What is story?

Through my blog I’ve been looking at narrative storytelling within films and video games. It’s a topic that has taken me from the historic background of game to film adaptation onto new technologies that are shaping the production of both industries and down into the exploration of new media concepts, before moving towards new ways of telling stories through innovative technology and remarkable narrative techniques.

It was just over four months ago that I started my exploration into this topic, but in that time there is one element of narrative storytelling I have yet to breach: what is story?

I set out to learn about, comment on and question the growing link between video gaming and film, but in doing so I ignored the ever-present gap between film and video game narratives – between linear storytelling and non-linear, spatial storytelling.

I recently spoke with Doctor Marian Ursu, professor in interactive media at the University of York whose interests and research lie in interactive narrative storytelling. Through our conversation we discussed the ways in which interactive narratives, i.e. those requiring user input and choice (effectively, every video game narrative), differ from more traditional, linear storytelling techniques. Whilst it’s true that mediums such as film and television are beginning to branch out into interactivity, the medium of video gaming is inherently designed around it.

I’ve talked about this type of storytelling before with my study of The Wolf Among Us and its focus on player choice, but in my talk with Marian we delved deeper into the basic difference between linear stories and interactive ones.

A linear story progresses in a straight line, along a single route. It’s the main type of narrative that we’re used to, seeing it in film, television, theatre and books. A story, then, is the progression of a narrative from point A to B along a set path.

A linear story path contains no user choice, it's a predefined journey

But, when a story involves choice and consequence – when it involves variables – it can’t remain the same thing. The entire basis on which the notion of story relies upon is changed.

Below is a representation of a simplified narrative space. What this translates to is the interactive sphere in which narrative interactions take place. In a game, for example, you may start at point A but then choose either point B or point C. From there you either reach point D, point E, point F or point G and so on. You are also, often, allowed to revisit a point, say point C, but your approach could now be from point E not point A.

In a spatial story 'sphere' there are multiple paths and journeys

Essentially, in an interactive narrative a story has to be crafted with multiple scenarios, choices and outcomes but these choices must also abide by continuity – point C must be reachable by point A, E and any other approachable angle yet still make sense to the player and their version of the story, however they choose to approach it.

A representation of how story points and end points can be visited from multiple approaches

As you can see by comparing the visual representations of a linear story to an interactive one, the difference is huge. Though the basic goals of each remain the same, in many ways they are completely different ideas.

Where then, does that leave us?

For me, it’s brought me to a place where to view a film and video game narrative as the same thing is entirely nonsensical. They are different in conception, structure and execution and require a different thought process. This may seem obvious, and I’m not stating here that until now a film or video game story was interchangeable to me, what I’m really driving towards is that any new technology (such as enhanced motion capture techniques), or any new media concept (such as transmedia storytelling) is perhaps missing this key difference.

We are, currently, living in the first wave of the new digital media age – second screens, internet streaming, on demand services, user control – these processes, technologies and systems are new and are being experimented with, written about and developed at an ever increasing rate.

I’ve been tracing these developments within this blog, trying to piece together how this changing landscape is affecting the convergence of films and video games, but I’m realising now that any connection, any link between the two is hindered by the innate differences of their narrative approaches and structures.

We may be, at present, content with our developing media ecosystem, but what I’m putting forward here is that until the possibilities of interactive narratives are explored and developed further, any system utilising one or any franchise merging traditional methods with new structures will never reach its full potential. At the moment, technologies, concepts and systems are developing at different rates, it will take a balancing of these elements to create a media network that can provide a fully realised experience to its users.