“Reading [. . .] is a creative act, a discovery of the meaning of things” (164). – John Preston, The Created Self
“[B]ooks are fundamentally interactive reading devices whose meaning, far from being fixed, arise at the moment of access” (147). – Amaranth Borsuk, The Book
“In fact, a tic-tac-toe program I have written shows that there are 211,568 possible tic-tac-toe games—211,568 paths through the game tree of this simple game” (60). – Jesper Juul, Half-Real
Proposal
Recent years have seen the rise of choice-driven texts. Video games are a powerhouse of the media world, Choose Your Own Adventure stories have spread to multiple media, and tabletop games are more popular than ever. What do these choice-heavy texts tell us about their readers/players/viewers/listeners (hereafter referred to as “participants”)? For one, they reveal the appeal of choice—choice allows the reader access to the stories they want, not just what an author has prepared. For two, they reveal that once the technology was readily available, developers begin to take advantage of the potential of these texts. And finally, they reveal that participants have the ability and willingness to create alongside the creators of the text. Together, these ideas tell us that all modes of artistic creation allow room for collaboration, which I argue has strengths that traditionally written media simply does not.
The development of choice-driven texts extends back at least 80 years to Raymond Queneau’s One Hundred Million Billion Poems, and yet essentially nothing has been written on texts like it and their ability to involve the participant. Choice-driven texts represent a huge uninvestigated world of media, and I believe that is due to two key reasons: (1) choice-driven texts are regarded by many to be novelty and not serious art, and (2) because of the complexity of participant choice, the majority of writing on the subject is about scientific studies on the psychological effects of making choices—but not the texts themselves. My research attempts to combine these scientific findings and approaches to literature in order to find the true value of these texts.
Utilizing a wide variety of media, including tabletop game manuals, podcasts, graphic novels, several highly different books and video games, and performance art pieces, my work seeks to investigate the ways that choice operates in different media. But while the texts themselves are varied, and the ways they use choice are varied, I argue that choice is essentially consistent throughout most every choice-driven text: it invests in the participant and allows them to curate their own experience.
Research Questions
· How do choice-driven texts utilize choice to empower the reader?
· Do different media use choices differently? Why?
· Can a choice-driven text rely more on the participant than on the creator?
· How have choice-driven texts developed since their first widespread development? What have the changes done to shape modern choice-driven texts?
· What is common among choice-driven texts? What is divergent?
· Is the participant truly an author of the text they make choices in?
· Why have choice-driven texts defied serious study despite their history and prevalence?
· Does a choice that subverts our understanding of choices in a text still represent what a choice that follows our understanding does?
· Why include choice in a text? How much is meaningful? How much is too much?
Primary
4’33” [John Cage, 1952, musical performance] – This experimental composition is over four and a half minutes of silence. The audience, seated before a silent performer, is the only source of sound during the duration of the performance, placing the “reader” of the performance in the role of performer while the pianist sits silently, listening. While the audience is not directed to participate, they are given the space to exercise agency in the performance.
House of Leaves [Mark Danielewski, 2000, novel] – Amillionbluepages.net is home to a variety of art inspired by House of Leaves. The eclectic collection showcases how invested people are in the work itself and the ways that they use their own art to make meaning of and enjoy House of Leaves, constructing a public archive of collective creativity. Additionally, the role of meaning-maker is forced onto the reader, involving them deeply in the process of understanding how the text communicates. The book is also structured so that the reader must choose between reading paths (as when there are as many as four multi-page text components on each page together), in effect composing the order of the book.
Batman: A Death in the Family [Jim Starlin, 1988, graphic novel] – This installation of the Batman saga posed the run’s end as a reader vote. They asked whether Jason Todd (one of Batman’s Robins) should die during the final issue or survive, using a hotline to count the votes. Over 10,000 votes were cast, and fans determined that Todd should die, determining the narrative course for the next Batman story. This direct binary choice represents the first instance of reader agency on the continuum.
Six Cold Feet, season two [J.M. Donellan, 2019, podcast] – This season of the podcast focuses on a mysterious singer, slowly uncovering the secrets she kept throughout her life. Listeners of the podcast are able to call in and record themselves describing memories of the passed singer, which in turn forms the narrative of who she was. The listeners, then, take an active role in determining the shape of the narrative, as edited by the podcast’s production team.
Bandersnatch [directed by David Slade & written by Charlie Brooker, 2018, film] – The first mainstream use of CYOA style in television format, allowing the viewer to determine the order of the story. This movement of the CYOA formula to the television format represents a new way for viewers to interact with texts which was previously limited to written materials and video games. The choices determine not the story’s content but the order that set narrative units are displayed, resulting in Bandersnatch’s relatively agency-less position on the continuum.
