Are Hypertext's Stories or Games?

Are fictional hypertexts such as Michael Joyce’s Afternoon, a game, story, or a hybrid of the two? Both sides of this debate, story or game, has validity as there is a continuum that exists between the two. Where one decides to draw the line on the continuum is completely personal as it is a hybrid of both. Even with that said I am going to suggest that hypertext fictions are stories; while it is impossible to dismiss the fact that they have game-like qualities, these are unintentional.

A hypertext is meant for linking a continuous thought, where the reader can click and follow up on. The medium was not produced in order to tell stories, yet it is possible to tell stories with any medium, and this is what fictional hypertexts such as Patchwork Girl and Afternoon attempt to do. You can also tell stories through music, ballads do this, but music itself is not a story-telling medium (Costikyan, 2001). You can tell stories through games, but the pleasure people derive from games is not dependent on their ability to tell stories. As seen on Xbox Live Arcade this week, the top selling game is Peggle, this is a puzzle game much like Tetris or Pong, these games do not tell stories, yet people enjoy them. Hypertext fiction is using the medium in order to just tell stories; hypertext is not dependent on stories, hypertext fiction however is.

A conventional scribal story is linear; however a game or hypertext is seen as non-linear or multi-linear. A story is a sequence of events, but just because the reader has choice over this sequence does not change the fact that is it a story. Hypertext fiction is rather redefining the notion of story to encompass agency over the text. Another outlook can be seen in film, if a certain film has two ending does this mean that it is no longer a story? No, rather the audience has the opportunity to experience a different reading that another person may have had. Whether a narrative is linear or multi-linear does not determine whether it is a game or a story.

An aspect that separates games from hypertext fiction or stories is that games have a prominent goal. In a game you need your hero to go through the adventure and be rewarded with a purpose at the end. In a hypertext fiction you are presented with a series of paths you can go down, where the only goal is to learn more to satisfy yourself to say I understand enough. In many hypertext fictions there is no apparent ending to the story, in Afternoon the goal may be reading to finding out whether Peter’s ex wife and his child have died in the car crash, but there is no lexia that offers a solution to this.

As Crawford puts it, a story is a vehicle for representing a reality, no matter where this story lands, in a hypertext or video game setting, a story can still exist. The line on the continuum for the medium of hypertext lands closer to story than it does to game for myself. Applications such as StorySpace offer an environment that is too similar to HTML, this is why I see hypertext fiction being unsuccessful. Hypertext is not a story telling medium, as I previously mentioned hypertext is meant to for linking continuous thought. If I click on ‘muskrat’ in Afternoon and am linked to a separate page describing something completely different (or even something on topic with the story, like Patchwork girl does, but has nothing to do with word clicked) then what was the point of writing this in a hypertext environment? Hypertext needs to work in a medium such as the world wide web or an application such as Wikipedia. Even though hypertext fiction does tell a story, it does not suit the environment in which it exists.

Works Cited

Costikyan, Greg. (2001). Where Stories End and Games Begin. Retrieved March 21, 2009, from http://www.costik.com/gamnstry.html.

On a side note, there was just one thing I had to disagree with the author about that has nothing to do with the question presented for this paper. I know he wrote this back in 1996, but that is no excuse when he writes “although stories trace only a single sequence of causal development, they do so with greater intricacy and detail than games.” Games can still have stories inside them! So how can the medium of games not support a story with as much detail as a scribal story? The only thing I can think of is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots where there is nine hours plus of cutscenes!