Beyond Myth and Metaphor: Narrative in Digital Media

Abstract

The concept of narrative has been widely invoked by theorists of digital textuality, but the promotion of what is described as the storytelling power of the computer has often relied on shallow metaphors, loose conceptions of narrative, and literary models that ignore the distinctive properties of the digital medium. Two myths have dominated this theorization. The myth of the Aleph (as I call it) presents the digital text as a finite text that contains an infinite number of stories. The myth of the Holodeck envisions digital narrative as a virtual environment in which the user becomes a character in a plot similar to those of Victorian novels or Shakespearean tragedies. Both of these myths rely on questionable assumptions: that any permutation of a collection of lexias results in a coherent story; that it is aesthetically desirable to be the hero of a story; and that digital narrativity should cover the same range of emotional experiences as literary narrative. Here I argue that digital narrative should emancipate itself from literary models. But I also view narrative as a universal structure that transcends media. This article addresses the question of reconciling the inherent linearity of narrative structures with the multiple paths made possible by the interactive nature of the digital text by distinguishing four forms of interactivity, which result from the cross-classification of two binaries: internal versus external interactivity; and exploratory versus ontological. Each of these categories is shown to favor different narrative themes and different variations of the universal narrative structure.

A Computational Model of an Intelligent Narrator for Interactive Narratives

“…Destructured narrative: The graphs of events are not oriented, allowing various schemes of navigation between story events. In that case, except for very particular stories, the causality of the narrative is broken and the immersion inside the story world is not possible (Ryan 2001). 754 …”

“…The level of conflict in interactive drama will not be as high as for noninteractive drama. One cannot push the user towards really uncomfortable situations; otherwise, the user will quit the story and remain frustrated not to be able to complete the story the way s=he wanted (Ryan 2001). Thus, if enough conflict has been expressed in a given situation (according to the author's tuning), even if the user has not chosen to accomplish the conflictual task, the system should ''free'' the user and provide a nonconflictual way to reach the goal.…”

Going Beyond the Classic News Narrative Convention: The Background to and Challenges of Immersion in Journalism

“…The borders are so fuzzy, and the permeability is so high that it has been debated by theoreticians from different fields with both contrasting and coinciding arguments, among them Murray (1997Murray ( , 2004Murray ( , 2012, Jenkins (2006), Ryan (2001aRyan ( ,b, 2006, and Aarseth (1997,2004,2012).…”

Narrativa transmedia y percepción cognitiva en El Ministerio del Tiempo (TVE)

“…En la actualidad el modelo de superproducción implica su difusión en diferentes medios, proceso conocido como "Total Entertainment" (Grainge, 2008: 65) El análisis de esta tipología de ficción necesita por lo tanto de una nueva metodología, que ya ha sido abordada por Aarseth (2006), Ryan (2001Ryan ( , 2004Ryan ( , 2009, Hernández-Pérez y Grandío-Pérez (2011). Otros autores como (Hernández-Pérez y Ferreras, 2014: 28) han realizado una aproximación http://www.revistalatinacs.org/071/paper/1107/27es.html Página 511 metodológica de las narrativas crossmedia a través de tres ejes; el primero señala que en los largometrajes de ficción se incide en la ortodoxia del tema, argumento, personajes, escenario, etc.…”