Bringing Art to Life: Examining Poetic Gameplay Devices in Interactive Life Stories

Abstract

A life story’s ability to evoke the emotion experienced by a protagonist is crucial to its success. Authors of interactive life stories sometimes strategically alter the interactive feedback loop to help convey this subjective experience. Using Mitchell’s conception of defamiliarizing poetic gameplay, this study identifies poetic gameplay devices, which creatively alter the feedback loop for emotional narrative impact. The article suggests extending the term “poetic gameplay” beyond interactive devices whose primary goal is critical appreciation of aesthetic form, to techniques directed at deepening a player’s narrative involvement, via alterations to interactivity designed to evoke emotions that mirror a protagonist’s experience. Close readings of 19 interactive life stories identified 13 devices, which fall into two categories: alterations to manipulation rules (involving local agency) and alterations to goal rules (involving higher level agency). The findings reveal some of the expressive possibilities of interactivity in digital narrative.

Keywords

interactivity life stories poetic gameplay interactive feedback loop agency

Recent years have seen video game research move past the debate on whether games can tell stories (Frasca, 2003; Murray, 2005) to focus on how games can tell stories and how they can be more human and emotive—more of an art form. Ebert’s (2010) provocation that “video games can never be art” helped to galvanize the impetus to create video games with emotionally complex characters; games designed to evoke nuanced reactions of nostalgia, tragedy, guilt, regret, and so on, rather than the superficial excitement of early shooters and platform games. However, as Anable (2018) argues, the fact that “plenty of games make plenty of people cry” (p. x) is not enough to provide games with a degree of cultural legitimacy. As the medium matures, video games and other interactive media are becoming vehicles not just for entertainment, or even aesthetic contemplation, but also for nonfiction storytelling.

“Interactive life stories” are stories created for the digital interactive medium, which profess to be about a human person’s life experience. Some interactive life stories represent a concrete person’s life, either literally or symbolically; others are more abstract, representing a particular aspect of the human condition such as mortality, addiction, or rejection. Formally, what makes an interactive life story unique is that it is presented through a computer medium in such a way that it requires significant user interaction to move the story forward. Computer-mediated interactive life stories are highly diverse among themselves (see Chew, 2017), ranging from multimodal hypertext narratives to interactive videos and video game narratives, among others. Of late, many life stories have appeared as small playable games, which closely approximate conventional video games, but differ from them in privileging the life narrative and subjective experience over the ludic goal of achieving the winning condition; for instance, The Cat and the Coup (Brinson & ValaNejad, 2011), Dys4ia (Anthropy, 2012), Gravitation (Rohrer, 2008), and That Dragon, Cancer (Numinous Games, 2016).

If, as Smith and Watson (2010) assert, “the materiality of a medium is constitutive of the subjectivity rendered” (p. 168), then the subjective expression of someone’s life in an interactive life narrative is necessarily colored by the qualities of the medium. Life story authors consciously choose the digital interactive medium because there is something in this medium that other media cannot do, or at least not in the same way (Herman, 2004; Ryan, 2006). Many interactive life stories do indeed push the known boundaries of the digital interactive medium as an expressive and aesthetic literary form, especially by their strategic alterations of the interactive feedback loop within the story. In the more compelling stories, these alterations often seem designed to recreate a sense of “what it’s like” to be in the protagonist’s place at a particular moment.

In the context of discovering the expressive capabilities of the interactive medium for storytelling, this article therefore argues for taking the interactive feedback loop seriously as a poetic literary device that conveys emotional information. The present study mainly focuses on video game narratives, as games are arguably the form of interactive media where alterations to the interactive feedback loop have the most pronounced impact. Rather than seeing works as either categorically games or not-games, however, Ensslin (2014) argues for a “literary-ludic continuum” (p. 44) along which works are more or less gamelike. The works we examine here can be considered a form of what Ensslin refers to as literary games, “a particular type of game that embeds literary elements but has conceptual and interactive emphasis on the ludic structures of the artifact at hand in addition to the aesthetic effects and processes it evokes” (p. 41). In poetic gameplay devices in life stories, we argue, the ludic structures of the interactive life story form an essential component of “the aesthetic effects and processes” evoked, which are directed toward conveying a subjective experience. In this article, we are focusing on the relationship between the poetic literary devices and emotional responses. The notion that the process of evoking emotions can potentially inculcate empathy for the life protagonist is a complex and contentious one (Pozo, 2018) and is beyond the scope of this article. For a detailed discussion of the issues involved, see Chew and Mitchell (2015) and Chew (2017).

Poetic Gameplay and the Meaning-Making Process

To explore the impact of alterations to the interactive feedback loop, we start with Mitchell’s (2016) concept of poetic gameplay. Poetic gameplay serves to draw attention to the form of the game, creating an aesthetic effect through defamiliarization. Poetic gameplay is the
structuring of the actions the player takes within a game, and the responses the game provides to those actions, in a way that draws attention to the form of the game, and by doing so encourages the player to reflect upon and see that structure in a new way. (p. 2)
Mitchell is building on Shklovsky’s (1965) notion of defamiliarization and the use of literary devices to “make one feel things, to make the stone stony” (p. 12). This is somewhat different from, for example, Brecht’s (1957) Verfremdung, which uses the process of making strange to distance the audience from a performance and encourage political reflection (Pötzsch, 2017).

What Mitchell is describing here is very much focused on alterations of the interactive feedback loop which forms the core of gameplay, and the impact this can have on the player. In this article, we extend this concept, applying it to artgames that are also life stories. We show how certain defamiliarizing techniques in addition to those Mitchell earlier identified are indeed applied as literary devices. As literary devices, however, their role is not only to draw attention to the form of the work through defamiliarization but also to subsequently draw the player back into the narrative by foregrounding the emotions provoked as part of the story (i.e., part of the life protagonist’s experience).

Although there has been extensive previous work exploring emotions and games, the existing literature does not investigate the ways that various kinds of deliberate manipulation of the interactive feedback loop can be used to elicit emotional responses. In the present article, our purpose is to initiate a systematic, work-in-progress framework in which the alterations of the interactive feedback loop may be categorized according to the associated emotions they evoke. It is envisaged that this framework will function as a useful tool for interactive storytellers to be better able to craft narratives that evoke the desired emotion in the player. It is important to note that we are not claiming that the poetic devices we identify, on their own, determine the player’s emotional responses. We acknowledge that, as Sicart (2011) argues, the meaning of a game emerges not just as the result of the rules, but rather from the player’s engagement with the rules through play, in a particular context, taking into consideration the player’s own background and personal experiences.

