chapter 5

in conclusion

Looking at narratives and mediums has opened up how a medium affects the story told. It is one thing to say that we know it's different to watch a movie than to read a book, but it's another thing to delve into exactly how the differences and similarities emerge. After exploring the stories found in Myst, Riven, Sandman, Ultima Online and MitterNachtSpiel I see that the four building blocks of narrative do differ from medium to medium (for reasons that have little to do with the mediums themselves) and that computational media does indeed change what a story is and can be.

in between

In discussing the narratives of Myst, Sandman,Ultima OnLine and MitterNachtSpiel I used a schema of narrative composed of four characteristics: setting, character, theme and plot. These four characteristics are the building blocks of narrative. Together they combine to give us a story.

My contention is that these four building blocks of narrative differ in degree in relation to each other across mediums. Looking at my objects of study has shown that these blocks do differ across mediums, but not necessarily because of the mediums. Instead, it seems to have more to do with the authors of the texts, and less to do with the characterisitics of the mediums themselves, that allows one block to foreground over the others. So, it becomes a matter of the authors' choices and how they approach the medium that cause a narrative element to be foregrounded.

The Myst novels may have foregrounded character, but the medium of print is more than capable of having any of the narrative elements highlighted. The same can be said for the comics. Sandman had theme as the strongest perspective because of Gaiman and company's choices in the story. Comics are also capable of having any element foregrounded. And similarly, the hypermedia objects of study may have foregrounded setting, but hypermedia is capable of having the other elements highlighted as well.

This is not a total loss. For while each medium is capable of having any of the elements foregrounded, the experience of these elements is different. Each medium demands a learned literacy in order to be fully engaged. You have to learn to "read" each medium. It is a performative difference in the immersion into the story across mediums. And while books and comics are relatively affordable, you need a computer in order to experience hypermedia (which is currently still an expensive purchase). In print, readers deal with the power and skill of the authors' words. To immerse yourself into the story (into the plot, setting, charracters and themes) is to let the words describe the story for you. The story is filtered through words. With comics, readers now have words in conjunction with images. Immersion occurs as you see the elements illustrated before you. The story is refracted through the dance between words and images. And with hypermedia, readers are virtually placed within the story itself. You are immersed within the world of the story. You have to act in this world, exploring within the story, in order to experience the narrative.

There is also a temporal difference for the writers of the mediums. Print is mostly a solitary pursuit in which authors complete and publish the work. This is where authors let go of of their active part of the narrative, and the rest is in the hands of the readers. Comics have a similar ending point where the authors release the work to the readers, but there is usually a team working on the story, so there is a narrative collaboration prior to the finished document. In the case of a CD-ROM, hypermedia also has a ending point, where the product is released to the public. But with the internet, the ending point blurs. The "final" story is more ephemeral. Authors can continue to change the work, even as readers are engaging the story. In fact, that is exactly what has happened with this dissertation. Instead of handing in a final hard copy, printed version and waiting for comments to come back, I am continually making changes to the document and posting the new revisions up online.In fact, with the advent of XML (Extensible Markup Language), ASP (Active Server Pages), Java and other technologies on the web, dynamic interactivity in webpages can be automatic and determined by the readers themeselves. So, this dissertation could be automatically and dynamically (re)arranged anew everytime someone "reads" it. This can be done both individually and collectively, as the website (and the arguments therein) respond to the readers. A hypermedia document on the internet is an organic and rhizomatic experience for both readers and writers. The story changes.

the written word

In considering the four aspects of narrative, plot, character, setting and theme, the Myst novels do lean most heavily on character and plot, and then on setting and least of all on a pervasive but bare bones theme.The novels center around characters, particularly Atrus who is present across each incarnation of the story grand. And in the plot of the third novel we see subtle hints of the events of both games, but the ends of the games are not given away.

