Recent Publications by Hartmut Koenitz
Understanding Interactive Digital Narrative:
Immersive Expressions for a Complex Time
This remarkably clearly written and timely critical evaluation of core issues in the study and ap... more This remarkably clearly written and timely critical evaluation of core issues in the study and application of interactive digital narrative (IDN) untangles the range of theories and arguments that have developed around IDN over the past three decades.
Looking back over the past 30 years of theorizing around interactivity, storytelling, and the digital across the fields of game design/game studies, media studies, and narratology, as well as interactive documentary and other emerging forms, this text offers important and insightful correctives to common misunderstandings that pervade the field. This book also changes the perspective on IDN by introducing a comprehensive conceptual framework influenced by cybernetics and cognitive narratology, addressing limitations of perspectives originally developed for legacy media forms. Applying its framework, the book analyzes successful works and lays out concrete design advice, providing instructors, students, and practitioners with a more precise and specific understanding of IDN.
This will be essential reading for courses in interactive narrative, interactive storytelling, and game writing, as well as digital media more generally.
Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN) as Representations of Complexity: Lineage, Opportunities and Future Work
Interactive Storytelling,. 14th international conference on interactive digital storytelling, 2021
Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 2021
In this article, we posit ‘game system building’ as a paradigm for game design. Inspired by earli... more In this article, we posit ‘game system building’ as a paradigm for game design. Inspired by earlier perspectives on cybernetic art, and current practices in game development and education, we consider the creation of dynamic game systems as a creativeartistic practice where the consideration of complex and often unpredictable behavior and effects are as foundational as the individual elements (rules, graphics, characters, UI etc.) of a game. The paradigm of ‘game system building’ has important implications for the education of designers and games scholars. In this article, we introduce the paradigm and its lineage, and propose an educational approach that reflects ‘game system building’.
ToDigra, 2021
In recent years, games with a focus on narrative have been a growing area. However, so far, inter... more In recent years, games with a focus on narrative have been a growing area. However, so far, interactive narrative aspects have not been the focus of video game education (with the noted exception of a small number of programs in game writing), which indicates that many narrative designers are self-trained. The insular status means that many designers use private vocabulary and conceptualizations that are not directly transferable. This state of affairs is an obstacle to productive discourse and has negative consequences for the further development of the professional field.
Reflecting in Space on Time: Augmented Reality Interactive Digital Narratives to Explore Complex Histories
COST Action 18230 INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) is an inte... more COST Action 18230 INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) is an interdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners intended to further the use of interactive digital narratives (IDN1) to represent highly complex topics. IDN possess crucial advantages in this regard, but more knowledge is needed to realize these advantages in broad usage by media producers and the general public. The lack of a shared vocabulary is a crucial obstacle on the path to a generalized, accessible body of IDN knowledge. This white paper frames the situation from the perspective of INDCOR and describes the creation of an online encyclopedia as a means to overcome this issue. Two similar and successful projects (The Living Handbook of Narratology and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) serve as examples for this effort, showing how community-authored encyclopedias can provide high-quality content. The authors introduce a taxonomy based on an overarching analytical fram...
Arts, 2018
There have been misunderstandings regarding “narrative” in relation to games, in part due to the ... more There have been misunderstandings regarding “narrative” in relation to games, in part due to the lack of a shared understanding of “narrative” and related terms. Instead, many contrasting perspectives exist, and this state of affairs is an impediment for current and future research. To address this challenge, this article moves beyond contrasting definitions, and based on a meta-analysis of foundational publications in game studies and related fields, introduces a two-dimensional mapping along the dimensions of media specificity and user agency. Media specificity describes to what extent medium affects narrative, and user agency concerns how much impact a user has on a narrative. This mapping is a way to visualize different ontological positions on “narrative” in the context of game narrative and other interactive narrative forms. This instrument can represent diverse positions simultaneously, and enables comparison between different perspectives, based on their distance from each other and alignment with the axes. A number of insights from the mapping are discussed that demonstrate the potential for this process as a basis for an improved discourse on the topic.
Today, no generally accepted definition of video game narrative exists. The academic discourse ha... more Today, no generally accepted definition of video game narrative exists. The academic discourse has pointed out ontological and phenomenologi- cal differences to more traditional forms of narra- tive, and therefore, the relationship to established scholarship in narratology is complex. In the field of video game studies, narrative aspects of video games are often described in contrast to rule-based aspects. A wider scan of related fields reveals additional positions. Ludonarrative is variously understood as a structural quality of the video game artifact, as an experiential quality during the experience of a video game, or as a high- level framework to understand video games. Finally, a number of scholars emphasize the difference to traditional manifestations and there- fore work towards specific theories of video game narrative. While all legitimate by them- selves, these different usages of “narrative” in
the context of video games are often not clearly distinguished in professional or academic dis- course and can lead to considerable confusion. It is therefore essential to scrutinize the particular context and underlying assumptions when approaching the topic. This state of affairs puts particular responsibility on scholars to identify the origins of their understanding of video game nar- rative and define their particular usage of the term in contrast to earlier applications.