Related Work

Interactivity, Agency, and Emotion

Research on emotions in video games has a history too broad to cover in detail here; worth mentioning however are Isbister’s (2016) book-length study How Games Move Us and various essay collections on the topic, including Perron and Schröter (2016), Tettegah and Huang (2016), and others. Also of note are Perron’s (2005), Frome’s (2006, 2007, 2016), and Frome and Smuts’s (2004) work on the different ways video games can evoke emotion, as well as Grace’s (2013, 2015, 2016) work on affect in games (see also Shinkle, 2008; Bopp, Mekler, & Opwis, 2016). Some of these studies focus on the narrative aspect of the story (Ip, 2011; Schneider, Lang, Shin, & Bradley, 2004) or character complexity (Lee & Mitchell, 2018); others take a formal approach focusing on the characteristics of the medium (e.g., Callele, Neufeld, & Schneider, 2006).

The present article aligns with the latter approach, considering the interactive feedback loop—an essential component of interactive digital media (Murray, 1997; Ryan, 2004) and, indeed, of all human–computer interaction—as central to the discussion. We define the interactive feedback loop as “a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think and speak” (Crawford, 2003, p. 3). That is, user input into the system is processed and stimulates a response from the system back to the user, who reacts in turn.

In narrative video games, the interactive feedback loop not only provides ludic, goal-directed interaction, it also moves the story forward. An interactive story cannot progress except through input from the player. Arsenault and Perron (2009) have proposed a model for how the basic feedback loop related to gameplay combines with other processes such as narrative and meta-narrative hermeneutical meaning-making. Their model involves a cycle consisting of three interwoven spirals of gameplay, narrative and hermeneutic meaning-making. Interactivity is seen as contributing to the overall meaning-making process.

In contrast with Hocking’s (2009) concept of ludonarrative dissonance—which occurs when players engage in actions that are not believably aligned with the player character’s goals and values—the present research looks for ways in which player actions are designed to facilitate identification with player character values and emotions. Arguably, it is not enough for gameplay interactions to merely not interfere with the storyline. Instead, these interactions can and should contribute positively to enhancing the player’s experience of the story or game by promoting ludonarrative resonance or harmony, as Toh (2016), Brice (2011), and Pynenburg (2012) argue. For life stories, this means evoking an emotion in line with the protagonists’ original experience. Thus, although the alterations to the feedback loop may initially disconcert, they ultimately prove meaningful when the player is able to understand the emotion evoked as part of the narrative experience (see also Mitchell, Sim, & Kway, 2017) and is able to weave it into the overall meaning-making process (see Chew & and Mitchell, 2016, for further discussion on this).

The meanings the interactive feedback loop produces within a particular interactive work are bound by conventions regarding human–computer interaction. Thwarting these assumptions, or otherwise manipulating player expectations, can produce surprise, anger, frustration, disgust, and other emotions. Over the years, increasing awareness of the emotion-provoking capabilities of the interactive feedback loop has drawn attention to the artful manipulation of player agency and control in order to shape meaning in interactive narrative situations.

For instance, Wysocki and Schandler (2013) explore the moral dilemma and emotional disquiet a game can cause players by presenting difficult ethical choices (see also Tulloch, 2010). Heckner (2013) discusses how a “passive player” is constructed in a game, producing a sense of illusory freedom that conveys an existentially fatalistic mood.

Wilson and Sicart (2010) list some manipulations to conventional game feedback as characteristics of “abusive design,” such as having players endure 8 hours of tediously navigating a bus through a desert, only to be awarded 1 point of 99,999. The five “modalities of abuse” they identify are physical abuse, unfair design (including “masocore” games with near-impossible levels of difficulty), lying to the player (by playing with player expectations), aesthetic abuse (generally audiovisual), and social abuse. As their focus is on critical play rather than emotion, however, the emotions elicited as such are not identified.

Two well-known games that elicit emotion by purposeful alterations to the interactive feedback loop are Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (Starbreeze Studios, 2013) and Journey (thatgamecompany, 2012). In Brothers, the player controls two brothers simultaneously, with each brother’s movements controlled by one of the two analogue sticks on a console game controller. As the game progresses, the player becomes accustomed to this unusual control scheme. Later in the game, the player kinesthetically feels the older brother’s absence after his death, as the player can no longer use the left set of controls. However, when the younger brother later faces an insuperable obstacle, using the controls associated with the older brother unexpectedly works, hinting that the older brother’s spirit continues to watch over the younger brother (May, Bizzocchi, Antle, & Choo, 2014; Sim & Mitchell, 2017). Through interactive feedback, the player comes to appreciate the siblings’ bond as something that transcends death. In Journey, feedback from player character movements provide “‘direct’ corporeal access to know how the character feels (in the sense of bodily awareness) as an embodied agent in the virtual world” (Schröter, 2016, p. 209), including experiences of empowerment and disempowerment.

Harrer (2013) also studies the experience of emotional loss in three video games and how this experience is conveyed partially through gameplay. Yet this—and other studies dealing with particular emotions—focus on specific instances rather than principles underlying interactive gameplay that map specific techniques on to particular emotional responses. While individual case studies provide useful insights into the role of the feedback loop in eliciting emotions within a narrative, further development requires theorizing on a wider scale.

In this line, Rusch (2009) puts forward fictional alignment, procedurality, and experiential metaphor as three devices useful for the “purposeful design of games” (p. 1). Although helpful for analysis and design, these devices are pitched at a higher level of abstraction than the present study, which seeks to link specific techniques to effects.

In short, most of the current research at present dealing with emotions and video games do not descend to the level of the relationship between strategic, deliberately designed alterations to the feedback loop and the emotions that are provoked, in a systematic way across games.

Poetic Gameplay and Agency

Having introduced poetic gameplay as part of the player’s meaning-making process in interactive life stories, and in light of the related work, we now consider how the present study fits into existing work on poetic gameplay and its relationship with agency.

As mentioned above, this study extends Mitchell’s exploration of “poetic gameplay.” Mitchell (2016) identifies three techniques for defamiliarization, elicited from close readings of artgames. In Mitchell, Sim, and Kway (2017), these are refined into five techniques for poetic gameplay, namely, disrupting the player’s expectations for control, disrupting the chronological flow of game time, blurring the boundaries between different forms, breaking the fourth wall, and the presence of an “unnatural narrator” (p. 4). Focusing entirely on alterations to the interactive feedback loop, the present study is concerned with the first of Mitchell’s poetic gameplay techniques, namely disrupting player expectations of control.