Building Stories [Chris Ware, 2012, graphic novel] – The fourteen bound works which are found in the box that is Building Stories can be read in any order, which allows the reader to construct the form of the story, if not the content. Several of the contained works challenge narrative form, including a poster, a book of wordless landscape drawings, and a 52-page book with no markings. This experimental work allows the reader to participate in an experiment regarding what a comic book actually is.
Life in Sonderville [Mark Swift, 2017, podcast] – This podcast features a running narrative with simple choices at the end of each episode which direct the listener to select a particular episode as their next, advancing the story in a CYOA style. The constantly-branching nature of the podcast results in the listener having basic control over the narrative regularly throughout the podcast.
Space and Beyond [R.A. Montgomery, 1980, novel] – Because the earliest Choose Your Own Adventure books offered the most elaborate plots of the series, I have chosen the third to be published. It includes the most possible endings in the official CYOA series (44), offering maximum differentiation of narrative experience and thereby reader agency. Reader blurbs written by children: “I like it because it is all about you.” (Robert, 9) “I like Choose Your Own Adventure because it feels like you’re actually in the real book.” (Alexander, 9)“These books make you feel like you are making the life-risking decisions, not reading about somebody making all the choices as they write the book.” (Matthew, 10) These kids are doing the work for me.
Spec Ops: The Line [Cory Davis, 2012, video game] – The game creates a situation in which the player must respond to feelings of guilt for their decisions in the game, including moments in which the game speaks directly to the player, giving the player ownership of their actions and guilt within the context of the story. The game also uses standard video game shorthand to present apparently simplistic choices which are actually more open than appearances suggest.
The Stanley Parable [Davey Wreden, 2013, video game] – This experimental video game explores choice in video games and what it means to design a game with the player in mind. Every element of the game is intended to make the player question the structure of video games, with creative explorations of a game world with a narrator who tells the player what to do—but will the player listen?
Hundred Thousand Billion Poems [Raymond Queneau, 1961, poem] – Queneau creates individual pages for each line of a single sonnet, allowing the reader to compose a colossal number of poems from the available pages. On the continuum of reader agency, this text is notable in that it explicitly tasks the reader with the process of writing, much like a tabletop game does, but more literally.
Quiplash 2 [Steve Heinrich and Ryan DiGiorgi, 2016, video game] – Quiplash is a party game which provides the players with brief humorous prompts and directs the players to take turns writing and judging answers; the best-liked answers win. As a result, the game is at least half-written by the players, and the game depends on a group of players who write answers and players who vote, creating a system in which each “reader” is directly involved in creating the game’s experience.
Stardew Valley [Eric Barone, 2016, video game] – The game provides opportunities for the player to curate the game experience for themselves by using a sandbox-style framework with many different elements. By choosing which of these activities to pursue in the game, the player determines the shape and form of the game itself, creating a narrative unique to the player. Additionally, thousands of player mods allow for endless customization and further control over the gameplay experience.
Lost Mine of Phandelver [Richard Baker & Chris Perkins, 2014, game module] – Numerous podcasts have used this Dungeons & Dragons module, allowing for illustration of how a reader-directed text can change drastically depending on the readers. It is more a framework for player (reader) input than a narrative in itself, and it is in fact designed for the reader to play a role in storytelling. It is noteworthy that the Dungeon Master is both reader and author of the text, converting the story fragments in the module into a coherent narrative which is also written by the players, who read the text in a very different fashion. The first page of the guide offers the advice, “When in doubt, make it up!” illustrating that the DM is in control of the narrative more than the book itself.
Rhythm 0 [Marina Abramović, 1974, performance art] – Abramović curated a collection of 72 items which her spectators were allowed to use on her while she stood completely passively. The audience timidly offered pleasant items at first, such as honey or tickling with a feather, but soon became more violent, using rose thorns, a whip, and nearly even a gun on her. The piece observed how spectatorship informs audience participation and depended directly on “reader” involvement to take form as a work of art.
Don’t Rest Your Head [Fred Hicks, 2006, game manual] – The manual for the game consists of a brief explanation of game rules and a relatively lengthier discussion of suggested game lore and possible interpretations of the rules. The later publication Don’t Lose Your Mind is a collection of suggested character powers that is longer than the game manual itself. The emphasis with everything written is to give the players (including the game master) access to as much agency as possible in terms of the narrative. “The King certainly has some kind of deal going on with the Bazaar, where he buys the memories that don’t sell, in bulk” (61). This is not typical game instructions. “. . . Don’t Rest Your Head games are about the stories of the protagonists at they strive to realize the goals of their path” (64).
