作者：Chris Lepine

Michael在Brainy Gamer上发表的《Narrative Manifesto》给我思考互动叙事中的关键所在的机会。尽管我只能简要阐述其中所包含的某些问题，我还是想试图理解些我们考虑互动和叙事的方法。我觉得我们对互动的理解不断重复犯着严重的错误，而故事情节发展方面却正走上一条死胡同。

我所认同的想法是，视频游戏中的“互动”至少有两个层面的内涵。我们已经忘记了，其中一个层面的相互作用比另一个层面更为重要。所以经常看到的情况是，玩家在游戏中战斗，却没有体验到游戏的乐趣。我们不应将游戏设计成让玩家生活在其狂野本性之中，我们应该打造一个让玩家以生活的态度来探索的世界。

当我们谈论起电子游戏之时，“互动”通常意味着玩家点击按键后游戏以某种方式做出回应。玩家以某种产生游戏内回应的方法来与游戏互动。25年来，这种形式的互动已经成为电脑和电子游戏的标准。其他媒体的受众选择似乎并不比以上两种多，比如我们在听音乐或欣赏绘画时，音乐的曲调和绘画似乎并不会发生改变。自那时起，我们就认同了这种想法，无论玩家何时做出某些动作，屏幕上的东西就应该有所改变。玩家与游戏间的互动便是我们通常所说的相互作用。玩家的选择便是他所做出的决定，游戏允许玩家实现他自己的目标。

然而，从来就没有人对此有过一丝怀疑吗？25年后，我们还会为这项技术感到惊奇吗？

要回答这两个问题，我们必须看看第二种相互动作。这种相互动作在人类认知的各个层面都能看到，而不只是在玩电子游戏时。我们在谈论起吸引力时，我们指的是某人的心灵从某种程度上被某物所俘获。当我们真正被某物所吸引，似乎它让我们投入所有的注意力。最极端的情况是，有时我们似乎除了感兴趣的物（游戏邦注：或人）之外就不知道任何其他事物的存在，我们觉得自己无法离开某人、某个地点或某物。18世纪众多哲学家曾尝试过撇开个人想法来认知事物的本质。

如果你读过Michael发表的关于棒球游戏中积分卡的体验，就会明白真正投入游戏就意味着我们将自己的欲望撇开不顾，让游戏与我们交谈。如果人们真正投入到球类游戏、扮演某角色、阅读书籍、倾听音乐、交谈和优秀艺术作品中，我们会将自我融入这些体验中来欣赏其本质，而并非出于个人意愿。个人吸引力是相互作用更为主要的形式，因为它让物体/人/游戏向我们表达其自身内容。只有这时，我们才能真正对其做出个人回应，从中获得某种感觉。这是种与事物更直接的互动形式。

我认为，我们在电子游戏中忽略了这一点。我们已经遗忘了，人类投入某物的能力是内在认知技能。反而，我们正试图将这种投入替换成用技术模拟出来的互动（游戏邦注：即玩家与游戏间的互动）。当我真正投入游戏中，就意味着我正处在游戏世界中，任何周围的事物都已经荡然无存。如果我没有真正投入游戏，我在游戏中所做的决定也就毫无意义科研，这些选择既不会影响我自己，也不会影响游戏世界。在玩《Ico》时，如果我不足够投入游戏世界，可能就不会在意Yorda被俘虏，她只是我短期目标的另一个绊脚石而已。

ico(from voxnihili.net)

但是当我沉浸在《Ico》的世界中，就会关心到游戏中发生的每件事情，也自然不可能放任Yorda被俘虏而不去救她。所以，让玩家真正投入其中正是电子游戏的魅力所在，这与小说、电影、音乐、故事和其他媒体相同。这种受众暂时摒弃自身想法的投入从原则上来说无法通过技术实现。换句话说，只有玩家真正投入游戏才会出现玩家与游戏的互动（游戏邦注：即游戏中我们所使用的互动）。

照此看来，我们创造互动故事剧情或AI以使其实时根据玩家选择做出回应的想法是错误的。我们应该努力让玩家真正沉浸在游戏中，构建起关注的感觉。

我并不是说玩家与游戏的互动已不再重要，它仍然是让电子游戏成为独特媒介的重要部分。我只是希望开发商能够多花时间制作那些能真正吸引玩家的故事情节，这是技术所解决不了的问题。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2008年8月7日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Narratives and Interactivity Still Misunderstood

Chris Lepine

Michael’s “Narrative Manifesto” post at the Brainy Gamer gave me an opportunity to think about what’s at stake when we talk about interactive narratives. Although I can only sketch out some of the issues involved, I’d like to take a stab at understanding a few ways we tend to think about interactivity and narratives, and the kinds of assumptions they come with. I hope that I don’t come off too strongly here, but I think we’ve continued to repeat a grave mistake in our understanding of interactivity, and because of that are headed down a blind alley in terms of story development.

