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Gathering data for my Master's Thesis

A topic by BulletEyeGames created Jan 12, 2022 Views: 511 Replies: 13
Viewing posts 1 to 4
(13 edits)

Hi everyone,

I’m writing a Master’s thesis about interactive literature (visual novels, gamebooks, text-adventure games, etc.), and more specifically, about the future of interactive literature. And I would like to ask for your help by grading the following possible future scenarios for interactive literature by how likely you think they are and to what extent, on a scale 1 - 10.

In this case, 10 = extremely likely (practically expected), 1 = not at all likely in any part, and if you feel you don’t know enough about the subject of the scenario, you can leave it out or empty, or answer with ’ - ’.

Optional: You can also provide reasoning for you grades.

And if you come up with any additional scenarios feel free to add them in (and grade them as well). I’m interested to see what kind of scenarios I didn’t think about and I might add them to my later questionnaires on other sites.

The scenarios:

  1. Text-adventure games and gamebooks will turn into interactive audiobooks, played on hardware such as the Amazon Alexa (like in the Skyrim: Very Special Edition trailer).

  2. Interactive books, such as gamebooks and choose-your-own-adventure books will once more achieve mainstream popularity thanks to e-books and their possibility of hyperlinking paragraphs.

  3. Text-adventure games will start to leverage AI more as a content generator or a ”dungeon master”, constantly generating new content and adapting to the players’ actions, such as with AI Dungeon.

  4. Text-adventure games will implement AR and VR to complement the text-display (maybe in the style Matrix' "you see the text everywhere" or by way of pop-ups: images, characters, videos, "holographic" depictions of events, as seen in many cyberpunk detective works).

  5. Hyperfiction stories and platforms (such as Twine) achieve wide mainstream popularity.

  6. Hyperfiction and point and click games will implement AR and VR to at least moderate success.

  7. Visual novels will abandon text displays and turn into fully illustrated, maybe even animated, audiobooks (or like interactive cartoons or comic books with voice acting) with speech recognition used for interactivity.

  8. Visual novels will fade out of popularity and be replaced by more cinematic interactive stories, the likes of Detroit: Become Human.

  9. VR Visual novels, such as Tokyo Chronos and Koikatsu VR, will become popular.

  10. Visual novels have reached their zenith state and will remain as the most popular form of interactive literature just as they are.

  11. Visual novels will be implemented in AR (Augmented Reality), readable/playable with, for example Google Glass.

  12. "True" gamebooks, such as the Fighting Fantasy series, will achieve mainstream popularity.

I’ll use the results in my thesis to see what readers, developers, and otherwise interested parties think about the various future possibilities for interactive literature, and whether or not there is one or two scenarios that standout above the rest. I won’t be gathering any names or anything, only the grades and, if given, the reasons behind the grades.

If you would like to talk about the topic or of any of the scenarios more in-depth in private, you can DM/PM me.

Moderator(+2)

Let me try to give some useful answers, beyond "most if not all these questions are simply misguided".

  1. Zero. Tone-deaf marketers have been trying to "reinvent the book" for over a decade now, always in ridiculous ways that had no chance of working even if the idea had anything good about it, and it doesn't. Books are already as close to perfect as any medium can get, after thousands of years of people improving the craft.
  2. Eleven. It has already happened.
  3. The question is wrong. That's not what people are missing when it comes to text adventures.
  4. You mean like virtual tabletops? Or play-by-post? Because people already play together online, they've been doing it as soon as it was possible. It's also not what players of text adventures are looking for. And there's a reason why people want single-player games sometimes. AI Dungeon solves the wrong problem in the wrong way, not to mention how much computing power it uses for minuscule gains.
  5. Bwahahaha. Again, there are reasons why people like text as a medium. It's not a technical limitation.
  6. You mean like Twine? Because it has already happened, it's just not pretentious crap hiding behind pretentious jargon anymore.
  7. That... is exactly what Twine does. Or GrueScript.
  8. Zero. Aesthetics matter. Text matters. People still go to puppet theater, don't they? It has yet to be replaced with robots, even though we can do it just fine now. Not to mention easy of authoring.
  9. Zero. Again. aesthetics matter, and visual novels are infinitely easier to author as well. Besides, it's not a zero-sum game.
  10. No, no, no! Why would that happen? Even if everyone liked VR and could afford it (and VR is inevitably more expensive as any other display tech, all else being equal), why would it replace everything else? Not to mention the inconvenience.
  11. I seriously doubt visual novels are the most popular form, or at the zenith for that matter. And even if they were, things always change.

