from
the interview:
->
The users of
interactive drama would enter a computer-generated world,
meet computer-generated agents, impersonate a fictional
character ... They would be spectator, character, actor,
and author.
->
From the point of view of a participant a plot that would
not be very interesting for a pure spectator may become
fascinating-just as playing a tennis game not worthy of
televising may be a richly rewarding experience for the
player.
->
Fiction presupposes a
suspension of disbelief... The creation of suspense is
highly dependent on the order of presentation of
narrative information... Randomizing the sequence is not
necessarily deprived of aesthetic interest; but the
effect that results from the chance encounter of two
lexia is more of a metaphorical / lyrical than of a
causal / narrative type.
->
Reading becomes a
game similar to solving a jig-saw puzzle: the picture to
be reconstituted is the story itself.
->
But does the
interactivity of digital texts change narrative on the
deep structural level, the level of story, or on the
contrary, do they threaten its coherence?
->
There may be
hypertexts that allow the reconstruction of a grand
narrative, some that present only little stories (stories
contained in one lexia), and still others that frustrate
narrative desire both on the level of grand narrative and
of little stories.
->
The next generation
of hypertexts will have to be visually pleasurable, and
hypertext will be a work of design and orchestration as
much as a work of writing.
->
To remain readable,
these conceptual hypertexts will have to be shorter than
the hypertext novels of the first generation. And it will
be necessary to give a strong allegorical meaning to the
action of moving through the textual network—not an
invariant generic message inherent to the medium, but a
meaning unique to each particular text, and ideally
recreated with every use of the device.
->
The anti-narrative
and self-reflexive stance of postmodern texts is an
interesting moment in the development of literature, but
in the long run, immersive narrativity is much more
viable, pleasurable, and diversified than
anti-narrativity.
->
Let me therefore
focus on what I see as the main problem with interactive
texts: their deficiency, compared to traditional
narrative in the area of immersivity...Every time the
reader is asked to make a choice, the flow of narration
is interrupted...
