Proposal #1: The William Desmond Taylor Story

GAME GENRES

A glance through an interactive gaming magazine or computer game store will quickly reveal a roughly hewn system of game genres. Many of these games are specific to interactive gaming in that they reference the type of interactivity encouraged by a game’s design or the hardware required to play the game. However, this genre system is grafted on to a set of genre distinctions shared by film, television, and literature: fantasy, action, science fiction, documentary, etc. Despite shared genre categories, certain genres work better within certain media forms. For instance, the musical is most popular within a theatrical form, which draws upon the traditional appeal of live musical performance; science fiction flourishes within cinema with its expanding repertoire of special effects; and the action genre is commonly found within the interactive game form drawing upon the ease in programming "shoot-em-up" interactivity.

One could argue either the compatibility or incompatibility of the murder mystery genre with an interactive storytelling medium. On the one hand, the murder mystery could be considered to have one of the most tightly controlled narrative structures of all the genres. A mystery writer doles out information with exactitude, raising suspicions about each character in turn, carefully holding back essential information until a final moment of revelation. Allowing total multi-sequentiality in a murder mystery could be considered tantamount to encouraging readers to flip to the last page of the book to discover the murderer’s identity.

On the other hand, the temporal structure of the murder mystery arguably grants a certain degree of flexibility not found in other genres. The goal of the narrative is to reconstruct a single event that, for the majority of the story, exists in the past tense. This reconstruction is often done in an apparently piecemeal fashion as clues are accumulated through various means. While one clue often leads to the next, this strict linearity is not essential to the genre. In fact, the backwards-looking temporal structure of the murder mystery serves to loosen up the story’s adherence to a singular sequentiality. The hermeneutic drive that accumulates around the murderer’s unknown identity provides coherence to the narrative despite deviation from the tightly constructed chain of cause and effect that characterizes more classical story structures. Unsurprisingly, some of the most experimental narratives within film have been forged within the mystery genre. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon is an oft-cited example of experimental deviation from temporal linearity. Similarly, Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, although nominally a caper film, is reminiscent of the mystery genre with its focus on a single event (the heist, in this case) and its drive towards discovering the identity of the individual responsible (in this instance, the identity of the mole). Citizen Kane is yet another innovative film that uses the reconstruction of an event or a series of events located in the past tense as its narrative core.

NARRATIVE PLEASURES

Interactive games employing narrative are traditionally evaluated along two registers: narrative pleasure (their ability to deliver the pleasures associated with older narrative forms) and the freedom of user movement through the story (their ability to deliver a pleasure unlike what has come before). Often success along one of these registers has meant compromise within the other due to the difficulty of constructing fulfilling narratives within a multi-sequential form. Many narrative games have attempted to deal with this problem by creating a relatively linear narrative while fostering an illusion of user freedom. For instance, the 1994 game Gadget has a surprisingly linear form despite its interactivity; one cannot proceed to the next location until all avenues of exploration have been covered. Trains do not depart unless the player has "spoken" with every individual in the train station. And trains refuse to reach their destinations until all information from the other passengers has been retrieved.

Other games relocate pleasures to other realms; instead of delivering the narrative pleasure of film or popular fiction, aesthetics, gaming strategies, eye-hand coordination, or self-contained puzzles are offered up in place old-fashioned storytelling. In any of the above cases, space is typically used as the construct for defining user freedom as the branching structures are made visible through architecture. The hallway with eight doors to choose from is a physical representation of multi-sequentiality and user choice. As in the case of Gadget, authors of interactive narrative may then apply certain restrictions — such as locked doors — that whittle down the multiple branches of a narrative into something that looks remarkably like linear narrative. If only one of the eight doors is unlocked and in that room one finds the key to one of the other doors, then a strict order of room exploration has been imposed with only the illusion of user freedom.

