What traditional ritual have you participated in, or are aware of, that reminds you in some way of an interactive narrative? What is it about this ritual that you think is like a computerised interactive experience?
I’ve attended the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge where every year a number of Druids
gather to perform ancient rituals. These rituals are rules based and involve the wearing of ceremonial robes and costumes. People often join in with the parades and dance to the drum beats. Everyone is playing a part and feel as though they are sharing an experience together similar to Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Many religious rituals and ceremonies could be compared to this type of interactive experience.
What game or sport have you played that you think could be adapted to a work of interactive entertainment? What would remain the same and what would have to be changed, and in what way?
The human joystick example in my previous blog below shows how the game of tennis has been adapted into an interactive entertainment with the whole crowd participating. In this example the rules have been simplified from the original game and the images shown on the screen are easy and quick to interpret. This allows people to learn the rules quickly with little work being done by the player. A lot of games and sports have been adapted into computer games including chess, football, cricket, golf etc.
The Wii console allows users to feel even more as though they are actually playing these games, with players being required to make real physical movements, which are detected using a special remote. It makes me wonder why people don’t want to go out and actually play these sports in “real life”. It may perhaps be the convenience of having many sports within easy reach available to be played at any time with no need to buy special equipment, travel or find someone to play these sports/games with.
What work of traditional storytelling (a novel, a play, a movie, or even a comic book) have you read or seen that contains a narrative technique that could be applied to a work of digital entertainment? What is this technique, and how could it be used?
The films Irreversible and Memento are both shown in reverse order with clues leading to a twist being revealed at the end which is actually the “beginning”. This technique could be used in a computer game. Playing the game in reverse and gaining more clues to the answer revealed at the end which would actually be the “beginning”.
Can you think of any work of traditional entertainment (poem, short story, novel, play, movie, TV show, etc.) that breaks the “fourth wall”? Describe how the fourth wall is broken in this work. Could the fourth wall be broken in a similar way in an interactive work? Why or why not?
In the film “Ferris Beulers Day Off”, Ferris, the main character, often addresses the audience directly informing them of extra background information on characters in the film, giving us greater insight into the story.
This way of breaking the fourth wall is already very common in computer games due to the fact that the players play an active role within the games.
1 comment:
Ahh! I love that film!
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