Uma experiência paradigmática : jogos e tensões no encontro entre a narrativa e a interatividade em forma audiovisual e eletrônica

Abstract

This thesis proposes to observate the contradctions and effects of the idea of interactive narratives, focusing on audiovisual and electronic forms. We understand that this is an heterogenous and difuse object, that moves along films, cybertexts and electronic games, among others. But the opposition between narratives and interactivity in the form of an oxymoron should not stop us from going beyond the dicotomic paralysis and observating this junction on theory and practice. In in, we will see a board of tensions that may help thinking about interactive narratives as a paradigmatic experience: a metaspace that defines meaning and is surrounded by a magic circle of games, narrative structure and interactive systems. In this space, the interactive narrative experience is influenced by the forces of contraction and expansion that result in effects of choice, control, illusion, simulation, action and identity. As a method of study, our theoretic framework relates to the practical objects, which in turn relate back to the theory, as an abductive method. First, we oppose the themes of narrative as found in Genette (1976), Chatman, (1993), Culler (1997) and Gerbase (2004), as well as the processes of identity in the cinema as in Aumont (1995), opposing them to the concepts of interactivity in Primo (1998; 2007), Rockwell, Bradley e Monger (1999), and Lemos (1997). The critical defense and attack of the idea of interactive narratives are brought to the table with Crawford (2004), Aarseth (1997) and Cameron (2010). We then choose a direction among the oppositions by taking on game theory in Caillois (1990), Huizinga (1955), Juul (2005; 2013), Salen e Zimmerman (2003), Bogost (2006), Koster (2010) and Sicart (2012). The idea of a paradigmatic experience becomes complete, then, with the help of Jakobson (2003). At last, our tension board that came from theory moves along to the interactive narratives as found in the real, practical world, so that we can visualize the moving concepts in different cenarios, not only applying the theory but expanding it. Our main objects in this phase are A Gruta (Filipe Gontijo, 2008), HBO Imagine (Biscuit Filmworks, 2009), The Sims 3 (Maxis, 2009), The Lost Experience (ABC, 2006), and Alan Wake (Remedy Entertainment/Microsoft Game Studios, 2010). The conclusions of our thesis indicate that it it possible to go beyond the radical opposition between narratives and interactivity in order to understand a movement of contraction and expansion between the text and the interactor, within a system that creates an experience of controled freedom in which narrative is a performance of and with a structure.