Chapter List

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

A narrative is what we commonly refer to as a story. An interactive multimedia narrative allows the user to explore several variations of a story or stories. Interactive narratives are produced for computer games, the Web, and interactive TV. Interactive narratives share many elements with linear film and video narrative. Because of this, it is useful to understand the basic elements of linear narrative before exploring the intricacies of interactive narrative.

NARRATIVE AND INTERACTIVE NARRATIVE DEFINED

"Narrative" and "story" are terms that we intuitively understand but are hard pressed to define. Critics have written many books defining narrative, but for our purposes we will define a narrative as a series of events that are linked together in a number of ways, including cause and effect, time, and place. Something that happens in the first event causes the action in the second event, and so on, usually moving forward in time.

Narrative multimedia...