It is a common opinion among experts that a medium can be recognized as an instrument of expressive art only if it can work at the following three levels: aesthetics (form), narration (story) and content (meaning). For example, Cinema is able to satisfy all three criteria; in particular, attention is focused on the narrative capacity of the medium, the ability to involve the user in a story. Until not long ago the narrative capacity of Video Games, and therefore their expressive capacity, was seriously questioned; some experts have tried to demonstrate the impossibility for Video Games to be recognized as a form of expressive art due to its narrative limits. According to them it cannot aspire to be expressive art any interactive medium that contemplates the possibility for the user to modify and interfere with the work of art as it was conceived by the artist. In a nutshell, according to some old academic theories, the weakness of Video Games from an expressive point of view is precisely their main feature, interactivity; the latter can be understood as the ability to process input and output of the information exchanged between the medium and the user in real time. It would make Video Games the medium of excellence for entertainment, but not able to reach the heights of expressive art.

Today these theories can no longer be taken seriously; in fact interactivity has entered forcefully even in the temples of art, in museums, thanks to the so-called installations of contemporary artists. In essence the artist prepares a situation in which the user can move, act and interact but in a way that is planned by the artist himself and that leads the user to live an aesthetic experience and to receive sensations and messages according to the intentions of the artist. This situation can be both physical and virtual, Video Games fall into the latter case. Interactivity is therefore not at all a limit for expressive art, rather it opens up new creative frontiers beyond the passivity of traditional media such as Cinema. However, the crux of storytelling remains to be solved: are interactivity and narration compatible? For narration we can understand the involvement of the user in a sequence of events through which relationships (human, environmental, etc.) and meanings are built. According to some old theories the possibility of the player to act with a certain degree of arbitrariness within the virtual world does not allow the artist / developer to tell the story as he conceived it and with the expressive purpose that he planned; if anything it allows the player to build his own story, thus creating an overlap and an incompatibility with the expression of the artist.

Such idea is completely wrong, but unfortunately many developers and producers fall into this trap; they even think that the possibility for the user to build his own story is a virtue for their game; or they want to make people believe this because it suits them …

Let me explain. It’s just a matter of intentions. If the intention is only to entertain, to make the player spend time with more traditional challenges (shoot, fight, run, search, solve puzzles, etc.) then surely the narration can only be sacrificed or thwarted. The leisure entertainment industry is very welcome; but it would be the case that this industry also looked at the expressive possibilities of the medium, following the same evolution of the Cinema industry, which has been financing and supporting movies with artistic aims for almost a century regardless of the success at

box office. Nowadays there is a genre of Video Games that is increasingly widespreading, where some basic mechanics are developed (search, find, survive, craft, fight, etc.) and some form of elementary AI introduced into the interaction with the environment and with the characters; basically the player is left free to act in a sort of sandbox, in a virtual situation devoid of any narrative intent or at most with a slight narrative trace. This is the cheapest way to develop a Video Game today. In fact artistic and narrative features are the most difficult and expensive parts of Video Games production. As a demonstration of this, cut scenes are the more widespread form of narration within mainstream Video Games. In essence, a Video Game is considered narrative if the story is entrusted to film sequences. A paradox, because it is implicitly affirmed that Video Games can only entertain thanks to gameplay based on the classic challenges (shoot, fight, solve puzzles, etc.) but in order to narrate you need film sequences, cut scenes, cinema. There is a clear separation between interactivity and storytelling, video game and cinema. Strictly speaking, this kind of Video Games should not be called narrative, the story is just a dressing to make the gameplay, the challenges, more interesting; developers and producers realize that players need to be involved in stories, emotions, human relationships, etc. and as consequence accompany gameplay with cinematographic narration.

As I said it is a matter of intention and in both previous examples there is no primary intention to express art, but just to entertain people with few or null creative resources, favoring the exploitation of sand boxes, interactive mechanics and graphic and physical engines standardized for commercial purposes only; it is no coincidence that many games are similar each other and always propose the usual re-heated soup, seasoned, dressed and camouflaged with cut scenes.

It does not mean that Video Games cannot express art and at the same time entertain, because it has to be clear that any form of expressive art can entertain, art is the most noble form of intellectual entertainment. To make art we need artistic intention, the artist or a team of creative artists that deals with the three levels mentioned above: aesthetics, narration, content. The developer who wants to convey deep contents through Video Games has to do a much more delicate and complex work of design and writing. It is certainly not enough to prepare a sand box and filming cut scenes. In particular, integration of storytelling within gameplay requires a lot of programming work and obviously many innovative interactions. The developer / artist has to prepare a virtual situation and make sure that player’s action and choices are configured within the narrative sequences imagined by the artist. In other words, the player, although having a certain degree of arbitrariness and interactivity, must be involved in the history and transmission of contents and emotions according to the intentions of the artist.

