Computer games and interactive narrative: A structural analysis

Computer games are primarily an interactive form, not a narrative form, but the medium shows great narrative potential. This study explores the possibilities for interactive narrative in computer games by investigating their origins, their unique structural patterns, and by identifying and exploring five major areas identified as most central to a writer's difficulties in merging game and narrative: linearity, continuity, identity, authorship, and consequence. Additionally, this study further defines the intersections between interactive narrative, gameplay, and game narrative.; A wide spectrum of games are addressed, including titles released both recently and in the past few decades in nearly every genre; as well as single-, multi-, and massively multiplayer; commercial and experimental; and those developed for nearly every kind of personal computer or major console system. Particular attention is paid to games with unique, thematically interesting, or particularly successful approaches to creating narrative in a gameplay-centric medium.; Conclusions are drawn that game forms and narrative forms are neither mutually exclusive nor impossible to merge, blend, or translate successfully into the computer game medium, and that a number of structures exist that describe effective and compelling game narratives, both theoretically and practically applied to commercially released or independent, experimental game titles.