The basic premise I have is that the word “interactive” can be understood on at least two levels in video games. We tend to forget that one level of interactivity is more important than the other, often end up in situations where a player fights with the game instead of enjoying it for what it is. Instead of beating our collective heads against the wall as we try to design games that let players live out their wildest desires, we should be developing worlds that encourage players to explore them as living, breathing, places.

When we talk about video games, we typically mean “interactive” when hit a button and the game responds in some way. The player interacts with the game in a way that produces some kind of in-game response. For the last 25 years, this form of interaction has been hailed as the hallmark of computer and video games because other media seem to be less contingent upon the audience’s choices – musical melodies and brush strokes don’t change much when we listen to music or encounter a painting. Since Pong, we’ve relied upon the idea that what is physically on the screen should change whenever the player does something. Player-game interaction is what we typically mean by interactivity. Player choices and decisions are tantamount here, and the game enables the player to accomplish her/his goals.

But doesn’t that seem a bit suspect? Like the first time a cat sees its reflection in a mirror and realizes that it can make its doppelganger do its bidding? Have we been pushing pixels around a screen for 25 years and marveling at the novelty of technology?

In order to answer that, we have to look at a second kind of interactivity. This level of interactivity is one that is found in all aspects of human perception, not just when we play video games. When we talk about engagement we mean that a person is somehow captured, arrested, or even enchanted by something. When we really engage with something, it seems to capture our entire attention. In the most extreme experiences of engagement we sometimes seem to perceive nothing else than the object (or person) of interest – we feel inseparable from the person, place, or thing. A lot of 18th century philosophy tried to get at the idea of perceiving things ‘as they are’ without our personal desires getting in the way.

If you’ve read Michael’s post on the experience of keeping a scorecard at a baseball game (and my comparison to Role-Playing), really engaging with a game means that we put our desires aside and let the game speak to us. Really engaging with a spectated ball game, role-playing a character, reading a book, listening to music, having a conversation, and engaging with fine art, all involve giving ourselves over to the experience and appreciating it for what it is, not our personal desires. Personal engagement is a more primary form of interactivity because it lets the object/person/game express itself to us. Only then can we really personally respond to it and feel something for it. This is a more direct, less masturbatory way of interacting with something.

This is where I think things have gone south of cheese in the way we think about video games. We’ve forgotten that our ability to engage with something is a gift inherent to human perception, and instead we’ve attempted to replace that form of engagement with a derivative technological form of interaction (player-game). When I engage with a game, and really live in that world, everything around me falls aside. The choose-your-own-adventure-esque choices that I make in game mean nothing if I do not already buy into the world as a living, breathing, place, where my choices matter not just to me but the game world itself. When I play Ico, if I don’t invest in the game world I couldn’t possibly care if Yorda is captured by the shadowy figures – she’s just another annoying road block that gets in the way of my immediate goals.

But when I engage with the world of Ico, I develop a care for what happens in the game, and it’s no longer possible to watch Yorda get pulled into one of the black portals without feeling guilty, or compelled to run over and save her. So inviting players to really engage with a game is the true magic of video games, as it is with novels, films, music, stories, and other media. The magic of engagement, which comes as a result of the author inviting the audience to stay a while, and the audience putting aside their immediate desires, is something that principally cannot be achieved technologically. Or in other words, player-game interaction (the kind of interaction we’re used to in games) only means something when the player is already engaged with the game.

In that way, the idea that we need to develop interactive storytelling algorithms or AI that “react” to the player’s choices in real-time in order to make stories better or more enjoyable, is barking up the wrong tree. Instead of figuring out ways to craft a story on-the-fly (how many times do we need to re-invent Choose-Your-Own-Adventure?), we should be trying to figure out what’s involved in getting players to really engage with the game and build a sense of care for it.

I’m not suggesting that player-game interaction doesn’t matter – it still remains to be an important part of what makes video games a unique medium – I’m instead suggesting that our time needs to be invested in understanding what makes a particular narrative or story compelling for a player. Without that, there is no technological magic pill that will make a story matter for us.

… does this make any sense to anyone else? (Source: The Artful Gamer)