It was fun and enjoyable to play the Fighting Fantasy book in class. That was the first time I read the Fighting Fantasy book. We chose the "Master of Chaos." It is interesting to note that the narrative can still be exciting and coherent while engaging readers in a game story in which the readers are free to choose the story paths, which ultimately lead to different stories with various denouements.
I find the narrative "well-formed" no matter which choices the readers opt for. There is still continuity and the story is still engaging. But sometimes, although one is given two choices, I noticed that whichever choices will inevitably lead the reader back to the same path to reach the kernels of the story, thus, those are just temporary diversions to create the illusions of choices. We didn't played long enough. Maybe if we play long enough and experience the paths the different choices lead to, perhaps we might notice that the choices are just illusions to make it look interactive. Perhaps the storyline is the same after all with maybe only one or two conclusions. Or maybe the illusions of choices function to let the readers assemble their own paths, and thus lead to different experiences.
I find the Fighting Fantasy book requires non-trivial effort and mechanical effort on the part of the readers to make the narrative progress. The readers need to throw the dice, make choices, calculate the scores, frequently turn the pages, etc.... It is indeed a very interesting concept of interactivity but the playing part of it is another matter. The interactivity of the book depends very much on the readers. If the reader finds the throwing of dice and calculating the scores in playing a game in which the end scores determine whether the reader will win the fight with an enemy cumbersome, most probably they will just assume that they won the game and proceed to the next scene. Thus, maybe more interesting games should be introduced to make the book more exciting instead of just throwing dices and calculating scores.
Some commented that they will not care whether the character in the story survives during the start of the game and will often exposes them to danger. However, they will want to keep the character alive after playing it for a long time. Whereas, some commented that they do not want their character to die by choosing the safer routes, but was still exposes to danger. It is interesting to note how the author tries to involve the readers in the game story. There is always some elements of risks involved in games. For me, I will carefully take some risks to explore the different paths but still wanted to keep the character alive in order to know how the story unfolds itself. Maybe I am more interested in the narrative part of the book compared to the game.
We discussed whether how different would it be if this form of game story was played using computer instead. I think that computer has the capability to picture the scenes, and create the sound effects and special effects, thus, engaging the audience more. The audience do not have to picture the scenes of the story themselves. Besides that, it will also save the hassle of recording and calculating the scores as computer has the capability to do that. Without all these activities, the audience will be able to focus on the experiences of the story itself. However, would this mean that the process has become more trivial, suggesting that the old media form of the book involves more non-trivial effort, thus, more cybertext than the new media, in this case, the computer?
Or perhaps, other interactive elements, such as the control of the fighting using the keyboards, can be used to substitute the interactive elements in the book to maintain the level of non-trivial effort. Maybe old media and new media can both be interactive, but in a different way.
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Yes, its very interesting that in this case, it actually seems that moving to new media would perhaps make the fighting fantasy book LESS of a cybertext… however, what it might do is enable the author to create other forms of configuration and effort on the part of the reader, either more meaningful choices, or as you suggest perhaps other forms of interactivity, such as controlling the battles directly. Games have taken many different approaches to this - some stick with the random value approach to determining outcomes of combat, whereas others require physical (mouse) skill on the part of the player. Each approach creates a distinctively different reading/playing experience.
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