When meaningfully used in interactive digital works, such alterations to expected control and feedback not only defamiliarize, by putting the player cognitively outside the anticipated schema (Douglas & Hargadon, 2001); as previously mentioned, they subsequently also draw the player back into the narrative, with a renewed understanding of the game narrative. As Mitchell et al. (2017) point out, defamiliarizing techniques only succeed as poetic gameplay when they are made “unfamiliar in a meaningful way” (p. 15). In this study, we consider cases in which interactivity clearly communicates something through an alteration to the standard feedback loop mechanic, for the purpose of conveying or eliciting a particular emotion.

Stretching the concept of poetic gameplay further, we propose here that poetic gameplay does not arise only from disrupting or removing player control: Occasionally, other surprising and unpredictable feedback responses to player input may also produce surprise and/or result in defamiliarization. This article therefore expands the concept of poetic gameplay beyond previous delineations of the five techniques listed. It expounds on the first of the five and extends it beyond direct control, to include choices and outcomes.

Before proceeding further, however, it is worth considering in greater detail what is meant by agency and its relationship with alterations to the feedback loop characteristic of poetic gameplay. To examine the various ways agency can be limited (or enhanced), we have drawn from Wardrip-Fruin, Mateas, Dow, and Sali’s (2009) definition of agency, with modifications that we discuss further on. According to them, agency is “a phenomenon, involving both the game and the player…that occurs when the actions players desire are among those they can take (and vice versa) as supported by an underlying computational model” (p. 1). From the player’s point of view, this can be paraphrased as “the expectation and the ability to act by carrying out the desired action.” These expectations for acting, according to Mawhorter, Mateas, Wardrip-Fruin, and Jhala (2014), are set up by framing (through narrative, audiovisual, and other input) and options presented. Moreover, for the player to have a sense of perceived agency, outcomes must be “to some degree predictable” (“Dimensions of player experience”).

Framing and options thus give rise to “choice idioms” within a framework of “choice poetics” (Mawhorter, Mateas, Wardrip-Fruin, & Jhala, 2014). Many of these choice idioms are a result of limitations on player agency, but they are not the whole story as far as poetic gameplay is concerned. As we show later on, other kinds of limitation on or unexpected system responses to player action, such as limitations on duration and unexpected feedback, can also provoke emotional responses in players.

To wrap up the discussion on poetic gameplay and agency, in their earlier work, Chew and Mitchell (2016) considered the role of the interactive feedback loop in evoking emotion to (re)create the lived experience of a character in a nonfictional video game narrative. Their close readings of indie games Gravitation and Akrasia (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Lab, 2008) showed how these games used coordinated audiovisual and kinesthetic feedback in order to convey a character’s inner emotional and cognitive state (Chew & Mitchell, 2016). Abrupt removals of player agency and impossible-to-win scenarios in Numinous Games’s That Dragon, Cancer were also identified as being used to prompt feelings of helplessness, disappointment, and futility in the player, which echo the original protagonists’ emotions (Chew & Mitchell, 2019).

However, these individual comparative close readings, while elucidating some general principles, stop short of proposing a more comprehensive framework that would allow different techniques to be mapped against the emotions produced. The present article does not attempt to present a full-fledged framework, only to draw common principles from close readings of various games that initiate the outlines of such a framework.

Based on the foregoing discussion, the research questions we seek to answer in this article may be stated as: “What are some ways the interactive feedback loop is altered in poetic gameplay in order to evoke an emotion? What sorts of specific emotional responses are generated, and how can these techniques and devices be categorized?”

Method

Nineteen interactive life stories of various formats were selected from a larger pool of 194 interactive works on or about people’s lives (see Table 1 for a list of the works analyzed). Interactive life story narratives were chosen because they are more likely to explicitly seek to convey a range of subtle emotions compared to conventional video games, given that the desire is often to replicate for the player the protagonist’s own life experience (Chew & Mitchell, 2016). Nevertheless, many interactive life stories (particularly biographies and interactive documentaries) take a factual rather than an affective tone, and few of them succeed at (or even attempt to) convey the life protagonist’s emotions. Works that did not convey a life protagonist’s emotions were excluded from the study. Other life stories that rely solely on audiovisual cues to evoke emotion were likewise excluded. The criterion for selection was, therefore, whether the standard interactive feedback loop was in some way altered to provoke emotion directed at causing an aesthetic response (such as reflecting the emotional tenor of the narrative), resulting in poetic gameplay.¹

Table 1.
List of Life Stories Analyzed.

Interactive Life Story Format

89 Steps Interactive within-browser mini-story

Akrasia Video game

Dear Mother Video game

Depression Quest Hypermedia

Dys4ia Video game

Explain Menstrual Periods to Me Like IAMA [Cis] Man Twine hypertext

Gravitation Video game

How to Overcome Performance Anxiety with Drugs and Alcohol Twine hypermedia

Hush Video game

Memoir En Code: Reissue Video game

Migrant Trail Video game

My Computer Video game

Spent Interactive text-based narrative

That Dragon, Cancer Video game

the.domestic Video game

The Cat and The Coup Video game

The Competition Video game

The Writer Will Do Something Interactive narrative

Why Must I Feel So Ill Video game

Close readings were used, inspired by Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum’s (2011) application of literary close reading methods to video games. Predefined analytical lenses based on the research question were applied to focus the close readings (J. G. Tanenbaum, 2015; J. G. Tanenbaum & Bizzocchi, 2009). Repeated playthroughs focused on, firstly, understanding which emotions were elicited in the life story; secondly, which of these emotions were elicited by variations to the interactive feedback loop; and, thirdly, how those emotions were elicited. In close readings, the researcher takes on a dual role of “imagined naive player” and informed scholar, which entails oscillating between interacting with the work as if for the first time and self-reflexively observing the whole process from the outside through a scholarly critical lens (J. G. Tanenbaum & Bizzocchi, 2009). It is this dialectical back-and-forth that allows a researcher “to excavate previously hidden qualities of [the] media artifact” (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011, “Introduction”.; J. G. Tanenbaum & Bizzocchi, 2009). Our close readings were also informed by Bardzell’s (2011) method of interaction criticism, which promotes repeated interaction with an artifact as a way for the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) critic to gain a “holistic, non-reductive understanding” (p. 606) of the artifact (see also Bardzell, 2008).²

Following the initial close readings, elements of a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) were used at the later stage of theorizing from the immediate findings. In grounded theory, data collection and analysis are done concurrently through constant comparisons, in order to build theory. This process demands a constant back-and-forth movement between data and analysis (Willig, 2013). Through repeated interactions with each work, specific poetic gameplay devices and the emotions they elicited were identified. A process of constant comparison among the poetic gameplay devices led to tentative categories. Finally, the devices were sorted into a taxonomy. Frasca’s (2003) distinction between manipulation rules and goal rules was found to be helpful in differentiating the levels on which alterations to the feedback loop take place.