And here comes a new world, that of interactive storytelling, which is not an oxymoron, nor a paradox, but simply a more evolved form of narration where the not-passive role of the user is contemplated; interactive storytelling makes the planning and programming work more delicate and complex. The level of interactivity can no longer stop at the usual simple

standard mechanics aimed at playful challenges (shoot, kill, search, find, run, solve puzzles, etc.); it is necessary to develop a narrative language proper to the medium and therefore different and more sophisticated interactive mechanics such as to not relegate storytelling in cut scenes, but to make it the main part of gameplay. Narrating by interacting, interacting by narrating! The player interacts with the environment and with the characters in a more complex and deep way, through actions similar to the real ones, and in doing so he carries on the story in real time, making himself part of story itself! The flux of events, relationships, feelings, dialogues, psychologies, contents etc. can be driven by interactivity!

Impossible? Not true, and we can empirically prove it by calling into question one of the symbolic games of interactive storytelling, What Remains of Edith Finch. What I am talking about is already an empirical and proven reality that is constantly evolving; I do not dwell for questions of time on other narrative games (e.g. Life Is Strange) of which I have written far and wide and whose reviews and analysis you can find on this site.

Narrative situations within the gameplay often require the use of the so-called scripted sequences. In these scenes your avatar cannot move freely in space, can only perform certain actions and not others, have access only to certain spatial dimensions and perspectives, player has limited control.

Alternatively, they allow motions, actions and perspectives the player has no access to outside the scripted sequence. What Remains of Edith Finch is a riot of scripted sequences, where, for example, the player can only maneuver a kite or a swing in a restricted space. Someone objects that in this way the interactive story limits the freedom of the player and makes the experience too much driven. Obviously it is not at all true, indeed the opposite is true. Let me explain.

When player is expected to write his own story thanks to his supposed complete arbitrariness, developers and producers are trying to hide the banality of the proposed interactive experience and the absence of a worthy narrative situation. In fact it is not at all true that in sand box games or open world action games player can really do what he wants; on the contrary, he can only do what developers have planned, that is to say, to entertain himself with basic mechanics (walking, running, shooting, killing, surviving, etc.); interactions with environment and characters are managed by very elementary AI that do not allow to avoid very predictable, repetitive and simplistic dynamics and situations. It makes me smile that the banal mechanic of being able to walk freely in all directions of the 3D virtual space, even without a purpose, is seen as a synonym of freedom! It is an action that is an end in itself and really reductive! Personally I would tend to associate the word freedom with much more complex actions that allow player to influence the environment and the characters in a deeper way! The truth is that there is no player’s arbitrariness! Video Games provide the illusion of a virtual reality but it is built entirely by developers, and player cannot do anything other than what they have planned and allow him. Going to the right instead of left, or shooting that enemy before the other one, or follow that strategy more than the other one, all this is not freedom at all, but just following the rules of a quite reductive and repetitive game! Even in the hypothesis of creating an enormous game world, could wandering in such world, while repeating the usual dynamics, be considered freedom? Not at all! I would feel much more free if, although I could not move my avatar, I could somehow interact with environment and characters in order to influence them and modify them considerably; for example traveling backwards in time or confronting me with multiple choice dialogues like Max does in Life Is Strange!

Previous ideas about the supposed free will of the player and the “write your story” purpose, they are completely wrong and misleading; player in the limiting conditions of the vast majority of mainstream games cannot write any story at all! Only if the player equips himself with a development tool, or a surrogate, as it could be the long-awaited Dreams by Media Molecule, then he can write his own story and game; but in this way player puts himself in the shoes of the artist, of the developer. We are on a totally different level, creative level, certainly not that of the contemplation and use of a work created by an artist different from us. Any Video Game does not allow any arbitrariness, but on the contrary inserts the player in a virtual situation completely bound to the intentions of the developers. It is just a matter of intentions, purpose, goal: you, developer, what do you want to do with your Video Game? Entertain the player with traditional challenges? Or let him experience a virtual narrative and expressive experience? Well maybe you can do both, nothing keeps anyone from developing a narrative game in which there are also moments of traditional challenges! But in this case challenges would have a different meaning; for example shooting would not be a repetitive action from the beginning to the end of the game, it would not only have the purpose of demonstrating player’s ability, collecting points, defeating boss, etc. No, in a narrative game shooting would have a narrative meaning and purpose, it would be inserted into a story, with important outcomes for the story itself, just like in movies: a single spectacular scene of tension, which however would not represent the central and constant core of the gameplay, but one of the many possible interactive sequences aimed at making the player part of the virtual story.

Interactive narration can add depth and complexity to the virtual experience, allowing Video Games to rise to the level of expressive medium to the nth degree thanks to its multimedia and interactive features; a sort of total artistic experience, as Video Games take on all the characteristics of other expressive media (Literature, Music, Design, Theater, Cinema, etc.). Finally, let’s not forget that the technological development of VR promises to further elevate immersion into virtual stories! We have already had a substantial appetizer with The Invisible Hours (2017, Tequila Works).

L.F.