Mapping the Unmappable: Reimagining Visual Representations of Interactive Narrative

Abstract

The complexity of interactive narratives inspired a variety of visual aids and graphical interfaces that support authoring tasks. This chapter analyzes the visual interface of popular IDN authoring tools that include an explicit visual interface for creating content, including Twine, Storyspace 3, inklewriter, Inform 7, and Adventure Game Studio. We employ a simple proto-IDN consisting of a set of passages that represent locations spatially linked together to compare the interactive and non-interactive visual aids across the five tools. We also identify several organizing metaphors that underly the visual logic, including Spatial Mapping, Scene-driven Structure, Nodal Mapping, and Traversal Mapping. Authors use the graphical interfaces in each of these tools to predict and manage the set of possible traversals that players may take. There identify key features in the interfaces by their function as a visual aid to specific authoring tasks. The interface techniques represented have evolved with these shared features, though they also represent the current limits of a paradigm of interactive narrative authoring where an author has explicit control over the structure and paths of the work.