<<< I've been wanting to write this essay for a while (since at least March, when I wrote an original set of notes for it, while out in Seattle). Now I have a location to begin constructing it, and bloody well intend to. I would appreciate other people's views (in particular errors and things I've overlooked) So if you would be so kind as to comment, but not actually alter anything (other than spelling mistakes) I would appreciate it. Ta. -- BenChalmers >>>

The Simulation Vs The Narrative

Fiction has always had an element of interactivity. The reader of a book or viewer of a soap opera has always interpreted the author's work within the context of their own experiences. While a book stands as a common point of reference to which all readers can relate, the experience created by the reader's and author's combined efforts is unique.

Before even the first book, there was a greater source of interaction found in storytelling. As hypothetical animal skin clad stone age hunters gathered around a campfire to tell tales of their days, it is reasonable to assume that their stories were elaborated upon depending upon the reaction of their peers. Perhaps the stories were changed, an occasional lie slipped in to acheive greater applause. Before the holodeck, before the mass marketed paperback, there was direct interaction with fiction.

But immersion - that is something different. When Dennis Wheatly provided not the story of a murder mystery being solved, but rather the clues (and the solution wrapped in an envelope) he was inviting the reader to not simply read about a detective, but to actually become one. In fact the murder mystery, in challenging the reader to figure the answer before the sleuth, had provided an element of immersion - indeed it is a pretty poor novel (and an almost certainly unfinished one) in which the reader does not find themselves imagining themselves experiencing something of what the protagonist experiences.

In the nineteen-seventies a new form of entertainment arrived - the roleplaying game. The origins of Dungeons and Dragons are well documented elsewhere [I'll add a bibliography later], but can be described as taking a hobby which was interactive (wargaming) and adding an immersive element, as one considered oneself not as a godlike general, caring nothing about his troops so long as victory was acheived, but instead as a single entity intent on surviving.

Roleplaying developed and moved away from its wargaming roots, gradually becoming less about achieving victory conditions and more about telling a story. The day that a player realised there was both a sensible course of action, and a different course of action their character would take - and chose the latter marks the extent of the change I am describing. I think it is safe for me to say this marks the difference between a particular form of skirmish wargaming and roleplaying propper.

Interactive fiction

The simulation

The narrative

<<< I havn't written enough of the essay yet to explain myself. Immersion is the concept of feeling involved, experiencing what the (fictional) entities involved experience - it doesn't directly relate to the narrative form of gaming. I don't think it's a bad choice of word (in fact I dislike the word narrative far more). Rather I intend to investigate how interactivity and immersion are affected by the different styles. The examples of Advent and Photopia will probably help with this .

In fact new terms - immersion and interactivity are characteristics which various forms of fiction have.

Simulationist and Narrative are styles of storytelling

--BenChalmers >>>

UnityWiki: simulationist (last edited 2008-01-20 00:02:47 by tack)