Interactive Fiction and Storytelling: Past, Present, and Future Directions (Roundtable)
Abstract
ontemporary literary, computer game, and cinematic history are rife with forms of interactive fiction and storytelling. Gamebooks such as the Bantam Choose Your Own Adventure series of children’s books, video games from early text-based games like Zork to more contemporary gaming, and interactive movies of the type becoming increasingly common through streaming technologies, allow for a different kind of relationship between audiences and narratives.
These types of narratives have been read, watched, and played by adults and children alike with increased regularity since the popularization of the form in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The purpose of this session is to examine the range of possibilities for interactive forms of narrative and storytelling, creatively, academically, and even pedagogically. This panel invites creative practitioners, educators, and scholars of film, gaming, and literature to share original creative work and scholarly criticism that explores this theme.
Description
This proposal encourages cross-disciplinary works with the goal of bringing together creators, scholars, and educators to begin critically examining the form and its potential. A roundtable format would be ideal for this special session as it would allow for a larger number of participants from a greater diversity of disciplines and ideally would also include types of creators who are not commonly represented at academic conferences.
While interactive fiction and storytelling has become increasingly popular, it not very well studied, and what current scholarship exists does not take an interdisciplinary approach which would bring together film and television studies, gaming studies, and literary studies. From a scholarly perspective, there is a great opportunity to develop this as an interdisciplinary field of study.
From a creative perspective the range of possibilities for this form is only increasing. Graphic-text gaming still exists and works such as Zoë Quinn’s 2013 interactive fiction game “Depression Quest” have made notable contributions to contemporary culture. Text-based games like Zork are no longer commercially viable, but the tools used by developers of these games have now been made free resulting in interactive fiction competitions and a thriving community creating works as part of a gift economy. Interactive fiction is also growing as a part of contemporary gaming, film, and television.
There is also a largely unexplored potential for using interactive fiction for pedagogical purposes. As online learning becomes increasingly common, and gamified courses become a new mode within this field, the time to consider multiple possibilities for interactive fiction is now.
Participatory stories, in whatever medium they are found, are only gaining in popularity as new technologies allow for new possibilities, and some potential topics of interest include how this form changes the relationship between audience and narrative, what it means to have a more active and participatory role in the stories we consume, and what it is about the form that draws audiences in the first place?
This session would ideally bring together some very diverse panelists for a productive dialogue on possibilities for this form. We are living through the development of this form as its original audiences have matured and entered creative fields, and begun to use the concept of narrative interactivity in novel ways. A roundtable discussion on this topic has the potential to open up new fields of exploration and possibilities that are not currently addressed in academia.