RETHINKING THE CONFLICT

BETWEEN AGENCY AND

COHESION

Miikka Lehtonen - 422375

ITIS41 MULTIDISCIPLINARY GAMES AND INTERNET RESEARCH

Introduction
Interactive Storytelling is not a new topic of research, nor a field limited purely to digital games.
Indeed, under the header of Interactive Storytelling we can find interactive movies, pen and paper
role-playing games, choose your own adventure books, board games and many other kinds of
forms, most of which have existed for decades and have been explored from a variety of
perspectives by industry insiders, academics and hobbyists.
One of the most interesting questions for me has always been the central conflict in Interactive
Storytelling, that between the authors desire for story cohesion and the players desire for agency.
Both sides of the equation need to be balanced in order for the experience to be fulfilling, but it is
an extremely hard problem to solve. This viewpoint is supported by the plethora of writing I
discovered on the subject, from a variety of angles.
These articles ranged from the introductory to the exploratory, with a wide variety of differing
points of view and schools of thought on display. Indeed, the wealth of material on offer can be
staggering. In the end I went with an author I respect, two papers that attempt to offer a quantitative
point of view on the subject and a fun application. I could also have selected from a wide variety of
papers describing and depicting various attempts at procedural story generation and AI storytellers,
but decided against it because I wanted to maintain some kind of focus for my essay.
Summary of articles
Interactive Storytelling is a term that applies to a wide variety of different styles and methods of
storytelling. The one defining aspect is that it is a form of telling stories where the audience gets to
participate in various ways and has a say in how the story proceeds. This is true whether we are
talking about pen and paper role-playing games, improvisational comedy, digital games or any of
the other forms that fit under this large umbrella. Each has its own challenges, features, benefits and
drawbacks. Some of these are shared, some are unique to the method.

One of these common challenges is the central conflict between story cohesion and player agency.
In traditional storytelling the author has full control over the story. They control the characters
personalities and are free to make sure they stay true to them. They control the story beats and can
freely build towards dramatic moments, all ultimately leading to a climax. An interactive storyteller
has no such luxury, at least if the story is to be truly interactive.
In the appendices for his doctoral thesis, Ernest Adams has included many writings which explore
these issues from a variety of angles. According to Adams (2013, 21), two common problems in all
forms of interactive storytelling are the problems of Internal Consistency and Narrative Flow, the
former of which deals with characters and the latter with overall story flow.
By giving the player a say in either of these aspects of the story, the storyteller by necessity loses at
least some amount of control. They run the risk of the player making choices that are not consistent
with how they envisioned their characters behaving, and not following the pacing the story was
designed for.
Imagine, for instance, Superman hearing a baby crying in a burning building. Superman would
never just walk away, but a player might, if given the chance. This is in direct conflict with the very
basic nature of Superman. If he behaves like this, he is not Superman. Similarly, in The Lord of the
Rings, imagine Frodo and Sam walking up to Mount Doom with the One Ring, finally reaching the
conclusion of their epic story and then deciding to turn around to do some side missions before
finishing their quest.
Obviously these are somewhat exaggerated examples, but they illustrate the problem well. Yet at
the same time, if the player feels like they have no freedom within the story, will they feel
railroaded through the story without any sense of agency?

The result is a balancing act no form of interactive storytelling can escape from. Either the story is
not interactive, or the author loses some amount of control over the story, and the story loses some
cohesion.
We are therefore planning interactive stories around these problems or at least we should be. They
are not something that can be taken out of the equation any more than we can design airplanes
which do not need to obey the basic laws of physics. Adams (2013, 101-103) describes three
possible solutions to the problem, none of which are ideal.
1. Limit the interactivity somehow
2. Have the story proceed at a set pace and the player lose the game if he fails to act within the
set time limit
3. Only move the story along when the player makes the right choices
None of these are ideal, and a mixture of all three has become the industry norm in recent years.
Popularized by the video game The Walking Dead (Telltale Games, 2012) games have started to
offer players the illusion of choice. That is to say the large story beats are set in stone and happen
regardless of the players choice, but they get a say in how their character reacts to these events and
other characters in the games, and how they are reacted to in return.
The reaction from both critics and players to this style of storytelling was extremely positive. At the
time of writing, the first season of the game series has a Metacritic average of 89/100 and won
numerous game of the year awards.
This is not surprising, because there is actual quantitative evidence to back up the anecdotal
evidence that the mere illusion of choice can be as satisfying as actual choice (Fendt et al, 2012).
Research has shown but of course not conclusively proven that acknowledging a players
choices is a key component in feelings of agency. Thus game designers can build stories that are
actually fairly linear. With clever writing and well-designed choices the player can be fooled into