Manipulation rules refer to “what the player can or cannot do within the simulation,” that is, direct and instant control of the player character or other system input. Poetic gameplay techniques on this level tend to involve restrictions to player agency on a local level (Mateas & Stern, 2005), with respect to the immediate system response to input rather than on the level of task or goal achievement. By contrast, goal rules refer to the larger picture, indicating “what the player must do in order to win” (Frasca, 2003, p. 232). Poetic gameplay that involves alterations to goal rules generally thwart player expectations of what it means to win or to lose, in order to highlight a narrative or meta-game point.

Results

From the close readings, a total of 13 poetic gameplay devices were identified (Figure 1): 9 on the level of manipulation rules and 4 in the category of goal rules. The devices in the “manipulation rules” category were further sorted according to whether they involved limitations to agency along the dimensions of duration, choice, or output.

Figure 1.
Summary of poetic gameplay devices relating to alterations to manipulation rules and goal rules.

Manipulating the Manipulation Rules to Alter Local Agency

Poetic gameplay devices involving manipulation rules affect local agency.³ These devices fall into three broad categories (Figure 1), within which are subsets of limitations to agency. Different emotional effects occur when a time limit for acting is known, compared to when it is unknown: Choice limitations include: Merely apparent choices (“false choice”) which result in only one “true answer”; a forced choice among undesirable options; a lack of any choice at all (“unchoice”); or even the ability to move the player character, but in a way that the player does not desire (“irrelevant agency”). Likewise, variations to expected system response might be movement-related, ineffectual, or otherwise surprising or disconcerting.

Table 2 presents the different devices along with some examples of where they appear and the emotions they were found to elicit. Although the differences between each poetic gameplay device are subtle, they can be distinguished and potentially used to different effects. Each device is further discussed below.

Table 2.
Poetic Gameplay Devices (Alterations to Manipulation Rules Affecting Local Agency).

Limitation on Player’s Agency Poetic Gameplay Device Example Effect

Duration (limited) Known time limit
Gravitation

Hush
Tension, nervousness, anxiety

Unknown time limit
The Writer Will Do Something
Shock/surprise, disconcertment, powerlessness

Choice (limited) False choice
My Computer

How to Overcome Performance Anxiety with Drugs and Alcohol

Depression Quest

Explain Menstrual Periods to Me Like IAMA [Cis] Man
Powerlessness, constraint

All undesirable options
Spent

Depression Quest
Constraint

Unchoice
Dys4ia
Constraint, powerlessness

Irrelevant agency
That Dragon, Cancer

Dys4ia
Constraint, boredom, impatience, annoyance

System response to user input Speed/degree of response
89 Steps

the.domestic

Dys4ia

Gravitation

Akrasia
Enthusiasm, energy, joy/irritability, aggression versus sadness, sluggishness, fatigue

Ineffectual agency
That Dragon, Cancer

Dys4ia
Frustration, helplessness, futility

Surprising or disconcerting outcome
Dys4ia (health insurance)

Akrasia (reversed controls)

Why Must I Feel So Ill
Confusion, difficulty, increased cognitive effort, ironic exasperation, injustice

Duration: Known time limits

Known time limits for acting are a staple of games and can be considered the unmarked default case. (It is even arguable if they can be considered poetic devices.) Foreseeable, time-limited restrictions on agency occur when the player is made aware of a time window for acting through a countdown timer (Gravitation) or through the game rules (in Hush, Antonisse & and Johnson, 2007, the player must press a key as the relevant letter appears—neither too soon nor too late).

The emotions evoked by known time limits are those conventionally linked to video games—tension and nervous anxiety as the player attempts to succeed at the task before the window closes. Arguably, what constitutes known time limits as poetic gameplay, however, is the way the games listed (Hush and Gravitation) make use of the time limit to draw player attention to a larger message. Known time limits become a poetic gameplay device when they seek to provoke particular emotions at the service of the narrative; for instance, causing the player to experience the tension felt by a young nursing mother in a war-torn zone, in the case of Hush.

Duration: Unknown time limits

Unlike known time limits, unknown time limits typically catch the player unawares. This abrupt and unexpected removal of player control creates a sense of dismay, shock, and helplessness. As a poetic gameplay device, it is used to convey to the player the character’s surprised dismay at finding himself or herself powerless in a particular situation.

For example, in The Writer Will Do Something (Burns, 2017), an interactive narrative that traces the professional life of a video game scriptwriter, the writer feels scapegoated for the imminent failure of a project. Thoughts flood his mind about how he should respond; these appear in long wordy paragraphs, but before the player can decide on an option, the words disappear and are replaced by the sentence “‘I vote cold open,’ Shawn answers, before you can speak.”

The player, expecting to make a decision, has the choice suddenly taken out of his hands, mirroring the protagonist’s experience of being rendered powerless when his colleague shortcuts his thought process with a final decision.⁴

The second set of limitations on local agency are limitations on choice. They may involve: False choices (in which options are only apparent since there is eventually only one option that “works”); choices involving only undesirable options; agency without choice; or irrelevant agency. The distinctions between the subcategories are subtle, but significant, and reveal different aspects of how agency may be restricted.

Choice: False choice

In the first case, options are presented, but no matter what option is chosen, there is only one real option, in the final analysis. Mawhorter et al. name this false choice in their list of choice idioms. This device often appears in Twine games and branching narratives.

For instance, in the autobiographical My Computer (Gibson, 2017), the author’s computer desktop is represented. If players click on the “Game” icon, the representation of a game appears, along with the options: “Play” and “Quit.” Clicking on “Quit,” however, hilariously causes a new word to appear in response: “Nope.” The player, having chosen to enter the “Game,” is now unable to leave it and is left with no choice but to click on “Play.” This encapsulates the author’s experience of being unable to say “no” to the lure of a computer game once it is opened: The experience of lack of agency in being able to freely choose to quit the game is translated into a refusal to allow the player to choose a different option.