TRUE CRIME

A particular subset of the murder mystery — the unsolved factual murder mystery — provides at least a partial solution to the aforementioned friction between traditional narrative pleasures and the interactivity of a multi-sequential narrative. In a traditional murder mystery, stumbling upon the murderer’s identity on the equivalent of page two may be profoundly dissatisfying. Yet, if we attempt to deliver as much user freedom as possible (allowing "pages" to be "read" in virtually any order), then we risk just such a dispelling of the hermeneutic code at any early stage in the game.

Even more dissatisfying than a premature revelation would be a denial of revelation, i.e., a refusal to reveal the murderer’s identity. However, the one exception is the unsolved factual murder. The deaths of JFK and Marilyn Monroe continue to prompt speculation as mainstream opinion deems these murders to be unsolved despite the explanations assigned to the strange circumstances of their deaths. One could also point to the fascination with true crime stories on television and the internet, a fascination that, strangely enough, seems to intensify in the absence of closure, thereby violating one of the primary rules of Hollywood storytelling.

WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR

We do not have to fully diagnose the pleasures of the unsolved factual murder using our arsenal of narrative theory in order to adopt its form, taking advantage of its appeal while conveniently sidestepping some of the difficulties of putting the mystery genre into interactive form. However, we do need to acknowledge the elements that enhance the appeal of such factually-based stories: intrigue, the involvement of famous people, sinful lifestyles, a bit of glamour, money, sex, and, while we’re at it, a certain degree of sleaziness. The story of the murder of1920s Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor combines such elements while offering the advantage of being a less known story in comparison to that of Monroe or JFK. Nonetheless, Taylor’s murder still possesses historical importance; in combination with the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, Taylor’s murder solidified public opinion towards Hollywood’s excesses, ushering in an era of strict censorship within the film industry.

With a more known crime, strict adherence to the historical facts would be more imperative. With the Taylor crime, it would be possible to abbreviate, even modernize the story, with appropriate documentation of our deviations from the true facts of the case. In short, our version could be roughly based on or at least inspired by the William Desmond Taylor story allowing us to capitalize on the intrigue of the actual crime while still taking certain liberties.

DESIGN GOALS

The particular design goals of such a project would be to deliver narrative pleasure with as few restrictions in the game’s branching structure as possible. This project would also be an exercise in experimental navigation as we try to move away from the typical equivalence between spatial and narrative progression. For instance, different media types within a police file — interview transcripts, surveillance tapes, home movies, police notes, letters, and photographs — might be navigated in certain non-naturalistic ways to reveal hidden information. While the class as a whole would work together to script the game and create the media elements (e.g., the surveillance tapes, which would require a staging and videotaping of certain events), each design group would work with a particular media element (e.g., the crime photos) to create a navigation design specific to that set of artifacts.

The project would also be an exercise in unifying different media types within a single aesthetic that could be applied to Disneyland snapshots as well as to crime photos. More importantly, the project would be an attempt to realize the proper compromise between intuitive navigation and the elusive "exploratory interface." I typically use this phrase derisively since I most often encounter it as a rationalization for bad design, as the creator claims to be developing an interface that encourages the user to meticulously explore the design to find navigational clues. In such cases, the user typically finds the ‘quit’ button long before she finds these mysterious clues. Despite the misuse of the exploratory interface, it still offers a worthy goal, but only if the right compromise can be struck, compelling the user to actually peer into the crevices of the interface long before the Control-Q key combo becomes irresistible.

ADVANTAGES

The project offers a strong match with the content of Janet Murray’s interactive narrative class as we analyze the user of non-linearity in film (Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Go, Two Days in the Valley, Rashomon).

Domain information is easily accessible through novels written about the murder.

Project development would include preparation of materials suitable for the Digital Arts and Culture Conference to be held at Georgia Tech on October 28-30, particularly if surveillance is one of the key themes of the Saturday night exhibition/reception.

The project’s use of photographic footage (rather than creating animated characters) may be less labor-intensive and would avoid some of the legal issues of recycling existent images.