thinking they are the decider in the story, when it is largely linear. Of course this illusion shatters on
repeated playthroughs.
Even with this approach designers have to pay attention to the types of choices they offer players.
We can intuitively guess that the more significant the perceived effects of a choice are, the more the
player feels in control. Minor decisions arent as satisfying as say, choosing between two locations
to go to or which of two characters lives or dies (Cardona-Rivera et al, 2014). It is interesting to
note again, that what matters is the perception of change: merely making it seem like the choice has
far-reaching effects is enough, at least until the player experiences the story again.
Naturally these findings are useful to those who make games, but they have other applications as
well, since the balancing act between authorial intent and audience agency has applications in other
fields. For instance, museum visitors desires to see popular pieces of art and the museums
physical limitations can also be represented through these same concepts, and thus we can try to
make better electronic / virtual tour guides that try to satisfy both the visitors and the museums
needs (Roberts et al, 2007).
Conclusions
In his 1999 essay, Three Problems for Interactive StorytellersErnest Adams (2013, 23) urged his
fellow game designers and storytellers to come up with solutions to these central problems in
interactive storytelling. He didnt offer any concrete solutions, and I believe there is good reason for
this: this is not a problem we can solve, ie. a problem we can make go away.
The conflict between player agency and story cohesion is unavoidable. By giving the player agency,
we immediately eat away at the cohesive foundations of our story, yet to be interactive a story needs
to give the player some control.

What this means, in my opinion, is that digital Interactive Stories need to evolve. They need to be
more than traditional linear stories with the occasional multiple choice thrown in. They need to
utilize the unique possibilities offered by digital games and keep the limitations in mind.
One recent example of this is Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer, 2013), which harnesses
player choice by essentially making the player a collaborator in telling the story. The story is
intentionally ambiguous, and the game allows the player to interpret the events as they see fit. These
interpretations then become the truth in that players game. With very little engineering debt and
loss of cohesion, the game designers manage to create a very personal experience and one that
would be very hard to achieve in other forms of storytelling. Because this experience feels so
intimate and personal, the player also feels a great deal of agency and satisfaction.
It is interesting to see that as digital games mature, they are finding room for new types of stories
and that intimate, personal and emotional stories are finding more traction with both game designers
and players.
This is not a coincidence but a phenomenon observed in other forms of storytelling as well. As the
creators and audiences get more comfortable with the medium, they move beyond the simpler
action-based stories and into stories that are more relatable. We cant relate to being a super hero
who fights the evil space monster or terrorist cell, but we can relate to being the confused teenager
who is searching for their place in the world, or the person who has lost a loved one.
When this happens, games no longer just have to offer us the choice of going down path A or path
B, but asks us how we feel in that situation. We are given the ultimate choice: the choice to define
who our character is. Instead of being asked to act like Superman would, we get to act like we
would.

In my opinion this is the true strength of interactive storytelling. By harnessing the players desire
to be involved we can get them invested in the story like few other mediums can, and then utilize
this effect to tell better stories.

References
Adams, Ernest W. 2013. Resolutions to some problems in interactive storytelling Diss. University
of Teesside.
Fendt, Matthew William, et al. "Achieving the illusion of agency." Interactive Storytelling. Springer
Berlin Heidelberg, 2012. 114-125.
Cardona-Rivera, Rogelio E., et al. 2014. "Foreseeing Meaningful Choices." Tenth Artificial
Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference.
Roberts, David L., Andrew S. Cantino, and Charles Lee Isbell Jr. 2007. "Player Autonomy versus
DesignerI ntent: A Case Study of Interactive Tour Guides."AIIDE.