Edited Books by Hartmut Koenitz
The Forking Paths - Interactive Film and Media, 2021
The Forking Paths
Interactive film and Media
The Forking Paths, a project by the Resea... more The Forking Paths
Interactive film and Media
The Forking Paths, a project by the Research Center for Arts and Communication (CIAC), began in 2013, when a group of researchers from the center began a theoretical and practical research process in the field of filmic interactivity. Since then, dozens of scientific publications have been written and the four interactive film experiences produced within the scope of the project featured in leading international festivals, such as FILE, in São Paulo, Brazil, or Script Road, in Macau, China.
In 2021, some of the world’s leading experts in interactive film and media join CIAC researchers. The result is the book The Forking Paths, which revisits historically, socially, pedagogically and aesthetically the last 50 years of audiovisual interactivity.
In the first chapter, Claudia Giannetti introduces us to the precursors and the development of interactive audiovisual, from last century’s early 70s to the first decade of the current century. Jeffrey Shaw presents us with “Future Cinema”, a visionary text written precisely 20 years ago and now revised, a text which impresses by its timeliness and the way it remaps and redirects the history of cinema. Peter Lunenfeld writes about the enthralling Multimediated project on immersion and pedagogy entitled “Colloidal Suspension: Immersion and the Pedagogies of Making”. In the chapter “Remediation or specificity? Interactive digital narrative and other interactive forms as continuation or new beginning”, Hartmut Koenitz opens an important discussion on the issue of conceptual framing of interactive digital narratives. Finally, the last chapter, written by CIAC researchers Bruno Mendes da Silva, Mirian Tavares, António Araújo and Susana Costa, relates filmic interactivity with surrealism and temporal perception, by presenting the project’s last interactive artifact, the Forking Paths: Cadavre Exquis, launched in 2019, and by contextualizing its production in the history of cinema and interactive film.
By contextualizing and rethinking the young history of film and interactive media, this book points to a hypothetical future of cinema, where we discover hints that seem to indicate a possible evolution regarding audiovisual syntax, although morphological issues remain unaltered. The relativity of the concept of plan, which changes from objective to subjective by taking into account the possibility of multiple choices, as well as the multiple reinterpretations it offers to the idea of sequence are two examples of the shift in audiovisual syntax. It is also important to mention the relevance of academic experimentation, which, rather than limiting itself to theorizing, should lead to praxis whenever possible, i.e. a practical demonstration of the developed theories. The advent of artificial intelligence anticipates a possible rupture with pre-established contents related to the real image, thus enabling the emergence of a new generation of interactive films. Soon, viewers will be able to acquire creative powers that are beyond their control as well as beyond the control of the original author. We are talking about a generation of unpredictable content. This will certainly be a rupture in the logical sequence of the history of cinema, a turning point where film can become something it has never been before: a complete audiovisual experience.
Interactive Digital Narrative: History, Theory and Practice
The book is concerned with narrative in digital media that changes according to user input—Intera... more The book is concerned with narrative in digital media that changes according to user input—Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN). It provides a broad overview of current issues and future directions in this multi-disciplinary field that includes humanities-based and computational perspectives. It assembles the voices of leading researchers and practitioners like Janet Murray, Marie-Laure Ryan, Scott Rettberg and Martin Rieser. In three sections, it covers history, theoretical perspectives and varieties of practice including narrative game design, with a special focus on changes in the power relationship between audience and author enabled by interactivity. After discussing the historical development of diverse forms, the book presents theoretical standpoints including a semiotic perspective, a proposal for a specific theoretical framework and an inquiry into the role of artificial intelligence. Finally, it analyses varieties of current practice from digital poetry to location-based applications, artistic experiments and expanded remakes of older narrative game titles.
Book chapters by Hartmut Koenitz
Interactive digital narrative (IDN) challenges basic assumptions about narrative in the western w... more Interactive digital narrative (IDN) challenges basic assumptions about narrative in the western world—namely about the role of the author and the fixed state of content and structure as the audience takes on an active role and the narratives become malleable. 1 It seems quite clear that narrative theory—as is—cannot fully account for these changed conditions. Many scholars have reacted to these challenges by adapting established narrative theories. This approach has clear advantages as terms, categories, and methods of analysis are already well understood. On the other hand, analysing IDN with theoretical frameworks created to describe narrative in traditional media carries the risk of misunderstanding the nature of the change. In this regard, Espen Aarseth rightfully warns of the danger of " theoretical imperialism " (1997, p. 16). For example, once we focus on similarities with ancient Greek stage play we can become overly wedded to the framework of Aristotle's Poetics and prone to disregard aspects that do not fit that particular frame of reference. A more fully developed theory of digital interactive narrative should be careful to avoid such theoretical pitfalls. Before sketching out a specific theoretical framework for IDN, I will analyse several existing theoretical perspectives to foreground the scope and focus of earlier contributions and investigate which aspects are not fully covered yet.
