Richard Garriott’s Ultima OnLine, is a story and game that takes place entirely on the internet (hence, ‘on-line’). In fact, it is the largest on-line game to date. The story grand of Ultima was originally developed over nine versions of a CD-ROM role-playing adventure game. Ultima OnLine takes place in the fictional world of Britannia where multiple players can log on and interact with each other within the two-dimensional graphic realms. It is an epic fantasy story with good and evil, magicians and monsters. The twist is that it is a socially developed and persistent hypermedia environment; there is the foundational story developed by Garriott at Origin, but the activities of the myriad of players (around 150,000 and growing) are what motivates and creates the stories that literally never end. What I mean by constructive and persistent is that the participants not only add through their actions, but their actions have lasting consequences. If you build a house, it will be there the next time you play. Origin maintains a community paper titled the ‘Town Cryer’ that allows participants to see the various stories that are developing in the world.

Kveta Pacovska's MitterNachtSpiel ("MidNightPlay") is an elegant piece of interactive artistic storytelling, the only words involved are actually on the packaging, which basically set up the context that on nights when the moon is not in the sky, it is actually down on earth at a play, and the moon and cast of characters interweave in a dreamlike fluidity from place to place and activity to activity as sights and sounds echo and entwine in a midnight play.