What is Interactivity

-An active relationship between two things.

-The participant of 'agents' within a representational context. the 'reading of a 'text'.'

The problem.

-Vague term

-Are all media, or even experiences, by definition, interactive?

-No identification where and how interactivity takes place or of structure or context.

Iterative process.

- Radically different from the 'top-down' approach of many mainstream game titles. Helps streamline production resources and create a successful product.

Zimmerman's model of interactivity

Model 1 -Cognitive

-Psychological, emotional and intellectual participation between a person and a system.

Model 2 - Functional

-Functional and structural interactions with the material components of a system - Real or Virtual.

Model 3 - Explicit

-Interaction in the most obvious sense of the word. eg; following the rules.

-Explicit interactivity is the biggest challenge to using approaches from film and literature.

- Film theories often rely on spectatorship. Although watching and listening are important parts of digital games there is also a lot of doing, which makes games much different from films.

(A game is not a film!)

Model 4 - Beyond the object interactivity

-Interaction outside the experience of a single system.

-Fan culture that co-construct communal realities that designed systems as raw material.

-Trans medial storytelling.

Interactivity and Games

-Some of the four modes occur almost universally in human experience.

-interaction is never as simple as it appears.

-'Dice' = Designed interaction.

Interaction and Choice

-Crafting of player experience through a system of interaction is critical.

-Choice is not always obvious of rational but can be intuitive.

Choice - Complex, multilayered process that translates into a complete video game experience.

-Games represent action which players participate - Basis of choice.

Anatomy of Choice

-Concept of choice appears basic at first.

1. What happened before the player was given a choice? (Internal)

2. How is the possibility of choice conveyed to the player? (External)

3. How did the player make the choice? (Internal)

4. Result of choice? (Internal)

5. Results of choice conveyed to player. (External)

-Actions have meaningful outcomes in good design.

-Player doesn't know what to do next. (Bad design)

-Losing and not knowing why. (Bad design)

-Not knowing if action had an outcome. (Bad design)