So, the perspective of a player of the CD-ROMs is treated as a character in passing reference within the third novel. And even though I believe the theme to be the narrative characteristic developed the least in the novels, it is worth noting that the theme has a intimate connection with the CD-ROMs. In the novels the theme is one of the virtue, joy and rewards of carefully and fully exploring and enjoying the world around you. That way you are living a full life and seeing the whole. This theme could very well be the best instruction for how to successfully play the CD-ROMs. You need to carefully explore the worlds of Myst and Riven in order to successfully puzzle through the game and fully experience the story that only moves forward as long as you're exploring the worlds.

sequential art

Unlike the Myst comic, the Sandman story takes full advantage of the medium employed to orchestrate the telling, and the receiving, of the story.

Like the novels, the comics explore and illustrate all four of the characteristics of narrative, but therein lies a main difference. Comics literally illustrate them. The visuals in comics do the load of the work, the words are rather important, but serve in collaborative tension with the graphics. To be honest, the Myst comic is of such low quality that it is hard to discuss which narrative element is foregrounded and why. That said, I would like to discuss the Sandman comics. These comics push the edges of the medium into a dance of words and images that is unbelievably wondrous and overflowing with subtle and deep meanings.

It is a work that centers around themes, the theme of storytelling in particular. And Gaiman deftly weaves this theme into his characters, settings and plots. As a medium, comics favor the visual, which in turn builds up the characters and settings more than the plot and themes (in general). Gaiman, takes the theme of storytelling and makes it his palette from which he gives us an enigmatic character, Dream. So, this theme of the power and beauty of story is given a mercurial shape in the character of Dream (who often is not even present - or at most is in the background of other's stories - in the stories being related across the series). And from Dream we get the various storylines that culminate in an intricate rebirth of storytelling itself.

hyper media

In Myst and Riven, we are in richly detailed worlds, exploring and looking for clues and hints that reveal more of the story and allow us further into the game. Myst and Riven thrive in setting. The worlds and the atmosphere created within these worlds are paramount. Next comes theme, an implicit need to carefully explore these worlds. Mostly you are alone, wandering through these worlds trying to piece together the story. Outside of a magnificently persistent atmosphere and sense of exploration, there are very few ups and downs and points beyond just exploring more and unraveling more story as you solve more puzzles. And so the story is truly one where you are the driver. It does not proceed without you there unraveling it. You learn more about Myst and Riven as you make your way deeper into the worlds.

But Ultima Online shows another facet of setting. Whereas Myst and Riven have a community that has formed around the games to help each other play them fully, Ultima Online has a community within it. Ultima Online is an internet-based game that allows thousands of people to play together, each from their own unique perspectives, interacting with each other within the world of Brittania. You develop your chareacter in this dungeons & dragons fantasy world.

And MitterNachtSpiel is unlike the others in that it is a much more abstract and artistic environment. It is heavy on theme and setting. You are playfully performing a theatrical piece with a moonlit cast of characters. These characters are iconic to the point of abstraction. You see them in a scene and then you see a scene in them. It is a story so simple (playing with the moon and friends) yet so surreal, seeing how recursive iterations of images and sounds associate and interweave.

And these are only three examples of the possibilities of this new medium we are exploring. The foregrounding of the narrative elements has more to do with the authors of the texts and less to do with the medium itself. These hypermedia objects of study may have foregrounded setting, but hypermedia is capable of having the other elements highlighted. With hypermedia, readers are virtually placed within the story itself. You are immersed within the story. And when you are online, you are immersed with other people as well. You have to act and play, by yourself or with others, within the stories in order to experience the narratives.