Similarly, in How to Overcome Performance Anxiety with Drugs and Alcohol (Turpin, 2017), the author faces peer pressure from his friends persuading him to down a tequila instead of a beer. If the player chooses “beer,” the scene keeps being replayed until the player chooses tequila. Other examples appear in Depression Quest (Quinn, Lindsey, & Shankler, 2013) and in the Twine game Explain Menstrual Periods to Me Like IAMA [Cis] Man (Smyth, 2013; see Chew, 2017, for further discussion on this device).

Choice: All undesirable options

In the second case, real options are presented, leading to different outcomes, but none of the options present a desirable outcome for the player character. The result is a feeling of frustration and constraint which differs slightly from the first case. In false choice, alternative options appear to be available but turn out not to be. The outcome is undifferentiated (and typically negative), to promote the idea that “no matter what you do, the result is the same”; it creates a sense of fatalism. In the second case, the sense of constraint and pressure appears as a result of having to choose between two undesirable options; pressure on the player arises more from the difficult choice between the proverbial “devil and the deep blue sea.” An emotional and cognitive burden is placed on the player who is in a dilemma, knowing that either outcome is not likely to be positive. This produces a form of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), where conflicting elements of knowledge cause emotional discomfort, which in turn encourages the person experiencing the dissonance to seek ways to resolve this discomfort. This is used in Depression Quest and Spent (McKinney, 2011), to portray situations in which the character faces a choice that she does not want to make, because none of the options or likely outcomes that present themselves are optimal.

Spent, for instance, presents players with dilemmas faced by low-wage Americans: should you spend US$10 of your meager income on a gift for a birthday party for your child’s friend, send your child to the party with no gift, or refuse to let your child attend the party? The first option strains financial resources, the second causes shame, and the third risks deteriorating the relationship with the child. In Depression Quest, too, sometimes the only options available hint at an unfavorable outcome (see Chew, 2017).

Choice: Unchoice

In the third case, which Mawhorter et al. call unchoice, no alternatives are presented. The player’s only option to proceed with the game is to carry out the action presented. K. Tanenbaum and Tanenbaum (2010) argue that agency, even without choice, can best be understood as a player’s act of committing to meaning. Agency without choice occurs often in games; however, it only enters the ambit of poetic gameplay when used to create a sense of constraint.

In Dys4ia, the player inhabits the role of a gender-dysphoric person. Players must move the character along a straight line toward “home,” bearing with nonplayer characters who address the player character as “Sir.” The life protagonist’s unease with the situation is conveyed by the feeble correction “Ma’am” that emerges in response to each “Sir,’” while the player, much like the protagonist, has no choice but to continue along the same path, as there is no other.⁵

We earlier described agency as the “expectation and the ability to act by carrying out the desired action.” In the above scenarios, the expectation and the ability to act are present, but the only course of action presented is not desirable. By thwarting this aspect of agency, the player feels forced and not entirely free. Unwilling cooperation is demanded of the player, who wants the game to progress but does not relish the only option presented. The setup is calculated to produce internal tension and dissonance as an aesthetic response that also serves a narrative purpose.

In order to evoke a sense of psychological constraint, this device hinges heavily on psychological and narrative framing (see also Mawhorter et al., 2014). Without adequate framing, a sense of constraint may not result. Thus, unchoice only becomes a poetic gameplay technique when it is meaningfully framed with the purpose of provoking a specific emotion or emotions.

Choice: Irrelevant agency

The fourth “choice” limitation is that of “irrelevant” agency. As with unchoice, the player has only one option for acting, but what differentiates irrelevant agency from unchoice is a curious mix of freedom to act and the unavailability of the action desired. Thus, the system allows the player to act, but the only action available is not in line with the action the player desires to take, exasperating the player.

Whereas unchoice highlights control by the game system limiting the player’s ability to choose otherwise, irrelevant agency is more likely to cause frustration by allowing the player to act freely (thus respecting the freedom to act), but in a different direction from the one the player wants to take (thus allowing the player some agency, but negating the ability to influence the outcome).⁶ Actions thus taken become meaningless on the immediate level and only make sense in the context of the larger narrative or meaning-making process.

For instance, in the waiting room scenes in Dys4ia and That Dragon, Cancer, the player must wait. The player characters can be made to walk in any direction, but this action does not help them move toward achieving the goal. There is the expectation of being able to act, as well as (to some extent) the ability to act, and even in the way desired, but in such a way that the action has no bearing on the outcome. Options for acting are available but restricted, such that the actions available are simply irrelevant to achieving the goal. This is likely to produce frustration, boredom, and a sense of impotent impatience, as the player is able to carry out actions in the game world, but not in a way that would contribute to the desired outcome.

The third and final category of poetic gameplay devices relating to local agency and manipulation rules involve variations on system response, which come in three subcategories: Variations in the speed or degree of response to player input, ineffectual agency, and a surprising or disconcerting outcome.

System response to user input: Speed/degree of response

Changes to player character response in terms of speed or degree of responsiveness are common in video games (such as receiving a speed boost when one gains bonus points). However, when harnessed as poetic gameplay devices, they are used within a context that gives narrative meaning to the enhanced or dampened system response by helping convey a character’s subjective experience.

Slowness or decelerating speed (increasingly retarded response) is often used to express fatigue, as in Dys4ia, where the character’s tiredness is shown by the player character covering increasingly less ground with each press of the key. Similarly, in “89 Steps” (UnionDocs, 2014), players have to click on the “Go” button 89 times. The physical action of pulsing the button, along with the frequent halts in the narrative as the player is made to wait for “Marta” to catch her breath before hitting the “Go” button again, mimics the experience of climbing the stairs with someone who is slower. The repetitive tedium of pushing the button makes the action a mirror for the represented activity of climbing steps, which is tedious and requires patience for both the protagonist in the narrative and for the player.

Conversely, enhanced movement response from a player character usually denotes energetic dynamism, as in conventional video games when a character is given extra strength. In Gravitation, when the player character is inspired and happy, his jumps reach several times beyond physically realistic limits, simulating a feeling of mild euphoria which is reflected to the player. In both Gravitation and Akrasia, a game about drug addiction, player characters’ movements mirror their emotional and cognitive states (see Chew & Mitchell, 2016).

