What is Interactive Story Telling?

Well, the answer is simple: The experiencing of a tale in which one can act and react, therefore influencing the path of the drama... hopefully.

Today most interactive stories aren't that interactive at all, mainly due to exploding development issues. But while this is true to computer games we'll find true interactivity in pencil & paper roleplaying games and other art forms.

This new form of story telling draws it origins from other media, a topic I researched for my dissertation in the second half of the '90s as one of the first to analyze this field (or as my "doctor-godfather" put it: "real pioneer's work").

I covered all aspects of contentual influences rather than the usual technology and gameplay approach, therefore beginning with classical literature from Homer, Poe and Shelley to Howard and Tolkien, TV and movies - e.g. like Star Trek and Star Wars - , analog and digital games like D&D and Wing Commander, cover art by Vallejo, comic book heroes and a lot of other prior media.

If you are interested in history of interactive story telling, check it out in the shop-section.

For my research on this new form of media, I researched the conventional forms and archetypes of structural paradigms, ranging from Campbell via Field to Vogler and developed myself the chaosparadigm (Bhatty, 1999), which is a reaction to the alpha-plot. The alpha-plot describes the overall flow of the designed area. so it is not the main plot but the structural framework... which, most importantly will be received in a linear form.

I implemented this concept of chaos in story telling sucessfully in the computer game SACRED, for which I designed as Lead Game Designer both story and world. I am pround to claim, that SACRED (2004) ist the first game from Germany which covers all types of narrative archetypes, not only the mentor and the shadow. However, this was only the beginning, rough experiments at the dawn of a new age of interactive media...

It is my believe that we can do more with games than just creating pseudo linear experiences. As I am now working at the MHMK, university of applied sciences in Munich as a professor for Game Design, I intend to push the envelop in this field of science, exploring new methods to create true interactive story telling. Let's see what the future will bring in years to come;-)

Scientific researchers also find me here...