Now, one thing I need to bring up again is the different possibilities between a CD-ROM and an internet-based experience. With a CD-ROM you have an experience that is delivered on a disc. This disc is a read-only copy, so once you get the game, that is the game you have. While the experience is dynamic and interactive, the assets (graphics, programming, etc) are not. They stay the same. The internet is a completely different world. The game is something in which you log on to another server (computers that stay online constantly) to experience the game simultaneously with thousands of others. The assets exist in a forum where they can be seamlessly (or not so seamlessly) updated as often as you want. So, the game could chance radically; it could look different, have new features, new stories, new everything and the people can come and go as well. And people do sell their characters and online possessions. These people are making money on their work. There can be a financial reward for the reader/author in this interactive internet world. The stories are truly shaped and experienced by the players themselves.

Looking back over the story grand of Myst, it seems that the idea of a story being developed from the outset to take place in multiple mediums is theoretically more interesting than practically feasible. Myst happened across time as the success of the original game fueled a multimedia barrage to tie into the initial success. This story grand shows some of the potential problems for spreading a story across mediums. Just like it is different for the reader across each medium, it is different for the author in, and of, each medium. Each medium makes its unique demands on the creator, and you need good form and content specific to that medium in order to tell a good story.

The specialization required of one medium is hard enough to come by, and in trying to combine, you lose the specialization as you spread across mediums. The Miller brothers made two amazing CD-ROM narrative games. They were groundbreaking in their time. Their novels, on the other hand, were just standard fantasy fare and the comic book was B-rate. So, their specialization shows in the area of expertise and the quality of the story grand ebbs and flows around their expertise. Currently, companies and individuals are set up to focus around one medium, so when there is a stab into a new medium, it is a secondary enterprise and the quality shows.

That said, I can see how large corporations, like AOL Time Warner or Disney, could put together a story grand across mediums through the licensing of characters and situations within their own holdings (movies, publishing books, internet, etc.). This would allow them to get talented artists within each medium to create that part of the story grand. But the creative genesis of the story usually comes in one medium with an original author, and the subsequent mediums end up lesser in quality as the creative vision is splintered, or the licensing could go to a lesser talent in another medium.

One possibility comes from the creative design and development world in which you have a creative producer who works along with the experts of various mediums. This producer would be in charge of the overall creative connectivity between mediums, helping stitch between the mediums. But to even make this worthwhile, the story grand would have to be good enough to make it worth the while, and this seems quite rare.

Mostly you see adaptations. For instance, Disney's movie the Lion King, which was adapted and directed by Julie Taymor into an award-winning Broadway show, and had a couple of video games released as tie ins. But all of these versions are telling the same essential story, just in a different medium. And often in these adaptations, you see the quality drop (How many times have you heard that the movie isn't as good as the book?). With this multimedia barrag,e where it is basically impossible for someone to have expertise in every medium, we may actually see a strengthening in the individual mediums as authors and artists focus on their expertise and return to specializing and mastering their medium of choice.

In turning this lens on myself, I have to wonder: readers can simply and solely read the secondary textual version of the dissertation and completely skip the primary hypertextual multimedia version. So, they will miss out on the associative linkings and logics as well as the dynamic and fluid connectivity of the internet and the ability to see images and movies playing together with the text. But would they miss out on the kernel of my dissertation? In this instance, I believe they will. Even though academe is still so focused on textual discourse, and an argument can be so well made with words, the medium of hypertext does allow for a new and different type of knowledge production and reception. The pervasive simulated worlds that computer enhanced narratives allow us to partake of are opening up a world where readers can be as interactive or as passive as they would like, exploring the worlds and stories as they wish. And the ability to argue, teach and learn within these stories is ours to choose.

@ play

In the end, is this hypertextual document able to be an academic dissertation by creating some form of new knowledge?

I strongly believe that it does. The analytical content of this dissertation comes to a conclusion that attempts to delineate the new and unique distinctions that the computer brings to what a story is and can be. And the rhizomatic form of this dissertation illustrates how hypertext can enable unique explorations and new modes of narrating, communicating, teaching and learning. Deleuze and Guattari note the rhizome, "has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight," and it, "connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple... It is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion" (21).