In the.domestic (Houlden, 2012), too, changes to player character movement reflect the player character’s emotional state. The player character moves more and more rapidly and agitatedly as stress levels at “work” build up. The rapid movement here reflects anger, tense energy, and irritability. Eventually, the player character’s movement goes out of control—every press of the key, no matter how short or gentle, sends the player character reeling off and after a particularly strong clash with the nonplayer character who represents the spouse, this character dies and the player character is taken off to jail.

System response to user input: Ineffectual agency

Ineffectual agency appears when the player sends a command to the system, but the system appears to reject the input, and this is reflected as part of the system feedback to the player. The action is executed by the player, but the system does not acknowledge this input (or sometimes it acknowledges the action but denies the player any progress toward the goal). As a result, the player experiences failure and frustration from the ineffectual action (Juul, 2013), and this is used to mirror life experiences of disappointment and of failure.

For instance, in Dys4ia, when the player character attempts to put on a dress, pressing the “Down” key causes the garment to bounce (mimicking an attempt to put on the dress), but no progress is actually made toward the goal. The player’s wasted efforts seem designed to reflect the life protagonist’s sense of futile endeavor. In That Dragon, Cancer, the protagonist, Ryan, is determined to sink into a metaphorical sea of despair. The player attempts to push him upward out of the water, but repeatedly pressing the button never gets him any nearer the surface.

The effective use of ineffectual agency relies on clear framing in terms of what action is expected and then the explicit denial of the accomplishment of the action leading to the desired outcome. The main emotions provoked by ineffectual agency are usually frustration and helplessness.

System response to user input: Surprising/disconcerting outcomes

The third and final subcategory of variations to system response includes surprising or disconcerting outcomes. Three devices were identified from the close readings: disparity between expectation and outcome, reversal of navigational controls, and unpredictable mappings. The primary emotion elicited is likely to be surprise, along with a secondary emotion of frustration or confusion, depending on the narrative framing.

In Dys4ia, the protagonist pays her medical bill using health insurance. After pushing the card across the table, the player’s expectation is to gain a discount on the $100 bill. However, as the health insurance card reaches the cashier, the bill is reduced by just one dollar—from $100 to $99. The disconnect between the expected outcome and the actual outcome produces disappointment and ironic exasperation in the player, likely reflecting the protagonist’s experience.

In Akrasia, a disconcerting outcome related to player character movement occurs when the character runs into a “demon” (possibly symbolizing cravings or fears). Postcollision, player controls are suddenly reversed—pressing the left arrow takes the character to the right and pressing the “up” arrow moves the character down. The player’s navigational commands produce a system response that is the inverse of what was expected, causing bewildered confusion in the player which mimics the confusion felt by the character (see Chew & Mitchell, 2016).

In Why Must I Feel So Ill (Leigh, 2016), the keyboard controls mapping specific actions to outcomes are constantly changing, so that the player feels the confusion and disorientation of someone feeling sick. In this case, the unpredictability of the system response to the same player input creates a sense of disorientation, which supports the visual text in conveying a sick person’s subjective sense of being disconnected from ordinary, predictable daily realities.

The above discussion relates to poetic gameplay devices that alter local agency; they work on the level of manipulation rules, to elicit emotion. The next section discusses gameplay poetic strategies that work on the larger level of the game, that is, strategies relevant to goal rules. Most goal rule poetic gameplay devices toy with conventional player expectations of global agency, in that they encourage the player to question the meanings of winning and losing outcomes on a larger scale. Nevertheless, not all goal rule manipulations actually affect global agency, in the sense of changing game outcomes.

Rewriting the Meaning of Winning by Altering Expected Goal Rules

Apart from the alterations to manipulation rules, which affect local agency by altering what the player can or cannot do, other poetic gameplay techniques elicit emotions by changing the rules on a larger level. At the level of goal rules, it is not the immediate choices or feedback that causes an emotional reaction in the player, but changes to what winning and losing mean. Although local agency is unhindered, accomplishing the task set by the game’s goal rules proves difficult, if not impossible; or, alternatively, achieving the game’s goals unveils unexpected negative implications, recasting the apparent win as a loss.

The four poetic gameplay devices identified on the level of goal rules, as shown in Table 3, are discussed below.

Table 3.
Poetic Gameplay Devices (Alterations to Goal Rules).

Poetic Gameplay Device Example Emotions Evoked

Winning is difficult
Migrant Trail

The Competition
Tension

Winning is impossible (insuperable obstacles to attaining the goal)
Dear Mother

Memoir En Code: Reissue

the.domestic

That Dragon, Cancer (Joel the Baby Knight)
Dismay, frustration, injustice, helplessness, exasperation (can be humorous depending on framing)

Winning is losing (undesirable outcome)
The Cat and the Coup

Dys4ia (shaving cut lip)

That Dragon, Cancer (go-kart race)

Gravitation
Dismay, disappointment, injustice, unpleasant surprise

Losing is winning (unexpected positive outcome from expected failure)
That Dragon, Cancer (“drowning”)
Surprise, confusion (unintended)

Winning is difficult

“Winning is difficult” is the conventional challenge of many video games. Like the “known time limit” discussed earlier, it is the default case in games generally; indeed, balancing difficulty against player skill is central to video game design. When used as a poetic gameplay device, however, the difficulty of play is framed to mirror the challenges of a character’s situation. Thus, in the docugame Migrant Trail (Williams & Gigantic Mechanic, 2014), multiple obstacles represent the dangers illegal immigrants face while attempting to cross into the United States. Similarly, The Competition (Smith, 2017), an autobiographical game about a twin’s compulsion to eat exactly the same amounts of food as her sister without being caught at it, mirrors the difficulties of life with a compulsive disorder. A key observation is that whereas in conventional video games, the difficulty level needs to be carefully calibrated and adjusted, so that the player is not overwhelmed by difficulty (Hunicke, 2005), here the gameplay seems to be designed just a notch above comfort level, so as to elicit a certain amount of tension that almost borders on frustration and giving up, and thereby giving the player a sense of the overwhelming odds faced by the protagonist. This feeling is backed up by a storyline that works together with the poetic gameplay device to heighten the player’s tension.

