Chatman speaks.

Many narratives have been expressed in both an interactive and non-interactive medium. In this case, I am going to talk about Dragonball Z the comic and Dragonball Budokai 3 the game.

Dragonball was originally a narrative expressed in a non-interactive medium(comic), however due to it's immense popularity, it has been transposed to an interactive medium(games). In Dragonball Budokai 3, there exist a mode called the Dragon Universe in which the player takes on a role-playing aspect and goes through the narative. While the player can go all around the world exploring, he has to fufill certain 'tasks' to advance to the next stage. By doing so, the story of Dragonball is told through many different eyes(characters).

I would say that the structure of the narrative remains intact as the story is not told differently, rather the player has a minor say in how things advance. This minor say expands on a second play through in which there are new things to test that were not avaliable in the first run. These new stuff changes the narrative slightly, however as we have already went through the original narrative, this feel more like the icing on the cake.



Seeing that interactive media allows for choice and control on the part of the reader/user, yet there must be self-regulation for an interactive narrative such that it does not become 'ill-formed'. There seems to be a contradictory issue here as an interactive media cannot be self-regulating, as self-regulation would results in lesser possibilities of interaction between the medium and the reader/user.

Thus when we design interactive narrative, we have to take into account how much interactivity to allow the reader/user. We cannot allow the reader/user to destory something that is vital to the narrative, an example would be allowing Gandalf to take the ring and be consumed by it in Lord of the Rings. While allowing the reader/user to explore the different events in a seemingly random order, the interactive narrative have to be pusing the story towards a certain plotline.


Using the dragonball budokai 3 game again, which is played on the playstation 2 console, the 'peculiar nature' of this interactive media is that it is a game that have fights that works in 3 linear axis. Rather than having a 2d battlefield, the characters exchange blows in a 3d arena. Playstation 2 games have a unique occurance to them and that is the vibration of controllers. This occus when you get hit or when both characters execute a death-blow at the same time, thus to signify the rush of the battle.

Also as a game, it have very visually pleasing graphics, which when combined with the game mechnaics, it almost feel as though each battle is a story by itself. Depending on how the player controls the character, we can do punches, kicks, teleportations, deathmoves, powerup, storing of energy(ki), ultimate moves. It is as though we are watching an animation but also advicing the characters how to fight.

The characters voices also lend an urgency to the battles as though we are in the world as we can hear the sound of the characters grunting when they get hit or shouting when they are using their powers.

A game can specialise in the narrative effect of sight and sound and in this case to an extent, touch. We feel as though we are watching through the eyes of the character and fighting for our lives. The vibration on the controller tells us that we are getting hurt and must be more alert in the future.

Lev Manovich and his thoughts

I would think that Electronic gaming would be a form of new media.

Let's take a look at the 5 principles of new media as proposed by Lev Manovich.
1. Numerical Representation
Electronic games are stored in data form, thus they are represented by numbers

2.Modularity
All data of a game is stored under the same system. For example in a Role-Playing Game(RPG), character's Hit points, Magic points, Items are saved in a certain data point. In each different game, the data point is modified and thus modifying the value for that game itself.

3.Automation
With Aritficial Intelligence, computer games with a computer controlled opponent has the element of automation, in which the computer has pre-defined responses to actions that the player takes.

4.Variability
In most games, even if the player does the exact same sequence of moves, the computer will respond slightly different due to 'randomness'. This could be in the form of the AI choosing a different set of moves in respone to the player, or just a simple different random number being generated by the computer when dealing damage or example.

5.Transcoding
We have seen many traditional games being transcoded into computer games. Games such as chess, risk, monopoly have all been transcoded into a computer game. This allows for players to play games even when they can't find a human opponent. The computer has taken over that aspect. Even sports such as tennis or golf are being transcoded into electronic gaming. Currently, Nintendo has plans to release a console called Nintendo Wii. This console uses a controller that communicates through Bluetooth, and it is able to sense linear motion through 3 axis, effectively moving us closer towards virtual reality. One can simply take the controller and play the game as though holding a racket or a golf club.


Comparing Chris Crawford and Manovich's views about interactive media, I find myself leaning more towards Crawford view of interactivity in which he defines it as a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak. According to Manovich, everything that is represented on a computer is interactive. Let's take a look at songs/videos/movies stored on a computer.

Do they allow interaction with the user? Unless one is arguing that since we can stop, play, fast foward, rewind them as and when we like, and that is interaction between us and songs/videos/movies. Even so, I do not consider that interaction as we cannot control what goes on in the songs/videos/movies. They carry on at their own pace playing the exact same date at the same point in time.

Run Lola Run like blogged in the previous entry has a very video game feel to it. I would not be surprised myself to see it coded into a video game. This relats to Manovich's concept of transcoding in that the same narrative can be expressed in different mediums.

Run Lola Run

A very interesting movie indeed. Unless i'm mistaken, each time Lola tries to save Manni, it seems to take almost exactly 20 mins. This gives a very real time feeling to it, as though we are following her through that 20 mins.

While it seems like she just did different things in each 3 runs, it feels like she knows what was wrong in the 1st and 2nd try. In the first try, she had to be taught how to turn off the safety, but she has no problem turning off the safety in the second run. It's as though she remembers.

It's also interesting to note that she bet on number 20 which is also the time she has to save Manni.

Run Lola Run gives me the impression of a video game in which we have 20 mins to finish our objective(Save Manni) and we have just saved our game. So now on the first try, we look for our papa to get money and get horribly rejected and even found out that he's not our biological papa. Leaving us with no time left to get money, we can only run to find Manni is already robbing the store as promised. As we tried to help him, we get caught by police and have to reload the game. And thus we try 2 more times till we find the correct sequence of events that lead to us fufilling our objective.

In some cases it also shows that some things are bound to happen, like the Father's friend(Mr meyer if i'm not wrong) crashes into the same car in all 3 tries. Maybe it's trying to put across the idea that some stuff is just impossible to change.

To me it feels that Run Lola Run is both a Narrative and Interactive Media. Maybe not so much as interacting with the audience, but it gives Lola different results from her different interactions, and in such let the audience wonder, what would happen if she had done that instead?


Lastly, the 2 post-sex scences in which they had a flirting, questioning dialouge felt a little cliche to me. It feels as though they are trying to show that, regardless what, Love Transcends Everything.