Introduction to Interactive Narrative

Last week we I was introduced to Interactive Narrative module of the Multimedia course. I had a previous understanding of what interactive narrative was before this session and it seemed like something I didn't think I'd be very interested in so I was a bit apprehensive about completing this part of the course. However, to my surprise I enjoyed this session as I found i had to think quite deeply about the structure of my interactive narrative ideas.

We were briefly introduced to flash in this session and I feel it looks quite complex and is something I want to get started on learning as soon as possible in order to get my final interactive narrative completed to a high standard. I will begin to look into this before next weeks seminar in order to gain some degree of understanding of Flash beforehand.

Choose a different ending:

An interactive narrative that focuses on raising awareness about knife crime. The user can make choices that lead to the outcome showing the consequences of knife crime, including the death or arrest of a character. This is a interactive narrative that I had heard of previous to beginning this course as it has been quite popular on TV over the past year or so. It consists of a number of short videos shot in first person from the viewers point of view, placing the audience directly into the narrative. Each shot shows a situation and then places the audience with a decision to make, for exmaple to take the knife or not. I think it is a very good example of interactive narrative and that it fulfills its objective of raising awareness of the potential dangers of knife crime.

I also began to brainstorm some initial ideas for what my interactive narrative could be, and my favourites were:

- Narrative raising awareness of the dangers associated with a firework display.

- Narrative of daily routine and how decisions made have a direct effect on your action (i.e. being late for work)

- Narrative of decisions made in order to get a sick person help as soon as possible (could raise awareness of diseases/illnesses and how to prevent them or what to do in an emergency situation)

I will begin to look at these ideas in more detail before the next seminar and begin to produce a plan of how my chosen interactive narrative will be structured.