Seriously, it doesn't work that way. The future of interactive literature is more authors, more works, more and better tools, libraries of reusable assets, and more importantly a sea change in how we perceive copyright and fan fiction.

Tech is not the future. People are. Focus on the people.

Thanks for the answers! However, it seems you have slightly missed my intention with the scenarios and grading. I did not intend them to be considered as black and white, "yes or no" type of thought,  which is why I provided the numbers 1 - 10.

The scenarios are extreme, by design, I was not expecting any 10/10 answers, they are simply so to offer a glimpse into a possible future (like the ones seen in many works of science fiction and fantasy) and to ask one to think how likely and in what part do you think these scenarios will come to pass.

For example, A miniature computer with the access to all human knowledge, will exist in the pockets of nearly every human being. This scenario might've seemed unthinkable once, I mean computers used to take up entire rooms and there's no way to get all human knowledge into one anyway. And even if you could, how would you implement a keyboard and a screen into pocket sized computer, you can't even use one without those... Nowadays, it seems to be more than just a little likely, but how exactly did it happen? What lead to this specific future scenario coming true, while so many others didn't?

Mind you, I'm not saying that the scenarios I introduced are all equally likely (even I don't believe or even want some of them to be), but... they might still come to pass. If and how and why is what I hope to find out with my Master's thesis.


Even if you didn't really grade them as I intended, you still seem to be well versed in the topic and you make some very good points, especially with your focus on people and authors being the ones that matter. I'd like to make the argument, though, that tech is also tools, after all, chisels to carve stone tablets, ink, pen, paper, typewriters, keyboards, hypertext, internet, etc. are all as much tech as they are tools.

If you don't mind, I'd like to ask if you could come up with any possible future scenarios, with people or authors as the main focus (perhaps concerning how we would get more of them). As well as what kind of tools (in addition to what we already have) would you like to see in the future or which ones would you like to see improved. And concerning what ever else you think I didn't take into consideration enough.

I really would appreciate it, especially since the ones I came up with are "misguided". (I do not mean to sound confrontational, or insulting, or anything in case I do, I legitimately would like your help to make my thesis and research better.)

Thanks for answers again, hope you have a good day (or night)! And thanks for the heads up on GrueScript, going to check that out.

Moderator (1 edit) (+1)

You're welcome. My problem with all those questions is the same triumphalist attitude towards tech that's been holding back games and the entire human civilization for decades while we chased bigger numbers that could be easily marketed, instead of trying to do good work with the tools we already had, or at least improve them based on what people actually wanted (I say wanted because need is in the eye of the beholder). And speaking of numbers, it's hard to reduce nuanced questions like that to one number.

If you'll forgive the shameless plug, back in 2015 I wrote a couple of essays called Games anyone can make and Art anyone can use, respectively, exploring some trends I was hopeful about at the time; but I'm no academic, and predictions are scary if they ever prove remotely correct.

Oh, by the way, sci-fi authors actually predicted something like modern tablet computers long ago, or rather engineers did and sci-fi authors picked up the idea. As far back as 1964 in fact. See the movie 2001.

Sorry for the late reply, itch.io figured it wasn't necessary to inform me about it, so I've just been scrolling past it...

But thanks for those essays, after a quick gloss through, I think I can use them in my thesis, if you don't mind. And I'll definitely check the movie out in the upcoming week or two (I've been going through movies by year starting from 1920, currently in the year 1962). There have indeed been quite a few works in fiction about future that are getting eerily true (Orwell's 1984 becoming truer by the year thanks to IoT, for one). And adding to tablets, the history of compact e-readers goes all the way to 1949, when a Spanish teacher, Ángela Ruiz Robles, build a machine that would display books printed on stools, the Enciclopedie Mecánica (Mechanical Encyclopedia), which she hoped would lessen the burden of her students (unfortunately, it never went into production).

And my reason for focusing on tech is simply the fact the tech has been a major aspect in the evolution of literature, from stone tablets to ink and paper to printing... and as you yourself mentioned Twine, which is an advancement in hyperfiction tech, that has helped revitalize the genre somewhat. So tech is not something that should be completely cast aside either, as you again mentioned "more and better tools" which usually take the form of new tech.