As I have said, I created this dissertation primarily for the web. I could burn this site to a CD-ROM, but the continual dynamics would be lost. The textual version is an artifact mapped from the hypertext. In looking at them together, I think the textual version is easily the lesser of the two versions. I believe that this has to do with the fact I was engaging in a different type of writing that does not translate well into linear, textual discourse. The secondary version becomes a textual exquisite corpse, pieced together from a variety of perspectives and ins and outs from the rhizome of the web. The hypertextual links will only be underlined artifacts within the text and the connected ideas will be severed and separated from each other.

This dissertation is a dynamic and rhizomatic document. A lot of the meaning comes in between and around. The associative linkings from words, phrases and images move rhetorically and performatively between pages and out into the web at large. There are meaningful and relevant logics and strategies involved with the interface and the links. There is an associative and metonymic reasoning occuring between each and every page. Every link was carefully chosen so the word or image is not only relevant to the page it is on, but also to the page to which it links.

There are a variety of layers of linkings that weave the document together into a rich tapestry of multilinear experiences. For instance, all of the definitions have images and these images are purposefully sprinkled throughout the site, creating thematic connections between the various roots of the rhizome. Also, notice the color of the links. If your browser is set to its default settings, a link to a page that has been visited will be purple. A blue link will take you to a new page (this assumes viewings in one browser on one computer). This gives you some sense of where you have been and where you are going. The rhizomatic and indexical frames allow you to choose between a completely associative experience, or one with an index to help guide you.

Hypertext allows for a document that can be played with by reader and writer (even simultaneously) in new and exciting ways. It can be exploratory and constructive all at once. Meaning can be actively, and performatively, created by all involved. To engage a hypertextual document is to play with the rhizome, to explore outside of normal standards and hierarchies. The web allows for a living document.

I have come to think of this new hypertextual process of knowledge as "ludic academe." Hypertext has the capability to fundamentally expand and enhance our academic endeavers. I do not believe that this is the end of text. Instead, I see it as a process that will add its own unique stamp to what and how we know. It is a rigorous and playful academic process that rhizomatically problematizes the balance of authority and allows readers and writers together in the same space at once, even if they are in different places within the conversation. For I still believe readers and writers occupy different places. They are now just doing so in a new space and in different ways - ways that we are just beginning to explore and use and play with.

In the end, I believe that the computer does radically alter what storytelling is and can be by its ability to virtually immerse us so directly into a story. Books and comics are established mediums that are going to continue to exist and improve. And even after all these years, there will still be radical and innovative ways in which these mediums are employed.

In experiencing Myst, Riven, Ultima Online and MitterNachtSpiel, you are positioned within the story. You get to explore simulated worlds and be an (inter)active part of them. So, the creation and relation of these computer enhanced narratives open up performative experiences where the author and readers are part of a theatrical scripting, where the story is related in the play and there are stage directions opening up the experience to the readers interactivity within the narrative experience and environment.

And with approaching technological advances, computer enhanced narratives are moving out of the virtual simulation of environments and into the real, physical world we live and breathe in. With broadband, console game Trojan horses, convergence and pervasive computing, we see DVD (digital video discs) and WAP (wireless application protocols) applications opening up the world to computer enhanced experiences. For instance, in the fall of 1999, a Masterpiece Edition of Myst was released. This edition had technological improvements and an active help agent/character you could work with to help you through the game. And in the fall of 2000, a new version of Myst, called realMyst, was released. It is the exact same game and story as the original except this version is not a series of lush still graphics that you point and click through. Instead, realMyst runs with realtime 3D graphics, so it is a lush simulated world in which you truly navigate around. You can walk around trees and rooms with close to infinite freedom, thereby being able to more fully immerse yourself in the world. And just released is another addition to the Myst story grand, Myst III: Exile, which takes place ten years after the events in Riven and also uses 3D panning. And coming soon is a project with the codename, "MudPie," as Cyan Worlds looks to innovate in the broadband internet and create an immersive, interactive and never-ending world (Cyan, "Cyan Worlds").

