Cyberdrama

Further information: Alternate reality game

Cyberdrama, a term coined by Janet Murray in the late 1990s, is used to describe a new type of storytelling. These stories employ computers and games as opposed to traditional novels and other printed media. Cyberdrama is used to “emphasize the enactment of the story in the particular fictional space of a computer."^[1] It encourages, if not forces players to use their imaginations and at the same time, human participants are given an experience of agency with cyberdrama. Transformation and immersion are two other points of interest within defining cyberdrama and what it strives to achieve. It can come in different forms including role playing games, interactive video and (the) first person. One continual challenge of the cyberdrama format is combining the traditional games and stories into the game-story. With the introduction of the game-story, there was a shift in how people and designers created and maintained both games and stories, both separately and together.

Agency

Agency in the sense of cyberdrama is the term used to “distinguish the pleasure of interactivity, which arises from the two properties of the procedural and the participatory.” When the world within the game you are playing responds “expressively and coherently” to the user’s interaction with it, the user is experiencing agency. Agency requires a script for both the player and the world of the game itself, so that the user may “build up appropriate expectations.” An example of agency within a word processing program is the changing of text to boldface or italics. In an interactive game, agency is experienced through dramatic effects.^[2] For example, changing a character’s clothing to change the mood of the story or navigating to a different point of view, dramatic agency is experienced. Agency can have a satisfying effect on the player when the result of actions taken fit into the player and story correctly.

Game-Story

Game-story is the “story-rich new gaming formats that are proliferating in digital formats: the hero-driven video game, the atmospheric first person shooter game, the genre-focused role-playing game, the character-focused simulation.” [2] All of these games are stories. Story telling in games has become popular due to many reasons. First, the “digital medium is well-suited to gaming because it is procedural and participatory.” Second, digital games include some of the building blocks of storytelling such as: images, moving images, text, audio, and three-dimensional space. Games and stories also have two important structures that are similar. “The first structure is the contest, the meeting of opponents in pursuit of mutually exclusive aims...The second structure is the puzzle, which can be seen as a contest between the reader/ player and the author/ game-designer.”^[2]

Forms of Cyberdrama

The forms of cyberdrama that Janet Murray lists in her essay “From Game-Story to Cyberdrama” are role-playing games, games with interactive characters, interactive video, and the replay story. According to Murray, the forms of cyberdrama have progressed so much that they should be considered genres of their own. A role-playing game is one in which the participant takes on the experiences and agendas of a character and sees his or her own person as the character. Examples that Murray gives of role-playing games include Ultima Online, Everquest, and Star Wars Galaxies. The interactive character game is one in which the participant is not viewing himself or herself as the character, but instead as an outsider controlling the actions of the characters. The example that Murray gives in her essay of the interactive character game is The Sims. Interactive video is much like the interactive character game, but the interactive video is much more like a movie where the audience chooses the characters’ actions. An example from Murray’s essay of interactive video is the set of “interactive commercials” that Ford Motor Company sponsored in Spring 2000. Audiences were able to vote online to determine which actions the characters of the commercials should take. The other form or genre of cyberdrama listed by Murray is the replay story. The main characteristic of the replay story is that the participants learn of the outcome before they learn the events that led up to the outcome. In the example that Murray gives of a replay story, Reliving Last Night, the story is still interactive on a slightly smaller scale, providing options for what clothes are worn, what drinks are served, and what music is played.

Controversies

There are many opponents to the cyberdrama concept since its birth in the late 90s. Some scholars feel that is impossible to actively achieve the goals of the cyberdrama, although Janet Murray accounts for the difficulties facing designers.^[2] Others pose the eternal question-- is there really a "game-story"? The impossibility of the creation, paired with the inability to imagine interesting and engaging characters leads critics to believe that the game-story concept itself is flawed.

References

1. ^ http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/autodramatic
2. ^ ^{a b c} Murray, Janet. First Person. From Game-Story to Cyberdrama. Eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004.