I'm of course not demeaning the need for more authors but from a futuristic point of view it's quite hard to come up with scenarios that would include how we get more authors to the scene other than by introducing tech that summons more interested individuals. Creative writing classes are already being introduced all the way in elementary schools, publishing online is about as easy as it can get, tools and documentation on how to use them for nearly any format of literature exists free and open to anyone and everyone. So at least in my eyes there is not much we can do in regards to getting more authors, other than by hoping that more and more people get interested in trying and writing (maybe there could be an in-depth introduction to all the possible tools and platforms in writing classes so everyone would know to search for them if they are interested, perhaps). And again, as you've said, "Books are already as close to perfect as any medium can get, after thousands of years..." and yet we've still seen how the introduction of new tech outside of books has pulled people into writing. So, essentially, the new and better tools or tech are what get people interested by giving everyone the platform they are most comfortable working with. Which I, personally, think is our best bet in getting more authors: by giving people as many different formats, platforms and tools to write as they can and hope that everyone who wishes to write finds the format, platform and tool that allows them to best express themselves and as comfortably as possible.

Moderator(+1)

Of course you can use my essays in your thesis! Good luck!

(+1)
  1. 1/10. In the same way that video games haven’t replaced books, or movies haven’t replaced theatre, I don’t expect the same to happen here.
  2. 7/10.
  3. -. I’m not sure what this question implies. Is it that people are too lazy to write on a keyboard? Ultimately, the challenge in a text-adventure game is not the interface but the processing and interpretation of user input.
  4. 10/10. Inevitable, knowing people’s unhealthy obsession with AI.
  5. 1/10. For the same reason as point 1.
  6. 10/10. This has practically happened already, looking at ARGs.
  7. 7/10. I can see this being an additional genre, but nothing more.
  8. 1/10. Nothing will be abandoned, but maybe complemented. I’m also not sure what it means for an audiobook to be illustrated, let alone animated. That should imply it’s not just audio.
  9. 8/10. Knowing people’s obsession with technology and “immersion”, probably. Little do they know how immersive a plain ol’ book can be.
  10. 1/10. For the same reason as point 1.
  11. 3/10.

I may have been too harsh in places, as this is a touchy subject for me.

Thank you for the answers really appreciate them, and I for one see no harshness in your answers, as you provided fair reasoning for them. The scenarios are... extreme, I know, but they are so by design. 

After all, I'm not asking black and white answers of "yes or no" but rather you are free to ponder how much of or how strongly said scenario might come to pass with the grades 1 - 10. Like the point you made about the 8th scenario, with nothing being abandoned, instead maybe complimented. I see that not as a harsh "definitely not" but as a fair "Not entirely, but some part of it, perhaps". 

I wasn't honestly expecting any 10/10 answers, simply because of how ridiculously extreme the scenarios are (the fact that "all" of something would be affected or replaced just seems impossible no matter how you look at it).

I also don't mind honesty, everyone has a bias, and most do not hide it in forums, which is why I wanted to ask these things in forums, hoping that different biases would balance each other out and result in a more generally viable opinion.


And by illustrated audiobook, I meant, perhaps, something like an interactive cartoon or comic book (you know, with voice acting instead of subtitles, and so on).

And also, I did not mean lazyness with speech recognition, but more like a continuation of the Skyrim: Very Special Edition trailer.


But thanks for the answers once more! May you have a fine day (or night).

(+2)

To be honest I don't really understand the foundation of these questions.  Many of these things have either already happened, or long since failed to happen.  Thus, it doesn't make sense to me to rank them on probability.  They're not really unknown future states.

We already know that new technology and new genres of games won't make text-based games go away.  What question are you ultimately trying to answer here?

Written literature will turn fully audial, and interactive literature, such as text-adventure games and gamebooks will turn into interactive audiobooks, played on hardware such as the Amazon Alexa (like in the Skyrim: Very Special Edition trailer)

No, we've had audio books for decades.  They have not replaced printed books and are never going to. 

Interactive books, such as gamebooks and choose-your-own-adventure books will reclaim their popularity thanks to e-books and their possibility of hyperlinking paragraphs.

We've had this for decades, too.  Even in the 1990s, long before Twine, there were adventures like this published on the web.  I don't know what precisely you are envisioning when you say "reclaim their popularity", though.  They're not going to become a dominating market force that takes over the industry, but they have their niche and that niche will continue.

