What I have learned after reading "Hamlet on the Holodeck"

I've came across this book during my 2nd year studies in Degree in Multimedia Design, but never had the time to read it. After 2 weeks of starting my 3rd year now, I finally realized the importance of reading as I could never write a good 6000 words essay without a bank of media theories at the tip of my fingers. So I rumaged in the library book shelves and grabbed this book --- thanks to Anderson's help for borrowing this book as this book is only for lecturers to borrow --- as a research material for my essay as well as for my 3rd year final project.

I would say that this book is not a difficult read. The author, Janet H. Murray, had included in some of her personal experiences with interactive narratives as interesting examples of her arguments and I've learned quite a lot from reading this book.

Murray's analysis on both optimistic and dystopian perspective on the idealised form of interactive narrative - immersive, hyperreal simulations of narratives - intrigued me to think about how human values can be questioned by technology. The human values here are love and faith, as shown in the example in Star Trek whereby Captain Janeway's lover, Mark (disguised by enemy) questioned her about her faithfulness towards him about she having a "virtual affair" with a virtual character named Lord Burleigh whom she meets everytime she enters the holodeck. Does kissing a virtual character means betrayal to your lover in reality? If the answer is yes, that means that the fine line between virtual and reality has vanished. Virtual characters can actually be as real as, or more real than real life people. If the answer is no, does this suggests that cyberspace is a platform for people to express their inner desires, fantasies, or what not?

Computer games and the internet were under constant blame for the unhealthy phenomenon --- from short attention span to obesity --- of kids nowadays. It is true that the instant feedback provided by the cyberspace pulls users away from the slow, and visually and audically unexcited collection of text printed on papers. Instead of pointing fingers and playing a tug-o-war with the cyberspace, why not assimilate the values of novel reading into computers? As Murray stated, what we look into are values and meanings rather than on the medium. Function over form.

Murrays explaination on immersion and agency is also helpful for the content planning of my project. To achieve user retention and keep them excited throughout the process of an interactive narrative, immersion and agency is important. By having the fourth wall (could be an avatar or rules to adhere by), only can users be immersed within the plot of an interactive narrative. The fourth wall draws the fine borderline between virtual and reality, enabling users to feel that they are part of the interactive narrative while not disrupting the flow of the narrative. It marks a set of rules to follow within the cyberspace, which in turn adds the users' believablity towards the narrative. If the fourth wall is removed, and users were to be invited into the cyberspace to roam freely in the narrative, users will not feel attached to the story itself and will bore out easily, or maybe worse, destroy the whole narrative structure of a particular interactive narrative. Agency, however, empowers the users and letting the users feel that what they do has a certain impact within the gamespace. A simple click could trigger a nuclear explosion within the gamespace. It is the feedback system which keeps users hooked on to the game/interactive narrative.

This book gave me more confidence in developing my final project on educating high school students on history through a narrative in the form of interactive videos on YouTube. Overall, this book really do benefit me by keeping my brain juices flowing.

A thought for my project --- to make my project appeal to my target audience, immersion and agency is a must. Probably the user can be the main character of my narrative, and each choice the user makes at each decision point will affect the storyline and reach to different endings.