And broadband brings us bigger data pipes so we can have much more robust graphics and video streaming over the internet. And console games are becoming a technological Trojan horse. With the playstation2 by Sony, you no longer have just a gaming console, you have the convergence of your entertainment systems. It plays your DVD movies, lets you log onto the internet and surf the web and check your email, and it of course lets you play games. And the games themselves are becoming more cinematic and narrative driven. In fact, some are so detailed and illustrative that some colleagues (Sandy Stone, Troy Whitlock, Andy Glikman) and I have discussed the acronym FREE (fully reactive engaging entertainment). It's like watching a movie except you are the main character on the screen.

DVDs open up a new avenue of storytelling as well. Currently the porn industry is taking the fullest advantage of the DVD's ability to click between screen angles and soundtracks (you don't like watching from that angle, try this one, or this one...). But imagine making a DVD mystery movie where you can be watching people at a murder scene and you can click to a different angle and hear what two characters are whispering to each other, or maybe from that angle you actually see the murder weapon under the table. It could be a multilinear narrative that threads together into one story and your choice of viewing position affects what story you experience. You become a virtual presence in the movie (or you could just passively watch the main thread from beginning to end). Either way, the story expands across the threads for those who choose to explore.

Similarly, WAPs are being used on cellular phones in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Japan to download roleplaying scenarios that a group can play together around town while keeping in touch on their digital phones (Silberman, "Just Say Nokia"). And remember, in Ultima Online, people are getting paid money for the characters and storylines they have developed. This could slowly turn into the ability for the reader as author to actually make money in conjunction with a narrative environment and experience created by someone else. The act and reward of creation are shared.

These developments are leading to pervasive computing, with the computers out of their boxes and into our environments and experiences. A great example of this is the EMP (experience music project) museum in Seattle. Funded by Paul Allen and designed by architect, Frank Gehry, it is a museum where you can take a specialized PDA (personal digital assistant) around the museum with you and it will respond to the displays you choose to view, keep tally of your questions and finally let you upload your visit to the internet where you can then visit it from home later (Kirsner, "Are You Experienced?"). And then there is an experience like Majestic. It is an online multiplayer game by Electronic Arts that also bleeds into real space. Computer characters will call you on your phone, send you faxes, instant messages and email. And participating web sites will contain clues to help you in the game. The story of the game exists outside of the computer itself. As a player in the game, you use all of your electronic devices to enable you to play the game and interact within the narrative from outside the box. Another example of this is the proposed Myst Island theme park where you would actually be in an environment where you walk through the island that once upon a time you could only experience virtually. And there would be objects and artifacts that you could pick up and move around with, and the environment would keep track of what you were doing and if you puzzled correctly, the environment would respond, opening a door or revealing a clue. And there could be people all over the island playing with different artifacts and experiencing different elements and aspects of the narrative environment that may or may not impact your experience of the environment (Kirsner).

The above examples are the tip of the iceberg of how stories are currently being told in new and exciting ways that lean on our narrative origins but leap forward in a world where we can relate and experience stories as never before. And we are struggling to fully comprehend the possibilities of this medium. As Marshall McLuhan's fourth law of media states, "the initial development of a new medium will retrieve forms from prior mediums." Likewise, we are using prior forms of analysis to try and understand this new medium (Miles, 4). I have aspired to use a new form expression, hypertext, in order to analyze a topic in ways that we not possible before (Landow, Hyper/Text/Theory, 36).

Computational media are allowing us to be placed virtually and physically within rich worlds where we are the protagonists and the story grand is there for us to explore, interact within and enact as we show, tell and experience stories with each other. This does not mean out with the old in with the new. Instead I hope this dissertation shows that by exploring how we have told stories in mediums we can see how to better tell stories in these new mediums and expand our notions of what stories are and can be.

works, images and links ->