Part One: Pasts, Presents, Futures
Game Narratives
While hypertext is clearly an interim form that is in a state of technological flux, the model of immersive interactivity that it is aiming for is something closer to that of the computer-based adventure game than the printed novel.
A comparative study of the different kinds of games that are being used by literary hypertexts and commercial adventure games will reveal how narrative is being realized in these divergent models. Integral to this discussion are notions of interactivity and agency. Janet Murray argues that agency is acquired through the physical act of navigating a text.
The student will look at how true this is for hypertext, explore issues surrounding the constraints established by authors, and compare and contrast the ergodics of the literary text with the multiform visual narrative approach of the adventure game genre.