How interactivity is a game changer Choose your own adventure ByBen Konuch Interactivity in media is an interesting enigma. It isn't anything new, with the popular "Choose Your Own Adventure· book series pioneering the concepts as early as 1979. but the last 10 years have shown a resurgence in the concept of interactive stories. Now reaching past its origin in books to encompass video games and even movies, the concept of interactivity is slowly shaping media with fascinating implications. Interactivity has been shaping media in two main ways: indirect action and deliberate choice. Indirect action uses entertainment to give the player or viewer a sense of secondhand culpability that furthers the impact of the story. Video games, with the nature of their player-game dynamic, predominantly use this type of interactivity often to cause guilt or show shock at something the consumer wouldn't normally pay attention to. For example, the 2012 action video game "Spec Ops: The Line· starts off fairly straightforward, with the player controlling a soldier exploring a post-disaster Dubai But. as the game continues, the plot gets darker and the player is called to commit crueler acts. There's some element of deliberate choice interactivity, such as whether or not the player executes enemies, but the overwhelming majority of the story unfolds with the player following the clear path set out for them with little regard to intentional choices or consequences. One loading screen tip even reads "The United States Army does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care?" In this way, players start making small choices without even realizing choices are being presented to them. The turning point of the game comes when the main character makes a decision without player input: to use white phosphorus to burn through an enemy fortification. After the attack subsides, the characters and the player are both shocked by the revelation that the fortification was actually a refugee camp. The game uses the fact that players of action games typically remove morality from their decisions, acting in a way that "furthers the story" and promotes a false sense of heroism and nobility, despite the serious and often fatal consequences of actions. The way "The Line" uses this trope and medium to drive the point into the player is shocking, graphic and upsetting It hits hardest because of the way the player used and surrendered their control for the sake of the fictional story. This is a story that couldn't have the same effect on its players without its use of interactivity. The second type of interactivity, the implementation of deliberate choice, isn't just bound to choicebased video games, like "Until Dawn" or "Telltale's Walking Dead." In 2018, Netflix experimented with its "Black Mirror" franchise with the release of "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch." "Bandersnatch" is a psychological thriller interactive film about a young programmer named Stefan trying to create a choice-based adventure game. The story focuses on Stefan trying to create his game about choice while ideas of free will and control are constantly presented to him. As the deadline gets closer. Stefan realizes he's a slave to someone else's decisions and starts to fear that he has no control over his own actions. The watcher is forced to make Stefan choose increasingly difficult decisions that can not only drastically alter the plot but determine his fate and sanity. So why, then, is the novelty of an interactive psychological thriller 18 CID6'1lS Imageof "Bandersnatch" courtesy of Netflix Image of "Spec Ops The Line" courtesy of 2K Games Fa\12022
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