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

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.