Jamin's Seminar

My seminar is about interactive storytelling!


***** What is interactive storytelling? *****

Interactive: a two-way system of communication

Storytelling: the telling or writing of stories

Put them together, and you have a two-way system of telling or writing stories. Those being told the story can have an influence on its structure and sequence of events.


***** How old is interactive storytelling? *****

In 1975, interactive storytelling first appeared as a text-based adventure game called "Colossal
Cave Adventure" (or "ADVENT") designed by Will Crowther.

Advent was programmed in FORTRAN, a programming language developed in the 1950s by IBM .


There are many links to good examples of interactive stories here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction#Notable_works_of_interactive_fiction


***** Other Examples *****

There are some funny older programs, and some of this stuff uses Java, so you can actually play
them online. Some of you may enjoy them, but I don't really find it that exciting since a lot of it
is just text...for example:

http://www.adamcadre.ac/if.html
and
http://www.nickm.com/if/emshort/galatea.html

are a couple that I checked out, and quickly grew bored of them.


There are way more possibilities out there, especially when considering all the things you can do
with Flash. I really enjoy Han Hoogerbrugge's work ( www.hoogerbrugge.com ). His interactive tale called "Hotel" is really cool.

You can check it out here:
http://www.hoteloscartangoecholima.com/splash.html

The only thing about Hotel is that the user input doesn't really affect the final outcome of the
story. There are a set number of episodes in each of the 10 parts, and when you play through the story you are always going to end up at the same episodes.

Pretty much all video games these days tell some kind of story or are based on a movie or book, such as Lord of the Rings, the Grand Theft Auto series, World of Warcraft, etc. Countless titles
incorporate some sort of storyline as a means of captivating the players on another level aside
from just the gameplay.


Something interesting I found is a new piece of software being designed called "Storytron" and
"Swat" :
http://www.storytron.com/overview/ov_index.html
...which are tools for creating your own interactive stories. They are like a more modern version of the text-based games, but they also incorporate some graphics, like giving the
interactive characters of the world a real face that you can look at (instead of just text). The creators of this software claim that it will be the next "major breakthrough in interactive entertainment."


***** What will become of interactive storytelling in the future? *****

Thought maybe this question would provoke some discussion...

I imagine something like the holodeck on Star Trek, or maybe being able to plug something into your head like in The Matrix. The interactivity at this point would be as realistic as reality. Amazing stories could be told and re-written. Beyond my lifetime?


***** Works Cited *****

interactive - Definitions from Dictionary.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/interactive

Interactive fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction

Interactive storytelling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_storytelling

storytelling - Definitions from Dictionary.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/storytelling

Storytelling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling#Storytelling_as_Art_Form