue to improve with time, and animated interactive narratives will become more accessible to all types of participant-storytellers.

Introduction: ‘Story’ is the communication of perception. Because all people have senses and are capable of some form of communication, all people have stories. When story is presented in an organized fashion, allowing for events to be arranged and meaning to unfold from the order and substance of those events, then ‘narrative’ is made. Thus, a narrative is the perceived organization of thought, for thought is worldview. Nevertheless, the terms narrative and story are used interchangeably herein, because of the ‘interactive’ distinction of the concept presented: the ‘animated interactive narrative’. Interactive narrative implies meaning is generated with immediacy, or in the way life unfolds with every moment, stimulus and response. Story is self-awareness. Story is thought. Digitize this happenstance, and one gives birth to the animated interactive narrative.

So, an animated interactive narrative is a story that is interactive, and that is also comprised of animated images, interfaces, or text. Such narratives exist primarily in the electronic. Though this mode is the perennial form, the central design of the animated interactive narrative is equal to the classic design of all types of narrative. This has always been the case throughout the entire electronic storytelling era. That design is this: The play was the thing, is the thing, and will remain the thing whether it is standard narrative or animated interactive narrative. The center of the animated interactive narrative is narrative. Narrative, or story-telling, has existed throughout human history. With the passing of years and the invention of new storytelling mediums, narrative has remained despite its being derived in newer and newer forms. For example, legends once passed orally from generation to generation were eventually painted upon cave walls, etched upon stone, and so forth, in all parts of the ancient world. The writings of tablets were later captured by the quill and thereafter the printing press. Regardless of these evolving methods of presentation, these oral legends generally remained true, from the first telling to the last. Narrative has become increasingly more visual. Near the turn of the twentieth century, with the invention of the cinema, stage performances were captured on film. Though the audience was witnessing a performance projected in light on a flat surface, it was still the original performance, only now captured in time. Thus, while the means of storytelling or story consumption have changed, story itself has not. Though there are boundless ways to tell a story, and different ways stories can be told have come about with newer forms, specifically technological, narrative is still narrative.

Electronic technological storytelling forms are under scrutiny here. Technology has made possible the two classifications ‘animated’ and ‘interactive’, which are ascribed to the term ‘animated interactive narratives’. Animation allows those cave-paintings, some of the first visual narratives, to come to life. In animation, figures are represented sequentially to develop the illusion of movement. It differs from standard cinema, in that it directly manipulates the image. Animation has become a part of everyday life, thanks in part to the personal computer (see Cybulski and Valentine “Timeline”). In widest consumption, animation’s primary design is that of storytelling. Herein animation is treated as a technological as well as artistic narratological form. It is viewed in a primarily technological sense when discussing video games. However, when discussing web cartoons and animation it is handled from an artistic vantage point. In total, this report is dealing with animated stories that can be acted upon by users, thus deploying new artistic possibilities via technological means. Interactivity is the foundation of a type of narrative known as ‘play’, or games. ‘Play’ is the interaction of one or more storytellers with given story elements. This interaction composes a narrative (Murray). Whether this narrative is achieved by a fixed or improvised performance of a previously composed subscription to a broadly or narrowly set paradigm, or it is conducted within a formal system of rules with no predetermined outcome1, competitive game play exists upon interaction. term ‘play’ The is appropriated by this author for use in describing narrative construction in electronic media.

1Theater is the former, games are the latter.

When the term “interactive” is uttered, it often calls to mind catch phrases like “interactive media” or “interactive electronics”. This sales-point use of the term

“interactive” is partly to be blamed on a consumer electronics industry bent on using buzzwords. However, for purposes here: the example of some children having a footrace outside, whether hundreds of years ago or today, is just as interactive an experience as is

children competing with each other inMarioKart, a popular go-cart racing videogame (Nintendo are not the discussion here.). Buzzwords

Little about play, at its very definition, has changed with the coming of technological forms, only perhaps how play happens, and certainly what play looks like. With the creation of the first American-made video game in 1958 (“The First Video Game”play forms have been transposed upon various titles,), historically traditional types, and genres developed for the medium. The medium of electronic games, and their

various dependent computer technologies, has become a part of society (Monroe). This lends the primary reason for the widespread use of the term ‘interactive’, since all of these interactive creations, the medium of electronic gaming in whole, are all interactive to begin with. Now, play is narrative (meimZnamr), and this underlines the point; that while the method of storytelling has altered, ‘story’, viewed as a separate concept, has not undergone any fundamental change, even if it is labeled “interactive . ” Without advances and innovations in electronic animation and graphics, the electronic game could not have taken on the popularity it has gained over the past decades. Storytelling is, at its heart, a visual art form. Whenever story is experienced a mental image is generated in the mind of the audience. Therefore, when specifically sharing stories in a visual form, instead of textually or aurally, visual stories often

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