Credit: Death Stranding (Kojima Productions)

Interactive Drama is a contemporary form of digital storytelling that weaves together narrative conditions of film, video games and immersive theatre into an exciting and growing entertainment genre, benefiting from the upscaling of technology to enable rich environmental design, character depth and participant immersion. But what are the ingredients that serve this genre? In this post I take a deeper look at it’s origins, motivations and capabilities.

Genre Origins

Firstly we need to disambiguate the genre from many other similarly worded genres. Interactive Drama is not Interactive Fiction - which is described as ‘a text based story with narrative style of literature and interactivity aided by static or sprite based visuals’ (citation Wikipedia).

Neither is it strictly Interactive Storytelling (although the terms are entwined), which defines itself as AI generated story progression that creates a unique experience and story outcome based on the situation, characters and setting defined by an author. Indeed Façade (2006), by Mateas and Stern, has the crowning title of first interactive story based on computer artificial intelligence that can ‘understand natural language and gestural input based on the context of the story and then integrate the player’s interactions into a space of potential plot directions and characters’ (citation Michael Mateas, Carnegie Mellon dissertation).

The origins of the Interactive Drama genre go as far back as 1983 with the advent of laser disc technology enabling non linear presentation of film sequences, or ‘chapters’ based on user choice. Dragon’s Lair was a popular Interactive Film that used this technology - a motion video cartoon where the player controlled some basic character moves via a controller in order to move the story forward. There was only one possible story outcome and if the user choice was wrong they were directed to an ‘end of life’ chapter before restoring back to the scene again until successful completion.

Video games began absorbing this concept as early as 2005 with Fahrenheit by David Cage, who wrote and directed the game with the ‘intention to make something that would satisfy ex-gamers and non-gamers, expressing frustration with the industry's repetitive nature and focus on younger demographics’ (citation Wikipedia). Within the game the player has limited control of the character and chooses certain actions to progress the story. Other scenes comprise of quick time event action sequences (QTE), requiring the player to hit appropriate buttons at the right time to succeed. The warm reception of the title, produced by an 80 strong development team, paved the way for the genre to emerge and split the concepts of a more traditional interactive film-making, most recently seen in Black Mirror’s: Bandersnatch (2018), and the specific subject matter of this post - Interactive Drama as a video game genre.

Immersion Tactics in Theatre

Credit: The Drowned Man (Punchdrunk Theatre Company)

We also need to bring reference to the emergent genre of Immersive Theatre to further consider the dynamics of an immersive narrative experience in video games. In this theatrical genre the spectators are not placed in front of a narrative unfolding in a linear progression. The narrative premise is to actively explore the extents of the playing area in an attempt to reach its edges and unravel the story. In that regard the story is presented to you as a puzzle, and it is for you the participant to piece it together in your own unique way. You experience the story as though you are part of the story, following the protagonist on a pathway to achieving their goal.

The use of suspense and anxiety can be used to guide an audience member through the narrative. By removing the participant from their comfort zone, their actions and reactions become influenced by both their instincts and the prompts that the storytelling experience gives them, creating a profound sense of non-cognitive ‘phenomenological’ immersion. Meanwhile the act of experimentation with the narrative structure and the temporal order of reception leaves the participant questioning their own subjective conclusion of the events they just experienced.

Immersion Tactics in Video Games

Immersion is a common word you will hear in game design, but if we consider some key tactics in modern games then we start to get a better understanding about how we are able to suspend a player from reality within a deep narrative environment. The game Metro Exodus (2019), whilst a 1st Person Shooter rather than Interactive Drama, deploys a number of well thought through systems to pull you into their world, and these are transferable across all interactive entertainment genres.

The first consideration is to keep all the interactions that a player needs to make, physical and tactile within the world. The common design of user interfaces, menu screens and heads up displays which are there to support and assist the player, simultaneously act as a barrier between the two worlds and break down the immersion. In theatrical terms, they create a 4th wall. In Metro Exodus, they give you the information that you require, but nothing else. You only navigate out of the game when you explicitly have to. If you do need to for example, use a map, then the map is a tactile in game object that you pull out of your rucksack. You barely have any heads up display with the exception of discrete directive UI actions when the player requires it.

Withholding as much information as you can about the game systems without disorientating or frustrating the player is another key concept. Tell them what they need to know, but enable their journey to be made through self guided interactions which lead to self discovery of the story. At this point the player is doing something for themselves rather than simply ticking off a list of tasks that is presented to them by the game designers in order to progress through the game.

So you are now suspended in your world, but to keep it real you must remain acutely focused within it. You aren’t riding a horse for 15 minutes through a gigantic open world in order to get to a quest. You are exploring your world deeply, you don’t know what is around the corner and you are keeping an eye over your shoulder in the meanwhile to be sure that there is no one behind your back. You don’t know what is coming next. You have meaningful interactions with the tools and objects in your possession to establish your next tasks towards story progression.

The final consideration is in the way you play. If the actions that you take and the way you present yourself in the game is absorbed by the game and it then reacts to you, then you begin being suspended in the belief that you are interacting with a living world rather than being presented with a linear story. This doesn’t mean there needs to be a convoluted AI system embedded within the game trying to understand how you are thinking, it can be simply about presenting the player with emotional human choices that create meaningful branches - both large and small - within the game as the story progresses.

