This chapter resonated with many of my reservations around interactive narrative. Much discussion about this topic has ended up about games, which is a train of thought that pigeon holes the promise of interactive narrative. Crawford also says that “These observations point to the conclusion that stories and games, as they actually exist, are distant cousins at best.” Having played video games since childhood, the norm is that game play trumps story, and that game play consists of a set of rules that players in the world abide by.

If we instead try to add interactivity to traditional narrative there are also obstacles. It is difficult enough for an experienced writer to create a linear story, never mind the exponential difficulty to create a multi-path story full of interesting decisions for the reader. And if the audience reads this story only once, like in traditional narratives, then it leaves the other potential paths of the plot unexperienced. Allowing audience input also has problems. The story quality is at risk of degrading when the audience is given narrative power, according to Crawford. “Permitting the grubby-fingered audience to interact with the carefully crafted plot will surely ruin its delicate balance.”

So far games with stories and multi-path stories lead to unexciting dead ends. Perhaps aristotilian quality of story isn’t a trait of interactivity. Life streaming websites don’t necessarily have reversal and recognition, yet can be interesting to read. For user generated stories, if there was a way to bubble up the high quality signal from the noise, we could see a viral distribution like those of youtube videos.

So far, the best experience of fully interactive narrative has been in role playing games such as dungeons and dragons. With a human author reacting and influencing your decisions as a player in their world, there is a rich interactive conversation and collaborative effort in unfolding a story. What could be next?

This analysis of film camera techniques were quite eye opening for the uninitiated. Even if one is a movie or television fan, it’s easy to be unaware of what goes into camera positions and sequencing shots to form a natural experience. When camera technique and editing is done well, the audience doesn’t notice the camera point of view and can be immersed into the scene. When it is done poorly, the audience is immediately aware that there is an editor and a camera operator. Most of the techniques described are to give the omni-present camera a more intuitive point of view, like to that of another actor in the room.