Interactive Storytelling is an interdisciplinary field in which the humanities meet artificial in... more Interactive Storytelling is an interdisciplinary field in which the humanities meet artificial intelligence. Collaborations between scholars rooted in the humanities and the computer sciences like the one between Brenda Laurel and the OZ group at Carnegie Mellon University have had a major influence on the field. At the same time, there are indications that the relationship is often tenuous, for exam- ple, between models of narrative in the humanities and their application in computational research projects. This chapter investigates the relationship, notes challenges, and identifies opportunities for an enhanced collaboration. Additional scrutiny in understanding context and scope of narrative models in the humanities would improve access for AI researchers to the vast space of available models and allow for the codification and re-use of adaptation strategies. Simultaneously, the work of many AI researchers could be recast and recognized as contributions to narrative theory. In this regard, film theory can serve as a potential model for a narrative theory of Interactive Storytelling.
Handbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies, 2015
In iTV and online video, narrative interaction has long been a Holy Grail for both audiences and ... more In iTV and online video, narrative interaction has long been a Holy Grail for both audiences and creators of these digital audiovisual works. On the one hand, interactive digital narrative promises interactors some exciting opportunities: to enter the world of the story, to affect the story and perhaps even to control its outcome, and in the process to gain a transformative self-revelation. On the other hand, this new medium changes the role and craft of the author and entails a host of technological, conceptual, and institutional challenges. The authors describe these opportunities and challenges in detail, before examining various projects that have attempted to realize this vision and grapple with the challenges. Works discussed span several decades, from the late 1960s to 2015. They also span a variety of forms, including interactive cinema, online video, interactive television, and both video- and animation-based games. Particular emphasis is given to contemporary interactive documentaries (iDocs). The chapter further discusses current research directions, such as explorations of the increasing incorporation of the interactor’s body and affects as well as second-screen and cross-device integration, and concludes with a fresh look at the original vision in light of conceptual and design approaches, current technological developments, their implications on the changing landscape of audiovisual content creation and consumption, and the new creative space of opportunities that they open up.
Papers by Hartmut Koenitz
Alternate realities in interactive digital narratives – understanding and improving design and prosocial effects through empirical methods
Multimedia tools and applications, Apr 3, 2024
When Has Theory Ever Failed Us? - Identifying Issues with the Application of Theory in Interactive Digital Narrative Analysis and Design
Interactive Storytelling
Methods, History, and Impact - Directions in Game Design Research
New Research Perspectives Game Design and Development Education, 2018
Research into the design aspect of games has proliferated since the early 1970s. Currently, early... more Research into the design aspect of games has proliferated since the early 1970s. Currently, early historical overviews appear and categorical divisions within the field become more pronounced. It i ...
Approaches Towards Novel Phenomena. a Reflection on Issues in IDN Research, Teaching and Practice
Springer eBooks, 2022
arXiv (Cornell University), Jun 30, 2023
INDCOR White Paper 0: IDNs representing complex issues Executive Overview Citizens everywhere hav... more INDCOR White Paper 0: IDNs representing complex issues Executive Overview Citizens everywhere have the right to be well-informed. Yet, with the high complexity of many contemporary issues, such as global warming and migration, our means of information need to mutually adapt. Narrative has always been at the core of information exchange-regardless of whether our ancestors sat around a fire and exchanged stories, or whether we read an article in a newspaper, or watched a TV news broadcast. Yet, the narrative formats of the newspaper article, the news broadcast, the documentary, and the textbook are severely limited when it comes to representing highly complex topics which may include several competing-and sometimes equally valid-perspectives. Such complexity contributes to a high level of uncertainty due to a multitude of factors affecting an outcome. Fortunately, with Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN), there is a novel media format which can address these challenges. IDNs can present several different perspectives in the same work, and give audiences the ability to explore them at will through decision-making. After experiencing the consequences of their decisions, the audience can replay to revisit and change these decisions in order to consider their alternatives. IDN works enable deep personalization and the inclusion of live data. These capabilities make IDN a 21 st century democratic medium, empowering citizens through the understanding of complex issues. In this white paper, we discuss the challenge of representing complexity, describe the advantages offered by IDNs, and point out opportunities and strategies for deployment. Four additional white papers, linked from this one, offer more detailed insights into design, conceptions, evaluation, and societal impact.