Text-adventure games will experience a new rise in popularity when speech-to-text features become a norm.

I don't see why.  People who need speech-to-text for accessibility reasons already use it, and few other people do, as far as I know.  Do you use speech-to-text to navigate the web or compose your emails?  I don't, though Forbes magazine probably predicted in 1994 that I would.  Games with primarily or entirely voice-driven interfaces have been tried multiple times before, and it's never taken off.  People generally don't seem to like it.

Text-adventure games will gain a new rise in popularity as a more TTRPG like format with either AI or another human player working as a ”dungeon master”, constantly generating new content and adapting to the players’ actions, such as with AI Dungeon.

I don't understand this question; we've had TTRPGs even longer than we've had text adventure videogames.  Adventure and RPG videogames have each developed along their own paths for as long as they've existed.

This question makes more sense if you pare it down to just AI-generated adventures.  Could an AI write a choose-your-own-adventure book on the fly while someone plays it?  Theoretically, I guess, but I don't see much point in speculating on that or even pursuing it as a line of development.

Text-adventure games will turn completely visual with VR and speech recognition will be used as the method for interaction (it’d be like you were telling your car how and where to drive).

The old text adventure games branched into early graphical parser adventures, which then developed fully iconographic interfaces without the need for text input, and eventually full 3D environments and controls became the norm.  Once again, none of these advancements have caused text-based games to disappear.

Hyperfiction experiences a new rise in popularity and hyperfiction platforms become more popular as people are more used to hypertext.

This is already happening thanks to Twine.

Hyperfiction will combine with point and click games and become popular thanks to touchscreens.
Visual novels will abandon text displays and turn into fully illustrated, maybe even animated, audiobooks with speech recognition used for interactivity.

Again, we already have graphic adventures.  What is really new about this?

Visual novels will fade out of popularity and be replaced by more cinematic interactive stories, the likes of Detroit: Become Human.

 Why?  They're not even the same thing.  Incidentally, the conventional wisdom in the industry about what is popular and marketable is heavily driven by what the industry is actually producing and marketing.  Graphic (and text) adventures, turn-based RPGs and strategy games, side-scrolling platformers - AAA publishers wrote off all of these and more as obsolete at one time or another to chase the latest market trends, but people are still clamoring for them decades later.  Indie games would never have exploded the way they did if there weren't vast underserved markets that the AAA industry completely ignores.

Not to mention that not everyone has the resources or even the desire to make Detroit: Become Human.  Indies will continue to make truckloads of VNs, and people will keep playing them.

Visual novels will all turn into VR experiences, such as Tokyo Chronos and Koikatsu VR, as VR technology becomes more commonplace.

I looked at Tokyo Chronos, and I guess it's literally just a VN that you put on a headset to read?  I guess there's a market for that, but I don't buy the narrative that VR is the only future for games.  In fact, of all the genres that could go heavily into VR in the future, games that already text-driven are probably the least likely.  The fact that they are text-driven is the whole appeal.  

I can see Mark Zuckerberg pitching his bold vision for the future.  Imagine putting on a headset and walking into a virtual library.  Then you can pull a virtual book off the shelf, sit down on a virtual chair, and actually open that book and read it.  Amazing!

Visual novels have reached their zenith state and will remain as the most popular form of interactive literature just as they are.

On this one, I actually don't know.  They can be the most popular form and still not have reached their zenith, but I don't see any reason to predict a dramatic shift in the near future.  I do know that they're not going to disappear because of new tech.  There's no such thing as an obsolete genre.

(1 edit)

Thank you for the answers! And while you did leave out the numeric grades, your reasonings for all the points are really good, and more or less exactly what I wanted!

Though, I would like to point out that, you do, somewhat, seem to be underestimating the future (not like anyone expected the explosive popularity and addiction to social media, or Vine or TikTok, for example. FYI, I hate all three).

The reason for grading is to not make them appear black or white, and to give some more easily digestible data for my thesis (every one to loves a good graph). The scenarios are extreme, simply because I'm not expecting any 10/10 grades.

And since you seem to have a really good grasp on the topics, would you have any... (better) scenarios that you think might be worth asking about? (I'll be asking this same thing on a few other websites as well, and would like to have as good a collection of "valid" scenarios as possible when I do.)


Again, thanks for the answers, really appreciate it! Have a good day (or night)!


