Exploring audience involvement with an interactive narrative: implications for incorporating  transmedia storytelling into entertainment-education campaigns

Angeline Sangalang, Jessie M. Quintero Johnson and Kate E. Ciancio
2013


This was not so relevant; is about how interactivity of games might influence people and educate them. a few highlighted bits under the cut though


The researchers selected an interactive game that featured a healthrelated
narrative (milk consumption) in order to assess the influence of narrative
involvement on health outcomes, to simulate the potential influence of EE games.
In particular, the researchers were interested in examining the relationships between
the experience of feeling involved with a narrative in an interactive game (i.e.,
transportation), the ability to follow and make sense of the narrative in an interactive
game (i.e., narrative understanding), enjoyment, and health outcomes (including
message-consistent beliefs, attitudes, and behavioural intentions). A further aspect
to explore was the extent to which feelings of frustration about playing the game
influenced both transportation and enjoyment.
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The researchers suggest that it
is equally important to consider the influence of interactivity on the effort required in
narrative understanding. Interactivity can be viewed as having active participation in
the creation of narrative itself (Evans 2011). It involves some form of user input or
control, though this often undermines the complexity that interactivity can represent
on a spectrum (Evans 2011; Newman 2002). In fact, it may be more useful for
interactivity to be viewed as another audience perception, where individuals may
experience different degrees of perceived choice, feedback and turn-taking (Lee et
al. 2006). Interactivity and narrative can intersect in different ways, which produce
different game narrative types (Jenkins 2004).


The researchers suggest that an examination of the influence of narrative involvement
with interactive games is also important because of its potential influence on
enjoyment. Enjoyment can be a motivator for message exposure, as well as an outcome
of narrative involvement (Bilandzic & Busselle 2011). Enjoyment can result from
the escape from the individual’s world into the narrative world, allowing them to
detach from their identities and try out possible selves (Bilandzic & Busselle 2011).
In interactive games, enjoyment might motivate the selection of a particular game
and also provide motivation for continued exposure. This is especially important in
health contexts, as health skills can be developed through repeated exposure and
practice (Peng & Liu 2008).
Interactive games might be especially useful for motivating players to practise
health behaviours because they provide intrinsic rewards associated with game
mastery (thereby reducing the dullness of health behaviour habit formation that
occurs in the absence of an interactive game). It is also possible that a person’s
enjoyment of an interactive game, situated in a larger transmedia effort, might
motivate that person to seek out other elements of the narrative