Toward a typology of interactive story forms

I’m still thinking about Gone Home and the state of interactive and/or software-enabled storytelling, and yesterday I went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. Here’s what I found:

Forms

• “Choose Your Own Adventure” is actually a brand name — the general form is called “gamebook.”
• “Interactive fiction” usually refers to “software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment… Some users of the term distinguish between “interactive fiction” that focuses on narrative and “text adventures” that focus on puzzles… As a commercial product, interactive fiction reached its peak in popularity from 1979 to 1986, as a dominant software product marketed for home computers… The term “Interactive Fiction” is sometimes used to describe other forms of storytelling and games, including visual novels, interactive novels, and interactive storytelling.”
• A “visual novel” is an interactive fiction game, featuring mostly static graphics, most often using anime-style art or occasionally live-action stills (and sometimes video footage). As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels. In Japanese terminology, a distinction is often made between visual novels proper (abbreviated NVL), which consist predominantly of narration and have very few interactive elements, and adventure games (abbreviated AVG or ADV), which may incorporate problem-solving and other types of gameplay… Non-linear branching storylines are a common trend in visual novels…”
• Interactive novels “offer readers another unique way to read fiction by choosing a page, a character, or a direction. By following hyperlinked phrases within the novel, readers can find new ways to understand characters. There is no wrong way to read a hypertext interactive novel. Links embedded within the pages are meant to be taken at a reader’s discretion – to allow the reader a choice in the novel’s world.”
• Interactive storytelling “is a form of digital entertainment in which users create or influence a dramatic storyline through actions, either by issuing commands to the story’s protagonist, or acting as a general director of events in the narrative. Interactive storytelling is a medium where the narrative, and its evolution, can be influenced in real-time by a user. Unlike interactive fiction, there is an open debate about nature of the relationship between interactive storytelling with computer games. Game designer Chris Crawford states that “Interactive storytelling systems are not “Games with Stories”.”

Notes

• These seem to be contested terms. The article for “interactive fiction” says that the term mainly refers to text-based forms, but acknowledges that visual novels are described as interactive fiction as well.
• Interesting that in both the case of interactive fiction and visual novels, a distinction has emerged between those which focus on problem-solving/puzzles and those which focus on the narrative.
• Gone Home was mentioned, presumably as an example, in the article for interactive storytelling — but as I wrote in my last post, one brilliant aspect of Gone Home is that you have control over the plot, not the story. This is a stark contrast to “creat[ing] or influenc[ing] a dramatic storyline.”

Further reading: There is a wiki dedicated to tracing the connections between technical implementation of interactive storytelling and narrative theories. On the theory side, I see a lot of names I recognize — Aristotle, Todorov, Propp, Barthes, Genette, Campbell — but many I don’t. Bremond? Boal? The reading list grows.