I played the game Her Story, though I did not finish finding and watching all the clips, I figured out most of the story. This game is not like any other games I have ever played, due to its unique story-telling method and interactions. Instead of the mainstream games that show you the stories directly or those detective games that require you to solve the puzzle to achieve something else (like winning the suitcase), Her Story provides no clear timeline and specific goal. To you have to do is input the keywords to watch video clips, and that is all you can do. While playing the game, after picturing the rough story, I wonder for some time that what is the next step, what should I do next? Should I report the murderer to someone else? And it turns out that there is no such option, the game ends whenever I want it to end, whenever I am no longer curious about what happened to the murder case.
To some point, I think Her Story is not exactly a game, its more like an application to search for video clips. But the story behind those clips provided me the motivation to figure out what really happened out there. I think such motivation, which let me use such “application” more, makes Her Story a game. Therefore, Her Story also widens my definition and thinking about what a game is, what requirements are necessary to call something a game.
Back to the concept of interaction, I related a lot to the idea of two entities (actors) listening, thinking and speaking to each other provided by Crawford. Such definition closely relates to the other books about interaction I read before. Start from this definition, I always found much of those interactive projects not to be with strong interaction. Because I often think that those computer programs are not “thinking” hard enough. I also found such pattern in Her Story, there is no denial that it involves interaction, but the computer program is not doing fancy thinking. It would show the result that contains a keyword, like a basic database. If using Crawford’s idea to let interaction have scales, I would personally think Her Story as low interactions.
However, such weak interaction already generates a new way of telling a story. Her Story reminds me of the film Memento by Christopher Nolan. They were both telling a story by cutting it into small clips and showing them in some way other than linear timelines (which makes them very hard to understand). But just like Crawford said, films are not interactive, we cannot search and choose which clip to watch like what we did in Her Story, but to accept whatever mess order Nolan gives to us. The interaction in Her Story, enabling us to form our own storyline, creates much difference comparing the Memento. And I do think that such interaction makes the whole process more entertaining, and more engaging than watching the film. Therefore, I think interactions do add more possibilities and fun to storying telling. Though I might also just want to see a straightforward story sometimes.
Reference
Crawford, Chris. The Art of Interactive Design: A Euphonious and Illuminating Guide to Building Successful Software. No Starch Press, 2003.
Nolan, Christopher, director. Memento, 2001.
Sam Barlow, Her Story, 2015.