OK, but what makes a Video Game an Interactive Drama?

In 2011 David Oso considered this same question as myself and derived the following core systems and mechanisms for the creation of an Interactive Drama product.

Storytelling Driving Player Emotion

Credit: Man of Medan (Supermassive Games)

Explicitly focus on the storytelling. At it’s core the game must be designed from the ground up to tell a story. The theme of the story can be interchangeable but it must exude deep feeling and emotion within the person that is interacting with it. If the feature that you are working on has no impact or relevance to the interaction with the story then dispose of it.

These emotions may vary, conveying a sense of fear and tension in a survival horror like Man of Medan (2019), or anger, guilt and despair in a dramatic plot like Heavy Rain (2010), but they are the heart and soul of what you are looking to achieve in game design.

‘In Heavy Rain during some scenes you would feel really angry in certain situations, in other parts you would feel sorry. For an example, I was jaw dropped when I accidentally shot Nathaniel, I never meant to do it as it was an accident: because of this I felt guilt and sorry for myself. Another part was taking care of the baby Emily, I felt sorry for the baby because she was all alone and I also felt kindness and love when I took care of her. Taking care of Emily was the best moment in Heavy Rain, it was really priceless because it captured the true feeling of how a human can have an emotion towards a video game’ (David Oso, Gamasutra - 2011).

Meaningful Interactions

You fully participate with the world you are suspended within. The interactions themselves draw you deeper into the story world. These are meaningful in terms of gathering direct information about your narrative experience, or there to support and reinforce your perception about what this world really is. What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) delivers this concept impeccably as it draws you in, allowing you to explore the story through a series of curated interactions, presented in the style of both a living museum archive and cartoon story book.

Credit: What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow)

Quick Time Events

Credit: Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream)

Quick time events (QTE) are context sensitive gameplay in which the player performs actions on the control device shortly after the appearance of an on screen instruction. They are the key method of interaction within all story-driven games. At the core of this gameplay system it is the concept that the requirements of the story are what drive the mechanics not the other way around, which is what makes it entirely unique as a game system within video game design.

Detroit: Become Human (2018) delivers an engaging moment comprised entirely of successive QTE events as Markus is found trying to repair himself using defunct android parts, escaping the very same fate of becoming decommissioned scrap.

Emotive Character Roleplay

Rapid improvements in motion capture, animation and cinematics within video games has led to the presentation of the characters at a deep and emotional level which is indivisible to film-making, and this is showcased in a deeply emotive scene from Detroit: Become Human when Kara is forced to turn deviant in order to intervene in a domestic abuse crime, putting herself at risk and ultimately succeeding in rescuing Emily from Todd.

Credit: Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream)

Robert Schaap cites that ‘generating interesting and appropriate facial expressions for video game characters is difficult, but it is very important for the overall game-play experience. Adding moods, personality and emotion to video game characters allows people to connect with the characters they are playing with. It allows the players to identify with characters and create a bond with them. On the other hand, a character with negative personality traits can cause the player to dislike the character and distance himself from the character. This allows the players to become more easily immersed into the game’.

Steer Your Own Story

At the heart of the genre is the concept of meaningful choice. It is the offering that ‘You Are The Director', and this is the secret weapon that gives this genre a distinct advantage over traditional film-making as it continues to evolve. It enables this additional layer of immersion: ‘not only does the game react to me but I am in control of what it will do next’.

Credit: Until Dawn (Supermassive Games)

Telltale Games used this as the basis of their hugely successful The Walking Dead Series (2012). This revered title turned point-and-click adventure games on their head, delivering cinematic stories that the player could directly affect by their choices - the outcomes manifesting themselves further along the narrative timeline.

An iconic execution of this premise is the visceral saw scene in Until Dawn (2015), which takes a well known torture porn concept but presents you with the intensely difficult choice of deciding who will live or die based entirely upon your emotional resonance with Josh or Ashley.

An Immersive Narrative Future

If you’ve made it this far through the article then you have probably yourself concluded that there is a lot going on in order to craft an Interactive Drama product: to achieve success it requires bending the conventional parameters of film, video game and theatre production simultaneously in order to deliver a compelling immersive narrative experience.

David Cage of Quantic Dream, who is undoubtedly the person that can be credited with it’s formation into a fully fledged genre by the early 2010's, spent 2 years producing the script for Detroit: Become Human, which is the most profound attempt to showcase the genre to date. The layers of branches and options within the storytelling result in vast nodal networks of possible outcomes which are complicated to pull off when making the game.

Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn took the Playstation charts by storm in 2015 by developing a deeply infectious survival horror game comprised at it's core from the same immersive narrative ingredients. It also introduced an emerging social concept: people were no longer exclusively playing these games, they were now willing to watch the gameplay as the moment to moment narrative and interaction was so compelling. Bear in mind too that this immersive video game experience was underpinned by a 10,000 page script.

The genre is also showing beginnings to shape a wider landscape in video games. The recent Death Stranding (2019) is a hugely immersive story-driven game, blending the genres of Interactive Drama and RPG playability simultaneously to great effect. This is certainly the early signals of a new era of advanced narrative interaction occurring across video game genres.

And so to conclude I will leave you with the genre's founder, David Cage, and his view of how to serve up quality Interactive Drama. Hollywood take note: there's a new platform in town.

What is Interactive Drama?