PS. I totally agree with you on voice recognition and speech-to-text stuff, I personally hate the mere thought of having to use them... But I also hate using smart-things and touchscreen and both of them are a thing.

(+2)

I mean... if you really want those numeric ratings, I can really only rate them as follows, but I don't think they are the kinds of ratings you wanted.

1, 3, 5, 9, 10) 1; we already have this tech and these things haven't happened, I see no reason to think this will change

2, 6, 7, 8) 10; these have already happened, more or less

4) 3; if we forget about TTRPG comparisons and restrict this only to AI generation of content; it's an interesting question but I tend to doubt that AI will reach this point in my lifetime

11) 4; VNs may or may not become or remain the most popular, but they have plenty of room to become more popular

Though, I would like to point out that, you do, somewhat, seem to be underestimating the future (not like anyone expected the explosive popularity and addiction to social media, or Vine or TikTok, for example. FYI, I hate all three).

I'm not just speaking from curmudgeonly skepticism, though.  I am quite confident, for example, that audio books will not replace printed books, because audio books have been around for a long time and that hasn't happened, nor come even close to happening.  That doesn't mean that it can never happen, but it does mean that there's no reason to think that it will.  It's just not really a relevant question to ask in this day and age.

The reason for grading is to not make them appear black or white, and to give some more easily digestible data for my thesis (every one to loves a good graph). The scenarios are extreme, simply because I'm not expecting any 10/10 grades.

Are they extreme, though?  The only thing I really question "how" is around AI-powered storytelling; the real difficulty I'm having with most of these is not "how" but "why".

Consider the difference in asking whether we will ever have holodecks, and asking if holodecks will replace books.  The former is purely speculative and maybe fun to think about, but the latter is a definite no, because why would they?  Holodeck sims might eclipse novels in popularity, and perhaps it's likely that they would, but that's really all we can say.  Even Picard was depicted reading books in his office on occasion, because Star Trek itself didn't envision one erasing the other.

Thanks for going through the extra effort of answering me again.

As for the Holodecks, I feel they touch more fiction in general, movies, games, etc. and I for one don't really feel them impacting books or literature any more then video games and movies do... However it did give me an idea for an additional scenario:

Visual novels will be implemented in AR and played with, for example, Google Glass.

What's your opinion on that?

And I would also like to ask for you to consider the first scenario again, this time leaving out the "audiobooks replacing traditional books" as I didn't realize people would get so caught up with that first point, and completely miss the second point of the scenario about "Interactive audiobooks, played with, for example Amazon Alexa." If you are still in the mood to answer again, I would like to know what you think about that specifically. (I did also edit it in my first post now, and in retrospect I don't know why I thought the first point was necessary to begin with.)


But thank you for answering once again, seriously!

(1 edit) (+1)
Visual novels will be implemented in AR and played with, for example, Google Glass.
What's your opinion on that?

AR seems like it would work better for an adventure game than a VN.  Would it basically play like an audio book with characters shown in the overlay, without the intended backdrops?  I guess it could happen for some VNs specifically written around it, but it doesn't sound like the most compelling use case.  4/10.

And I would also like to ask for you to consider the first scenario again, this time leaving out the "audiobooks replacing traditional books" as I didn't realize people would get so caught up with that first point, and completely miss the second point of the scenario about "Interactive audiobooks, played with, for example Amazon Alexa." If you are still in the mood to answer again, I would like to know what you think about that specifically. (I did also edit it in my first post now, and in retrospect I don't know why I thought the first point was necessary to begin with.)

I didn't miss it per se, I just didn't see it as distinct from the first part.  If you still mean this as absolute replacement, I still have to give it a 1/10.  If you mean that this will emerge as a significant use case outside of accessibility reasons, maybe 4/10.  People like to control their gadgets hands-free, but any time voice interaction with games pops up, it seems to be mostly disregarded as a novelty or a nuisance.  There could be something cool that comes out and sparks more interest, but for now I'm not convinced that this is something people want.

I notice you have revised several other items.  Are you still revising the list?

Thanks for the reply once more!

I can definitely agree with your reasons...

And yes, if there is a good reason for revision, such as a better alternative scenario or a good new scenario, then I will edit. If I had more replies, I wouldn't because it does somewhat make the previous answers invalid (especially if given without reasons), but with only three replies and solid reasons that can be used even without the exact scenarios, I don't think I'm losing much.

So if you have any good ideas for improving the list still, I'll gladly take them.