RESEARCH PAPERS KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING: A STUDY OF THE BOOMING “CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE” VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY By ERIC TYNDALE * FRANKLIN RAMSOOMAIR ** * Graduate, Ryerson University, Ontario, Canada. ** Faculty, MBA Program, Ryerson University, Ontario, Canada. ABSTRACT Video gaming has become a multi-billion dollar industry that continues to capture the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of millions of gamers who span all ages. Narrative and interactive games form part of this market. The popularity of tablet computers and the technological advances of video games have led to a renaissance in the genre for both youth and adult audiences. Understanding the resurgence in this aspect of the market would be the topic for a useful academic endeavor, but exploring the bases for the interest in this aspect of technology can not only satisfy academic curiosity, but also lead to expansion of the overall industry. The goal of the research is to provide an explanation and framework of what makes some interactive narratives more successful than others. This was done by identifying the common story elements and writing strategies that are used to make digital interactive stories enjoyable and satisfying to participants. This research can potentially be a valuable tool for studios entering the interactive storytelling space because it will provide writers with a general outline of the key success factors required to design a compelling game and story. The paper analyzes selected interactive narrative video games in order to provide an explanation and framework of what makes them successful. The research questions addressed are: (1) What are the common storytelling elements present in successful games? (2) Why do these help to ensure a satisfying experience? Keywords: Video Games, Interactive Gaming, Participative Video Gaming, First Person Video Gaming. INTRODUCTION itself into every corner of the globe where computers are In the early days of the internet, video games first appeared available. The interactive segment of this huge market is as an idiosyncratic consumer of time, and sometimes, particularly appealing to developers. It is an unassailable stress. Games were basic and appeared as highly pixilated fact that games make money. However, games tend to offerings in which the player used imagination, aided by influence individuals, from young to old. Players learn as blotches of color created on a monitor. The appeal of the they make progress in games. Learning is conceptualized video game graduated from passing time to game loyalty. not as a function of the game itself or even a simple Each kind of game attracted its own following. coupling of the player and game; rather, learning is seen as transformations that occur through the dynamic relations The video game would apocryphally take its place from between subjects, artifacts, and mediating social being a side attraction to a major part of computing structures (Squire, 2002). hardware and software. There are critical issues to the study of gaming, particularly in the learning sciences, which Video gaming has been purported to have an effect on a offers some important practical and theoretical traditions multitude of aspects in society, from health to Global that games studies can draw upon as it matures as a field Production Network approaches in understanding the of important study. Playing video games has been geographically uneven impacts of globalization processes transformed into a social phenomenon that has infused (Johns, 2005). Consequently, there are many avenues for 28 i-manager’s Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 13 l No. 3 l October - December 2016 RESEARCH PAPERS research in this milieu. This paper seeks to explore one narrative game being used in the experiment may be aspect of the overall industry by attempting to find out in partly responsible for their skewed conclusions. The game with greater understanding, why a particular genre holds being studied had limited mass appeal, a very slow pace the appeal it does. of narrative, and relied heavily on participant's ability to 1. Rationale for the Study detect subtle social cues (Kinney, 2015). As a result, the negative experiences described by some of the One of the most highly acclaimed interactive stories from participants led the authors to focus too heavily on the this new generation is ‘The Walking Dead’. The much elements of the interactive narrative that upset players. In coveted youth digital market is also being targeted by this sense, an opportunity was missed to focus on the story major gaming studios. Disney has capitalized on the elements that led directly to participant satisfaction. prevalence of tablets by releasing interactive digital (O'Rourke, 2015). storybooks that feature their much-beloved characters (Bacon, 2014). Even traditional comic book superheroes 3. Maintaining Traditional Narrative Elements such as Batman will soon be featured in Choose-Your-Own- This section focuses on the genre's struggle to maintain the Adventure (CYOA) style games (Miller, 2015). However, integrity and characteristics of a traditional story within the despite this emergence of an exciting new writing medium unique and evolving framework of an interactive narrative. most of the academic literature written on the topic of Ryan (2009) focuses on the challenge of integrating the interactive narrative tends to focus heavily on software participant's agency into a framework that fulfils the systems and other technical issues. There has been traditional structure of a story. That structure defined as a significantly less material published in which the sequence of events involving thinking individuals, linked by researchers attempt to analyze the actual creative causal relations, motivated by a conflict, and aiming at its elements of the story writing process and define best resolution (Nakamura, 2015). Aside from this being an practices for this emerging genre (Ohannessian, 2014). This excellent description of story structure, Ryan (2009) has also gap in research has provided the motivation for this paper. provided a much needed working definition of narrative 2. Literature Review structure for consideration in this paper. The core of the article is the author's belief that the creation of personal 2.1 Participant Experience and evolving relations between the participant's character Milam, El-Basr, & Wakkary (2008) deliberately evaluated an and the computer characters is what allows the participant interactive narrative from the perspective of the participant to influence their destiny and feel concern both for as opposed to the perspective of the designer. After themselves and others and that this is what is required to observing and interviewing participants they developed a successfully combine interactive narrative with narrative list of sixteen themes or criteria which they felt directly structure (Ryan, 2009). While this is a fairly convincing affected how participants judged their narrative argument, it could be strengthened with a more direct experience. The warrant presented by the authors is that a connection to the importance of developing a narrative player's experience relies heavily on their background and structure that works within interactive stories. previous experiences. They elaborate by positing that Perhaps the biggest difference between a traditional story many of their participants could not identify with their and an interactive narrative is the added element of suggested role in the story and thus didn't feel ownership or participant agency. This topic is discussed at length in the a sense of control. article by Harrell & Zhu (2009). In this article, the authors This finding in this regard was not overly convincing discuss the misguided concept of a narrative paradox because, the authors seem to place far too much which is said to cause many researchers to think of agency importance on the value of their participant's lived as being adversarial to a writer's ability to design a narrative experiences as far as they relate to the concept of role structure (Harrell & Zhu, 2009). To elaborate, the authors acceptance (Gutelle, 2015). The sample interactive i-manager’s Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 13 l No. 3 l October - December 2016 29 RESEARCH PAPERS believe that many researchers are confusing agency with 1. What are the common storytelling elements present in free will. Their findings include the proposition that simply commercially and critically successful interactive providing an ever increasing amount of free will is not narratives? conducive to creating an engaging interactive narrative. 2. Why do these common elements help to ensure an Rather they argue that agency should be thought of as an enjoyable and satisfying experience for the expressive resource or tool that can help writers design participant? meaningful work (Harrell & Zhu, 2009). 6. Methodology and Tools for Data Collection 4. Planning Interactive Narratives A thematic analysis of the sources of participant Porteous, Cavazza, & Charles (2010) address the problem satisfaction from interactive narrative video games was of how best to manipulate and organize story elements conducted by utilizing a sample of gaming industry and such as narrative pacing, arc, and tension. As a solution, popular media product reviews that were sourced from the the authors present a software system which they have largest and most credible digital media websites. Five designed to use state trajectory constraints as