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Part II. Storytelling in the Information Age ] 67
video games constitute the largest group of digital interactive narratives,
but fictional and non-fictional narratives of interactive television are also
on the rise.
All storytelling can be labeled as interactive digital storytelling, regardless
of the medium, in which the design team’s exploration of a narrative product
(e.g., a game or T'V show) is guided by the interactions of the recipient. Such
narratives may feature non-linear plot-driving as well as multiple scaffolding
variations that encourage the interactor to engage with the content iteratively.
Another feature of IDNs is that, unlike traditional storytelling where the time
of the story and the time of reception are split, in interactive storytelling, they
coincide, especially when the interactor is involved as a first-person agent.
The interactor controls the course of events through his or her choices, and
while there is freedom of choice, not all interactive narratives give interactors
the time that they need to process decision situations thoroughly.
Narrative structures in video games can be different. Emergent narratives
are games that only provide the narrative framework and the story with
its episodes is developed by the player during gameplay (e.g., The Sims).
Eladhari (2018) distinguishes four layers of storytelling in emergent narrative
games. The basic level is the coded, AI-driven digital framework, the second
level is the backstory framework, the third is the level of discourse between
the player and the game, and the fourth level is represented by the player’s
‘reconstruction of the story, which is embodied in its retelling. A game can
be said to be well-designed if the interactor can recall the most important
moments of the games story (Sych, 2020).
From a narratological perspective, further issues arise when the interactive
digital narrative is augmented with 360° videos. Instead of the sequential
spatial structure of traditional moving images, the interactor finds himself
in the continuous present-time of virtual reality and in a multidirectional
space without control (Fearghail, Ozcinar, Knorr & Smolic, 2018). In these
narrative universes, the units of the narrative are located on a spaceline instead
of a timeline. Stepping out of the cutscenes and sequences of traditional film
narrative, the viewer decides which scene to watch and from which angle to
view events. The free change of viewpoint through VR or AR may therefore
cause the viewer to miss moments that are important to the story (Rothe &
Hussmann, 2019). A further challenge for the interactor is that the pacing of a
film presented in VR becomes imperceptible to the audience and orientation
problems can take the viewer out of the film experience (Dowling, Fearghail,
Smolic & Knorr, 2018). It is also questionable whether such an experience
can be considered as true interactivity if the player/participant is free to look
where he or she wants to. In recent games, creators have made some story
elements inaccessible so that the players have access to significant episodes
in a sequenced structure.
The IT environment for narrative games is constantly evolving, and access
to it may have significant financial implications. However, IDNs have also