Role Playing Games as Interactive Fiction

Authors

John Miller

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This chapter compares the experience of gaming and the experience of reading, and explores what that comparison might tell us about each. More specifically, it applies methods of literary analysis to the study of two narrative activities situated near the border of reading and gaming: Electronic hyperfictions and role-playing games. Miller first reviews literary theories of reader response and interactivity and notes how these have informed recent critical discussions of literary hyperfiction. He then critiques these discussions and the claims made for hyperfiction's liberating or empowering effect on readers: Contrary to the claims of some critics, such narratives generally fail to fulfill these promises and are, in fact, in many ways less interactive than traditional print fictions. The author then approaches the border between gaming and reading from the other direction, by examining a form of gaming that resembles reading in interesting ways: Role-playing games. Miller explores how reader response theories apply to analyzing the effects and meanings of such games, concluding that role-playing games provide a better model for the reification of reader response theories, albeit in a medium which is more oral than written, than do the hyperfictions which have received more serious attention from literary theorists. As such, role-playing games offer a potential medium for more truly interactive fiction that "serious" authors have yet to explore. Raising questions of textuality and its relation to games, Miller argues for the inclusion of games in contemporary literary studies and shows how fruitful such studies may be for our understanding of "new media" possibilities.

Repository Citation

Miller, John. "Role Playing Games as Interactive Fiction." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 6, no. 1, 2006, pp. 1–17. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol6/iss1/14