arXiv (Cornell University), May 3, 2023
This whitepaper has been produced by members of the COST Action 18230-Interactive Narrative Desig... more This whitepaper has been produced by members of the COST Action 18230-Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR-https://indcor.eu) INDCOR White Paper 2: Interactive Narrative Design for Representing Complexity Executive Summary This white paper was written by the members of the Work Group focusing on design practices of the COST Action 18230-Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR, WG1). It presents an overview of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) design for complexity representations through IDN workflows and methodologies, IDN authoring tools and applications. It provides definitions of the central elements of the IDN alongside its best practices, designs and methods. Finally, it describes complexity as a feature of IDN, with related examples. In summary, this white paper serves as an orienting map for the field of IDN design, understanding where we are in the contemporary panorama while charting the grounds of their promising futures.
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Recent Publications by Hartmut Koenitz
Looking back over the past 30 years of theorizing around interactivity, storytelling, and the digital across the fields of game design/game studies, media studies, and narratology, as well as interactive documentary and other emerging forms, this text offers important and insightful correctives to common misunderstandings that pervade the field. This book also changes the perspective on IDN by introducing a comprehensive conceptual framework influenced by cybernetics and cognitive narratology, addressing limitations of perspectives originally developed for legacy media forms. Applying its framework, the book analyzes successful works and lays out concrete design advice, providing instructors, students, and practitioners with a more precise and specific understanding of IDN.
This will be essential reading for courses in interactive narrative, interactive storytelling, and game writing, as well as digital media more generally.
the context of video games are often not clearly distinguished in professional or academic dis- course and can lead to considerable confusion. It is therefore essential to scrutinize the particular context and underlying assumptions when approaching the topic. This state of affairs puts particular responsibility on scholars to identify the origins of their understanding of video game nar- rative and define their particular usage of the term in contrast to earlier applications.
Edited Books by Hartmut Koenitz
Interactive film and Media
The Forking Paths, a project by the Research Center for Arts and Communication (CIAC), began in 2013, when a group of researchers from the center began a theoretical and practical research process in the field of filmic interactivity. Since then, dozens of scientific publications have been written and the four interactive film experiences produced within the scope of the project featured in leading international festivals, such as FILE, in São Paulo, Brazil, or Script Road, in Macau, China.
In 2021, some of the world’s leading experts in interactive film and media join CIAC researchers. The result is the book The Forking Paths, which revisits historically, socially, pedagogically and aesthetically the last 50 years of audiovisual interactivity.
In the first chapter, Claudia Giannetti introduces us to the precursors and the development of interactive audiovisual, from last century’s early 70s to the first decade of the current century. Jeffrey Shaw presents us with “Future Cinema”, a visionary text written precisely 20 years ago and now revised, a text which impresses by its timeliness and the way it remaps and redirects the history of cinema. Peter Lunenfeld writes about the enthralling Multimediated project on immersion and pedagogy entitled “Colloidal Suspension: Immersion and the Pedagogies of Making”. In the chapter “Remediation or specificity? Interactive digital narrative and other interactive forms as continuation or new beginning”, Hartmut Koenitz opens an important discussion on the issue of conceptual framing of interactive digital narratives. Finally, the last chapter, written by CIAC researchers Bruno Mendes da Silva, Mirian Tavares, António Araújo and Susana Costa, relates filmic interactivity with surrealism and temporal perception, by presenting the project’s last interactive artifact, the Forking Paths: Cadavre Exquis, launched in 2019, and by contextualizing its production in the history of cinema and interactive film.
By contextualizing and rethinking the young history of film and interactive media, this book points to a hypothetical future of cinema, where we discover hints that seem to indicate a possible evolution regarding audiovisual syntax, although morphological issues remain unaltered. The relativity of the concept of plan, which changes from objective to subjective by taking into account the possibility of multiple choices, as well as the multiple reinterpretations it offers to the idea of sequence are two examples of the shift in audiovisual syntax. It is also important to mention the relevance of academic experimentation, which, rather than limiting itself to theorizing, should lead to praxis whenever possible, i.e. a practical demonstration of the developed theories. The advent of artificial intelligence anticipates a possible rupture with pre-established contents related to the real image, thus enabling the emergence of a new generation of interactive films. Soon, viewers will be able to acquire creative powers that are beyond their control as well as beyond the control of the original author. We are talking about a generation of unpredictable content. This will certainly be a rupture in the logical sequence of the history of cinema, a turning point where film can become something it has never been before: a complete audiovisual experience.
Book chapters by Hartmut Koenitz
Papers by Hartmut Koenitz