Second Playthrough
Media and Form

Interactivity

In short The degree to which a work changes in response to what its audience does.

Interactivity is the degree to which a work changes in response to what its audience does. In an interactive work, the audience's input alters what happens next: the order of events, the outcome, or the state of the world on screen. That sets it apart from media consumed without input, such as a film or a novel, which unfold the same way whatever the viewer or reader does, even though they demand active interpretation. The useful question is not whether a work responds at all but what the input actually changes, and by how much. The word is often used loosely, for anything with buttons, which is why it pays to ask that question directly.

Not to be confused with

  • Player agency

    Interactivity is the work's capacity to respond to input; agency is the player's sense that the response follows from a choice they meant to make.

  • Feedback loop

    Interactivity concerns each response to an input; a feedback loop is the cycle that forms when those responses change the conditions for later inputs.

  • Simulation

    A simulation models how some system behaves and need not accept any input; interactivity says nothing about whether a real system is being modeled.

Where the game lives

  • rules
  • goals
  • feedback
  • uncertainty
  • choice
  • play

Interactivity needs only an input, a rule for responding to it and a visible response. Goals, uncertainty and play can be layered on top, but none is required, which is why interactive media are not automatically games.

used dropped · What the six structures are

Examples

  • The Cave of TimeEdward Packard (Bantam Books), 1979

    The first Choose Your Own Adventure book, in which the reader's choices decide which page comes next.

  • Black Mirror: BandersnatchNetflix, 2018

    A film in which viewers choose between options at set points, changing the scenes that follow and the ending.

  • Dear EstherThe Chinese Room, 2012

    The player can walk and look but cannot change the story, a useful test of how little input still counts as interactive.

In the essays

No essay takes this term on directly yet. Its neighbors in the guide are linked above; the newsletter announces new essays.

Sources

  1. BookChris Crawford. The Art of Interactive Design. No Starch Press, 2002. Defines interaction as a cyclic process of listening, thinking and speaking, and argues that interactivity comes in degrees. Reading list
  2. BookLev Manovich. The Language of New Media. MIT Press, 2001. Criticizes "interactive" as too broad a label for computer-based media. Reading list
  3. BookEspen J. Aarseth. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Reading list