Interactivity is dead. And Andrew Hussie killed it.
Let me back up. Andrew Hussie is the man behind MS Paint Adventures. And he killed interactivity. The end.
Let me back up once more. MS Paint Adventures started as an idea (and by no means a totally new one) in storytelling, based in an online forum. The author, Andrew Hussie, posted a starter panel of a comic, and drew subsequent panels based on the suggestions of his readers. He made a point, he tells us, of choosing the first suggestion that was posted.
That story was called Jailbreak, and it was every bit as senseless as its storytelling process would suggest. Not all of the absurdity flowed from the pens of the readers, mind you - Hussie knew he was making something silly and didn't shy away from pushing the silly envelope all the way to Baker's Ridge (formerly known as Sillytown. Still a very silly place).
The next story, Bard Quest, didn't last long enough to prove much of anything except that the format didn't really support branching paths. But even that lesson is one that gamers should know well: the more paths you create, the less integrity any one path possesses. One path is "real" and the others aren't.
And that's why the next MS Paint Adventure, Problem Sleuth, resolved itself to a single storyline. And at the beginning, the readers' suggestions had some serious weight. One suggestion, for the hero to build a fort out of his desk, had immense implications for the rest of the story: it became the means by which people could tap into the power of the "imaginary" world, which made some people gods and some demons.
But as the story grew, it reached the point where it had to stop growing. Unlike Jail Break, it developed a cast of named characters, a setting, and an antagonist. All these things had to resolve themselves into some kind of conclusion. Which they did, and did so awesomely. But it came at a price: Andrew seized the reins of the story, penning "reader" commands himself in order to bring the tale to a close.
The result was excellent. It was an entertaining story told by a skilled storyteller. But it wasn't interactive anymore.
The current MS Paint Adventure is much, much better than Problem Sleuth. But it is equally less interactive. Reader commands, Hussie admits, never had the power to really change the story, only to suggest silly asides. The tradeoff is that the story is well-paced and captivating.
And that's how Andrew Hussie killed interactivity. By demonstrating, through trial and error, how authorial control triumphs over user input. Really, it's a fascinating case study in the shades between authorial control and player agency, and it should be required reading for anyone who cares about games. Those of us who want to make interactivity matter, this is what we're up against. A single author can always make a better story than a mob, so the question becomes: what's more important than the story? And can we own that?
