Agency

1. Agency • “power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices” • Participation in narrative is fairly rare • Participatory music relies on cueing and formulaic behavior • Square dancing vs. ballroom dancing • Not just interactions per minute in games

2. Navigation • Moving through a geographic or abstract space can be enjoyable • Maze as challenge to find solution in space • Physical and/or mental challenges • Must find the exit • Rhizome rejects a single path, single solution, or single meaning • System design can get in way of agency • If done right, the reader need not worry about the loss of the plot • “Dear Dad – this game will never end. William.”

3. Between Maze and Rhizome • Neither overdeterminednor underdetermined • Generating anxiety • Violence hub as model • A dramatic event • Many perspectives • How different and how same from existing games and hypertexts?

4. The Journey Story • Pleasure of uniting problem solving with navigation • Fitting problem solving into world • Zork 2 vs. The Seventh Guest • Games into stories • Offer opposing satisfactions? • Need for a happy ending? • Many reasons to play a game

5. Games as Symbolic Dramas • Protagonists and plots • Enacting relationships to the world • More abstract interpretations • Social meaning in Monopoly • Drama in Tetris • The Contest Story • Opponent (Pong) • Requires little imaginative effort as agency is direct • There is a difference between drama and narrative

6. Constructivism • MUDs as a model • Can play existing stories or create new ones • Can be individual or social • Problems with shared authorship • Live-Action Role Playing • Separation of GM and players • Works because of persistent relations between players • Agency vs. Authorship • Creating activity vs. creating opportunities • Procedural authorship