1. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
Chapter 5: Agency
Hamlet on the Holodeck:
The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

2. Agency
The more realized the immersive environment, the more active we want to be within it
Things we Do
Sense of Agency
Tangible Results
Agency is the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices
Double click and open a file………….change numbers on spreadsheet and click on sum and get total…….

3. Agency
Participation in narrative is circumscribed in a way that generally limit our sense of agency
The story is designed to unfold in the same way no matter what individual audience members may do to join the fun
Music and theater participatory forms are successful because they rely on careful cueing and formulaic behavior
Sing along with chorus, square dance vs ballroom dance

4. Agency
Electronic environments have similar formulas and rules for structuring participation
Examples?
What is the crucial difference between folk art rituals and computer-based interactions?
In computer, we encounter a world that is dynamically altered by our participation
When things are going right on the computer, we can be both dancer and the caller of the dance = feeling of agency
Click on a menu, word processor

5. Agency beyond participation
Agency, goes beyond both participation and activity
Game-makers focus on the number of interactions per minute, is a poor indicator of the pleasure of agency
Chess vs game of chance

6. Navigation
Moving through a geographic or abstract space can be enjoyable
This participatory pleasure in the organized sport of “orienteering” is a satisfying activity regardless of the space is real or virtual
Zork-like dungeons, informational webs
Allow us to experience pleasure specific to intentional navigation
Pleasure of orienteering in electronic environments
Solvable maze
Tangled rhizome

7. The story in the Maze Maze as challenge to find solution in space
Physical and/or mental challenges
Must find the exit
A classic fairly-tale narrative of danger and salvation, with maze as the road map for telling the story
What is the drawback to the maze orientation?
It moves the interactor towards a single solution
Our desire for agency in digital environment makes us impatient when options are limited

8. Rapture of the Rhizome
Rhizome rejects a single path, single solution, or single meaning
Any point may be connected to any other point
System design can get in way of agency
If done right, the reader need not worry about the loss of the plot
“Dear Dad – this game will never end. William.”
Longing for closure and separation
Lingering forever in an unfolding process because it can never ends

9. Between Maze and Rhizome
Both overdetermined single-path maze and underdetermined Rhizome work against pleasure of navigation
Generating anxiety
Stories should be goal driven enough to guide navigation but open-ended enough to allow free exploration with satisfying dramatic structure
No matter how the interactor chooses to traverse the space

10. Between Maze and Rhizome
Violence hub as model
A dramatic event
Many perspectives
How different and how same from existing games and hypertexts?

11. The Journey Story
The navigational space of the computer makes it suitable for journey stories, which are related to mazes but offer additional opportunities for exercising agency
Huckleberry Fin, The Story about a Real Man
Computer based journey stories offer this pleasure of uniting problem solving with navigation
Confined space until the solution to a puzzle is found

12. Games into Stories
Games seems on the face of it to be very different from stories and to offer opposing satisfactions
The Myst
The game is well designed in that all the evidence on which to base a decision is, as in any good detective story, available to the player
Win/lose ending

13. Games as Symbolic Dramas
Protagonists and plots
Enacting relationships to the world
More abstract interpretations
Social meaning in Monopoly
Drama in Tetris
We need to take advantage of the symbolic drama of contest games to create suspense and dramatic tension without focusing on the interactor on skill mastery
Lottery buying

14. Constructivism
The constructivists pleasure is the highest form of narrative agency the medium allows
The ability to build things that display autonomous behavior
In Fallout 4, players have the ability to construct and deconstruct buildings and items and use them to build settlements.
It is likely that more and more people will turn from win/lose game playing to the collective construction of elaborate alternate worlds
Are we there yet?

15. Constructivism MUDs as a model Live-Action Role Playing
Can play existing stories or create new ones
Can be individual or social
Live-Action Role Playing
Separation of GM and players
Works because of persistent relations between players

16. The Interactor as Author
There is a distinction between playing a creative role within an authored environment and having authorship of the environment itself.
Interactors only act within the possibilities established by the writing and programming
Problems with shared authorship
Procedural authorship
It means writing the rules for the interactors involvement, where the conditions under which things will happen in response to the participants actions.
In electronic narrative, procedural author is like a choreographer who supplies the rhythms, context and steps that will be performed.