{"id":105,"date":"2012-08-30T00:01:43","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T00:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mycours.es\/gamedesign2012\/?page_id=105"},"modified":"2012-09-03T12:36:27","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T12:36:27","slug":"branching-narrative-from-borges-to-the-hypertext","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/mycours.es\/gamedesign2012\/48-2\/branching-narrative-from-borges-to-the-hypertext\/","title":{"rendered":"Branching narrative from Borges to the Hypertext"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\nLinear story<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\nBranching story<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\nThe problem with branching stories<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\nThe most common solution<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\nOr another solution…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
From You chose wrong<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Your first assignment is a branching story.
\nThe most popular artifacts of this kind are the Gamebooks or Choose Your Own Adventure. Very popular teenage literature in the 80s and 90s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
CYOA diagram – Michael Niggel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PDF here<\/a><\/p>\n

Or you can check this impressive formal analysis of Choose your own adventure books:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Visualizations, playable books and essay here.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before computers<\/h1>\n

We have to go back in time to find more “noble” precursors of non-linear and interactive storytelling.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Apollinaire – il pleut 1916<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
F.T. Marinetti and the Futurists “Words in freedom” (1909 – 1916)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And the DADA movement<\/p>\n

To make a Dadaist poem<\/strong>
\nTake a newspaper.
\nTake a pair of scissors.
\nChoose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
\nCut out the article.
\nThen cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
\nShake it gently.
\nThen take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
\nCopy conscientiously.
\nThe poem will be like you.
\nAnd here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.
\n\u2013 Tristan Tzara, 1920<\/code><\/p>\n

Writer William Burroughs in the ’50s applied this technique to his own writing.
\n(And David Bowie, and Kurt Cobain, and Thom Yorke\u2026)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nJorge Luis Borges<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Garden of Forking Paths (1941)<\/strong>
\nIn the short story a character named Ts’ui P\u00ean tells everybody that he wanted to write a book and build a labyrinth. Nobody ever found the labyrinth, only a very confusing and contradictory book. We then discover that the book *is* the labyrinth. In the fictional book, every chapter is followed by “every” possible continuation.\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable work of of Ts'ui P\u00ean, he chooses - simultaneously - all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. This is the cause of the contradictions in the novel\"
\nThe Garden of Forking Paths - Jorge Luis Borges
\n<\/code>\n<\/p>\n

\nAkira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950)<\/strong> in which non linear storytelling is used to explore the subjectivity of truth, subverting mystery drama cliches.<\/p>\n