Winning is impossible

Some games make it completely impossible to succeed. “Winning is impossible” typically represents a subjective experience of futility and impotence in the face of a situation. In Dear Mother (failnaut, 2013), the author expresses frustration and hopelessness in the struggle to “avoid sin” as his mother instructs him. However, “enemy” figures fall so quickly that the player cannot avoid them. A humorous version of the same mechanic occurs in Memoir En Code: Reissue (Camillieri, 2016), where each time the protagonist raises his umbrella, the rain stops, whereas putting down the umbrella causes it to rain again. This conveys the storyteller’s impression that it is impossible to outdo the weather in the Netherlands. Another example is the.domestic, which is a no-win situation. Despite player efforts, “you” always end up in prison, either for domestic abuse caused by work-related stress or for debt from not working hard enough. Likewise, in the game-within-the-game “Joel the Baby Knight” in That Dragon, Cancer, neither Joel nor Tim can ever beat the dragon representing cancer (see Chew, 2017, for further analysis).

Winning is losing

“Winning is losing” is the interactive incarnation of the dramatic plot twist: The player is led to think she has won, but a negative outcome ensues instead. In The Cat and the Coup, after successfully completing various “levels,” it is revealed that the player, by taking the role of Mossadegh’s cat, has been in cahoots with Mossadegh’s enemies all along. In Dys4ia, successfully shaving off a moustache results in a cut, bleeding lip, while in That Dragon, Cancer, a go-kart race simulation ends with a score board listing cancer medicines instead of high scores (see Chew & Mitchell, 2019). In Gravitation, the player thinks that to win is to get a high score but then, in a devastating moment, he discovers that in the process of chasing a high score, he has lost his child.

Losing is winning

The final category, “losing is winning,” is something of an anomaly. In the previously discussed “Drowning” scene in That Dragon, Cancer, the player must help the player character out of the water, but pushing him upward fails to succeed (ineffectual agency); the player later discovers that the character must be pushed down into the water, symbolically letting the protagonist wallow or “drown” in his grief, in order for the game to proceed. This surprising discovery is an instance of “losing is winning,” where an action expected to cause failure instead leads to success. The discovery is an “Aha!” moment for the player, a mini-triumph that sits at odds with the character’s depressed emotional state. This causes an emotional disjuncture, a moment of “wrong” defamiliarization for the player (see Mitchell et al., 2017). Here, the poetic gameplay device fails to evoke an emotion that reflects the character’s experience. Nevertheless, this remains an interesting poetic device, and its not having been successfully used so far does not preclude it from potentially being used effectively in future.

We have considered poetic gameplay techniques on the level of local agency—where manipulation rules are altered, affecting what the player can and cannot do (and how she can or cannot do it)—and on the level of goal rules, where traditional notions of winning and losing conditions are employed—and sometimes overturned—in service of the narrative. At a still broader level, sometimes the rules of the entire game are revealed to be deceptive: The winning condition either does not exist or is determined by other rules. For instance, in Akrasia, following the apparent goal rules by eating the energy-boosting rods leads to the rapid demise of the player character. Through subsequent replays, the player teases out the game logic and discovers the real goal rule, which is the opposite of the apparent goal rule.

In Gravitation, apparent goal rules are in tension with each other: gaining points versus keeping a child happy by playing ball. Playing to maximize points results in a “winning is losing” scenario in which the player character’s child suddenly disappears. However, in the game as a whole, Gravitation combines “winning is impossible” with “winning is losing”: Game outcomes vary between losing the child and not losing the child, but not losing the child does not constitute an actual winning situation. Ultimately there is no winning scenario, as the screen fades to black when the time limit is up and returns to the title screen.

Both Akrasia and Gravitation apply alterations to the interactive feedback loop in intricate ways. More than one poetic gameplay device is used: Manipulation rules and goal rules are crafted to support a deeper narrative point that is revealed to the player as she teases out the game’s procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2007) through gameplay (for further discussion on these games, see Chew & and Mitchell, 2016; Chew, 2017). Poetic gameplay devices such as alterations to manipulation rules and goal rules, then, are not necessarily used in isolation but can work together to support the conveying of emotional experience.

Conclusion

We began by suggesting that poetic gameplay devices, which include strategic alterations to the interactive feedback loop, may be used not only to promote critical appreciation of the art form through defamiliarization (Mitchell, 2016) but also to draw the player back into the narrative. In life stories, this occurs when the alteration to the feedback loop contributes meaningfully to the narrative, by provoking an emotion in the player akin to the protagonist’s experience related in the life story. The 19 stories reviewed (see Table 4) show that the techniques used to evoke emotion can be categorized along the lines of alterations to local agency and alterations to higher level goal rules; moreover, these devices can work in tandem, supporting one another in an attempt to convey the life experience more deeply.

Table 4.
Summary of Life Stories Analyzed and Poetic Gameplay Devices Identified in Each Work.

Interactive Life Story Devices Identified

89 Steps Speed/degree of system response to user input

Akrasia Speed/degree of system response to user input, surprising or disconcerting outcome

Dear Mother Winning is impossible

Depression Quest False choice, all undesirable options

Dys4ia Unchoice, irrelevant agency, speed/degree of system response to user input, ineffectual agency, surprising or disconcerting outcome, winning is losing

Explain Menstrual Periods to Me Like IAMA [Cis] Man False choice

Gravitation Known duration limitation, speed/degree of system response to user input, winning is losing

How to Overcome Performance Anxiety with Drugs and Alcohol False choice

Hush Known duration limitation

Memoir En Code: Reissue Winning is impossible

Migrant Trail Winning is difficult

My Computer False choice

Spent All undesirable options

That Dragon, Cancer Irrelevant agency, ineffectual agency, winning is impossible, winning is losing, losing is winning

the.domestic Speed/degree of system response to user input, winning is impossible

The Cat and The Coup Winning is losing

The Competition Winning is difficult

The Writer Will Do Something Unknown duration limitation

Why Must I Feel So Ill Surprising or disconcerting outcome

It is anticipated that future work will greatly expand the range of gameplay poetic techniques. Most of the poetic gameplay devices discovered so far express negative emotions, perhaps because of the subject matter of the life stories; future research could investigate other feedback loop alterations that support positive emotions. It is also worth exploring the parallels between the tendency for interactive life stories to deal with issues of trauma, illness, and misery, and similar trends in the wider field of auto/biographical writing (see, e.g., Gilmore, 2001). Further work in this line could contribute to broader discussions of games’ cultural legitimacy (Anable, 2018). A methodological limitation is that close readings are subjective, which may influence the labeling of emotions associated with each poetic gameplay device. There is also the possibility that some of the responses we have reported are the result of repeated play, something that is inherent in the close reading process, but that may not be representative of how most players would approach the work. We also need to acknowledge, as Sicart (2009) points out, that “players are beings who come to a game experience with the cultural baggage of previous game experience” (p. 65). It is not clear whether all players would bring with them the degree of gaming literacy that many of these games depend on for their poetic techniques to be effective. Future work should confirm the emotions judged to be elicited from each work by triangulation with other players, as well as covering a broader range of works.

