playable narrative

The world of game development is heavily male dominated and sexism is notoriously endemic in online gaming and videogames. In this context, as a feminist woman and sole writer, developer and designer of an interactive digital narrative, I am something of a rarity. Doing it all myself may seem perverse, especially in a field where collaboration is common, but the ability to author code myself is empowering and, crucially, gives me independence - a development environment of one's own - a classic feminist goal. In this presentation, I will discuss how these factors are reflected in the interplay of genre, narrative, discourse, gameplay, game logic, character development and thematic content in my interactive digital narrative, Stitched Up (currently a work-in-progress).

In an extremely rare inversion of the 'Damsel in Distress' trope, a common plot device in video games, the central male character in Stitched Up is a 'dude in distress' (Sarkeesian 2013). A powerful female antagonist has trapped Joel in a perilous situation and he must be rescued by his wife, Sarah (both Joel and Sarah are player characters). However, rather than action adventure, I describe Stitched Up as a psychological thriller. Moreover, its feminist narrative themes, problematizing the idea of home, significant others, working women, parenthood and masculinity, suggest similarities with the emerging literary sub-genre of Domestic Noir.

To create an interactive narrative that is capable of exploring these issues, I am drawing together concepts from second-order cybernetics with Possible Worlds theory from narratology. Combining these abstractions provides me with a framework for not only thinking about character-driven playable narratives, but also a methodology for authoring and designing them. I am drawn to Possible Worlds theory because, unlike structuralism, it does not regard fictional characters as purely semiotic constructs but regards them as make-believe life-like persons, able to arouse emotions in the reader. Influenced by cybernetics, along with the concept of feedback and 'the art of steering' (cybernetics' etymological root), I am exploring the idea of the fictional character as a Black Box in order to simulate psychological depth.

An observer can only infer what is going on inside a Black Box from its inputs and outputs. Stitched Up is text-driven but highly visual and I am coupling my dialogue-based game engine with a responsive abstract visualisation system for the characters' internal emotional data to deliver subtextual layers of meaning. These combined outputs will affect the choices that reader-players make, the inputs. This stimulus-response model, which is my core gameplay loop, functions as a kind of rudder for the reader-player to steer a course through Stitched Up's narrative universe of Possible Worlds. How the reader-player chooses to interpret the characters' behaviour will determine the kind of story they experience and its outcome. The 'Damsel in Distress' trope invariably decrees a revenge-driven story, Stitched Up's 'dude in distress' device challenges that edict.

How can a convincing interactive character, with apparent psychological depth, be modelled in a playable narrative that adapts to a reader’s choice? This is the central question of my practice-based research that I address through the authoring (in both natural language and computer code) of an interactive text-based psychological thriller Stitched Up.

Narratives “by their nature are riddled with gaps” and characters are “some of narrative’s most challenging gaps” (Abbott 2008), yet filling in these gaps can be an enthralling source of readerly pleasure. On the other hand, flat characters “seem to exist on the surface of the story, along with objects and machines. There are no mysterious gaps to fill since what you see is what you get” (Abbott 2008). The majority of simulated characters in video games and interactive adventures tend to be more flat than round probably because, as Montfort (2007) has argued, a flat character can still be compelling and meaningful due to the nature of simulation, especially when combined with narration. Nevertheless, I aim to create round simulated characters in Stitched Up. These individuals in the storyworld will be compelling precisely because they are complex and undergo development as a result of reader–player interaction. In my playable psychological thriller, the readerly process of filling in the characters’ “mysterious gaps” is the core gameplay loop.

Stitched Up is based around the idea of a character as a “black box”. An observer or external entity can only infer what is inside a black box from its inputs and outputs. Interaction between two human beings could be viewed similarly. One person can only infer what the other one is thinking and feeling from their outputs, from their behaviour or what they say.

Since an interactive character must be constructed in code, I am researching how the properties and processes of programming in JavaScript can be used as functional metaphors to represent the psychological make-up of fictional characters and their dynamic interpersonal relationships. In JavaScript, as in other programming languages, encapsulation (the technical term for the black box) is an important strategy for organising complex code into modules (and/or functions), whereby internal code is hidden from external objects so that they can interact with each other safely and effectively via an Application Programming Interface (API). In this paper, I will discuss how I am repurposing the modularity of such JavaScript design patterns to dynamically model the internal mental states of my interactive fictional characters – their emotions, memories, moral values, opinions, etc. – and how this affects the process of creatively writing characters in natural language. Overall, this entails developing a modular form of character design where these attributes are discrete elements that can be amalgamated and delivered in multiple combinations yet still offer an individuated, meaningful encounter with a person in a storyworld.

(source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)