noitCARetni-interACTion

Montfort with interactive and hypetext fiction

Tackling one question at a time.... one more reading to go and another question!

1. Montfort argues that interactive fiction is distinctively different from hypertext fiction, stating: “There is… nothing in the nature of the lexia or the link, those fundamental elements of hypertext, that allows the reader to type and contribute text or provides the computer with the means to parse or understand natural language. […] Hypertext fiction also does not maintain an intermediate, programmatic representation of the narrative world, as interactive fiction does.”In terms of understanding how these two forms relate to/differ from narrative, is this distinction significant? Or are they more closely related that Montfort would like to admit? Discuss.

In what I gather about interactive fiction as so defined by Montfort, and also via his examples (although he did qualify that the examples he gave are not the only types of interactive fiction), the distinction between hypertext fiction and interactive fiction is contentious.

In interactive fiction, there is a perceived sense of greater control as the user/interactor
becomes both a reader and a writer of the narrative. There is greater input of words to provide directives for the operating of the program. Interactors get to decide their choice of words or phrasing. Interactive fiction seems more like something where the full picture and linkages are not shown but are instead revealed one by one. This probably creates a different experience for the user as there is a greater sense of suspense, mystery and adventure. It is in this sense, more exploratory.

In contrast, hypertext fiction strikes me as one which is more structured in the sense that the main body tend to be written and shown to the reader. Then, in order to find out about something in greater detail, the hypertext linkages will lead the reader to another page to further his or her understanding on the situation. (disclaimer: this is putting it in a simplistic manner). Therefore, several linkages are probably shown at the same time. The experience of using hypertext fiction is probably different from the interactive one. Hypertext fiction seems to give the user less control as the linkages have all already been explicitly predefined. The freedom to choose comes from picking which hyperlink to click.

However, if we consider beyond the experience of the reader to that of the structure of both, they consist of networks and many different nodes linking different possibilities to one another. Both also involve the connecting of words to one another. The key difference is then the way it is presented to the user (interface).

posted by shamanthayan @ 7:37 AM