In this study, we have proposed to extend the ambit of poetic gameplay beyond its original focus—as a defamiliarizing aesthetic device used to draw attention to the art form—by showing that such devices also serve a narrative purpose in some situations, such as in interactive life stories. The initial moments of defamiliarization indeed draw the player’s attention to the form, but the reader subsequently integrates the moment of defamiliarization and the emotion elicited into an understanding of the overall narrative, producing a deeper appreciation of the life story. Despite our focus on life stories, the findings are relevant to poetic gameplay as a whole, as well as for any forms of storytelling that involve computer-mediated interactivity. For example, our findings suggest that concepts such as ludonarrative dissonance, which are normally seen as disruptive to the experience of narrative within a game, could instead be used deliberately as a poetic device, where the player weaves the initial discomfort into a larger experience, so that what was initially experienced as dissonance results in ludonarrative resonance when the player realizes that the poetic device is part of a larger meaning-making mechanism. This insight provides a new perspective on the relationship between gameplay and narrative. The interactive feedback loop as a mechanism of artistic expression is still in its infancy, and so too are interactive life stories as a genre. Much of their expressive potential remains to be explored, and this article represents but an early step in this exploration.

Interactive Life Story	Format
89 Steps	Interactive within-browser mini-story
Akrasia	Video game
Dear Mother	Video game
Depression Quest	Hypermedia
Dys4ia	Video game
Explain Menstrual Periods to Me Like IAMA [Cis] Man	Twine hypertext
Gravitation	Video game
How to Overcome Performance Anxiety with Drugs and Alcohol	Twine hypermedia
Hush	Video game
Memoir En Code: Reissue	Video game
Migrant Trail	Video game
My Computer	Video game
Spent	Interactive text-based narrative
That Dragon, Cancer	Video game
the.domestic	Video game
The Cat and The Coup	Video game
The Competition	Video game
The Writer Will Do Something	Interactive narrative
Why Must I Feel So Ill	Video game

Limitation on Player’s Agency	Poetic Gameplay Device	Example	Effect
Duration (limited)	Known time limit	Gravitation Hush	Tension, nervousness, anxiety
	Unknown time limit	The Writer Will Do Something	Shock/surprise, disconcertment, powerlessness
Choice (limited)	False choice	My Computer How to Overcome Performance Anxiety with Drugs and Alcohol Depression Quest Explain Menstrual Periods to Me Like IAMA [Cis] Man	Powerlessness, constraint
All undesirable options	Spent Depression Quest	Constraint
Unchoice	Dys4ia	Constraint, powerlessness
	Irrelevant agency	That Dragon, Cancer Dys4ia	Constraint, boredom, impatience, annoyance
System response to user input	Speed/degree of response	89 Steps the.domestic Dys4ia Gravitation Akrasia	Enthusiasm, energy, joy/irritability, aggression versus sadness, sluggishness, fatigue
Ineffectual agency	That Dragon, Cancer Dys4ia	Frustration, helplessness, futility
Surprising or disconcerting outcome	Dys4ia (health insurance) Akrasia (reversed controls) Why Must I Feel So Ill	Confusion, difficulty, increased cognitive effort, ironic exasperation, injustice

Poetic Gameplay Device	Example	Emotions Evoked
Winning is difficult	Migrant Trail The Competition	Tension
Winning is impossible (insuperable obstacles to attaining the goal)	Dear Mother Memoir En Code: Reissue the.domestic That Dragon, Cancer (Joel the Baby Knight)	Dismay, frustration, injustice, helplessness, exasperation (can be humorous depending on framing)
Winning is losing (undesirable outcome)	The Cat and the Coup Dys4ia (shaving cut lip) That Dragon, Cancer (go-kart race) Gravitation	Dismay, disappointment, injustice, unpleasant surprise
Losing is winning (unexpected positive outcome from expected failure)	That Dragon, Cancer (“drowning”)	Surprise, confusion (unintended)

Interactive Life Story	Devices Identified
89 Steps	Speed/degree of system response to user input
Akrasia	Speed/degree of system response to user input, surprising or disconcerting outcome
Dear Mother	Winning is impossible
Depression Quest	False choice, all undesirable options
Dys4ia	Unchoice, irrelevant agency, speed/degree of system response to user input, ineffectual agency, surprising or disconcerting outcome, winning is losing
Explain Menstrual Periods to Me Like IAMA [Cis] Man	False choice
Gravitation	Known duration limitation, speed/degree of system response to user input, winning is losing
How to Overcome Performance Anxiety with Drugs and Alcohol	False choice
Hush	Known duration limitation
Memoir En Code: Reissue	Winning is impossible
Migrant Trail	Winning is difficult
My Computer	False choice
Spent	All undesirable options
That Dragon, Cancer	Irrelevant agency, ineffectual agency, winning is impossible, winning is losing, losing is winning
the.domestic	Speed/degree of system response to user input, winning is impossible
The Cat and The Coup	Winning is losing
The Competition	Winning is difficult
The Writer Will Do Something	Unknown duration limitation
Why Must I Feel So Ill	Surprising or disconcerting outcome

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study has been funded by Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 grant FY2015-FRC2-004, “Exploring ‘Literary’ Devices for Poetic Interactivity.”

ORCID iD

Evelyn C. Chew

Alex Mitchell

Notes

Author Biographies

Evelyn C. Chew received her PhD from the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, where she previously majored in English literature and psychology. She also holds an MA in international communications (Macquarie, Sydney). Her research interests include life story narratives and empathy, and she is particularly interested in how interactive digital media and affords new ways of communicating a lived experience.

Alex Mitchell is an assistant professor in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. His research investigates computer-based art and entertainment, focusing in particular on games and interactive stories. Recent publications include “Making it Unfamiliar in the Right Way: An Empirical Study of Poetic Gameplay” (DiGRA 2017) and “Antimimetic Rereading and Defamiliarization in Save the Date” (DiGRA 2018). He is a member of the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling steering committee.

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