Secondary
Reader Response Theory
Davis, Todd F. and Kenneth Womack. Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave 2002.
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. Hill and Wang, New York. 1974.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore, 1974.
Holland, Norman N. The Dynamics of Literary Response. Oxford UP, New York. 1968.
Fish, Stanley E. Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth Century Literature. U of California P, Berkeley. 1972.
Thiselton, Anthony, C. Hermeneutics: An Introduction. William B. Erdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids, MI. 2009.
Preston, John. The Created Self: The Reader’s Role in Eighteenth-Century Fiction. Heineman, London. 1970.
Games Literature
Rettberg, Scott. Electronic Literature. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK and Medford, MA, US. 2018
Green, Melanie C & Keenan M. Jenkins. “Interactive Narratives: Processes and Outcomes in User-Directed Stories.” Journal of Communication, vol. 64, p. 479-500, 2014.
Moser, Christopher & Xiaowen Fang. “Narrative Structure and Player Experience in Role-Playing Games.” International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 31, no. 2, p. 146-156, 2015.
Hayles, N. Katherine. “How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine” ADE Bulletin, 2010 No. 150. 62-79.
Salovaara, Perttu and Matt Statler. “Always Already Playing: Hermeneutics and the Gamification of Existence” Journal of Management Inquiry, 2019, Vol. 28(2) 149–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926187921
Aarseth, Espen. “A Narrative Theory of Games.” Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games - FDG 12, Jan. 2012. Research Gate, doi:10.1145/2282338.2282365.
Hayles, N. Katherine. “Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis.” Poetics Today, vol. 25, no. 1, 2004, pp. 67–90.
Yu, Hong & Mark O. Riedl. “Personalized Interactive Narratives via Sequential Recommendation of Plot Points.” Ikee Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, vol. 6, no. 2, June 2014.
Kartsanis, Nikolaos and Eva Murzyn. “Me, My Game-Self, and Others: A Qualitative Exploration of the Game Self.” 2016 International Conference on Interactive Technologies and Games. 2016. DOI 10.1109/iTAG.2016.12
Ferchaud, Arienne and Mary Beth Oliver. “It’s my choice: The effects of moral decision-making on narrative game engagement.” Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. Vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 101-18. doi: 10.1386/jgvw.11.2.101_1
Tancred, Nicoletta, Nicole Vickery, Peta Wyeth, & Selen Turkay. “Player Choices, Game Endings and the Design of Moral Dilemmas in Games.” CHI PLAY'18. Oct. 28–31, 2018. Melbourne, Australia. Conference Presentation.
Murray, John Thomas. Telltale Hearts: Encoding Cinematic Choice-Based Adventure Games. UC Santa Cruz, PhD Dissertation. 2018.
Choice Meaning
It may be observed that choice-driven texts are similar in form to games. Therefore, each choice-driven text has procedural rhetoric, and we can consider each text in terms of what it incentivizes its “player” to do.
Choice is not novelty: using multiple parts of the brain to make sense of a choice driven object utilizes more of our minds to make sense of than traditional reading.
When a reader/player/viewer/listener—a participant, in the terms of Rhythm 0—is given access to choice, they are allowed the ability to “create” a narrative of their own design (to varying extents, depending on the text). Collaborating with the author(s) means that the participant has transcended simply observing and has begun to think along the lines of what story they would like to experience, not how they will react to a static text.
In today’s world of increasingly popular choice-driven texts (video games are a more lucrative industry than any other artistic medium), it is more important than ever to consider the subversion of choice. Games like Spec Ops: The Line and The Stanley Parable exist in order to communicate the implied rules of choice in texts and then break them. While some texts sell themselves on the notion of choice itself (Batman: A Death in the Family), others seek to say something meaningful about the groundwork laid by earlier texts.
When a reader encounters a choice in a text, they are faced with multiple psychological impulses: they may want the most interesting story, the story in which their avatar character is best off, the story which breaks the rule of narrative. While the discrete outcomes may be predictable in that they can be mapped to the available options, readers’ experiences are far more complex.
Glossary
Choice-driven text: A text which cannot be experienced without reader input affecting the content of the text.
Intentionality: A reader’s ability to accurately predict the outcome of their choice. If the outcome cannot be at least partially relied on, the reader’s choice is effectively random, and there is no intentionality.
Agency: A reader’s ability to exert control over the direction of the text.
Participant: A catch-all term for the person experiencing a text which is non-medium-specific and reinforces their role in making choices.
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