Abstract
With a special focus in designing interactive stories for children, this article considers transcripts, whether playscripts of interactive stories or recordings of video games, as transitional objects, not as crutch, but as a bridge between the open possibility space of games and the fixed linear realms of video and print. Through a series of examples, the authors argue that transcripts provide a stabilizing aid for reading and interacting in digital environs for users of all levels of experience. The transcript offers the player a means to fulfill and extend the creative collaboration of play by producing a record of their performance. Despite freezing interaction, transcripts provide a tracing, a linearization of experience that may prove to be central rather than secondary to gameplay. We argue that game designers should consider the central role of the transcript in player retention, comfort, and pleasure.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Stood, B.D., Amspaugh, L.B., Hunt, J.: Emergent literacy: early literary experiences. In: Children’s Literature. MacMillan Education, Melbourne (1996)
Piaget, J., Inhelder, B.: The Psychology of the Child. Basic Books, New York (1969)
Bland, J.: Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment: Children and Teenagers in English Language Education. Bloomsbury Academic, London (2013)
Sontag, S.: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks. In: Rieff, D. (ed.), pp. 1947–1963. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (2008)
Winnicott, D.W.: Playing and Reality. Tavistock, London (1971). http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/winnicott1.pdf
Schwab, G.: Reader Response and the Aesthetic Experience of Otherness. Stanford Lit. Rev. 107–136. Spring (1986)
Poulet, G.: Criticism and the experience of interiority. In: Tompkins, J.P. (ed.) Reader - Response Criticism. From Formalism to Post-structuralism, pp. 41–49. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (1980)
Ramada, L., Reyes, L.: Digital Migrations: Exploratory Research on Children’s E-Lit Reading Profiles. Peter Lang, New York (2015)
Monfort, N.: Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, p. 24. MIT, Cambridge (2005)
Goicoechea, M., Sanz, A.: Literary reading rituals and practices on new interfaces. Literary Linguist. Comput. 27(3), 331–346 (2012). Oxford University Press
Dena, C.: “The Dance of Life.” Cross-Media Entertainment. 15 March 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060524225045/http://www.cross-mediaentertainment.com/index.php/2006/03/15/dance-of-life/
The Marino Family. Mrs. Wobbles and the Tangerine House (2013–2015). http://markcmarino.com/mrsw/
Pressman, J.: The aesthetics of bookishness in twenty-first century literature. Mich. Q. Rev. 48, 465–482 (2009). Fall
Aarseth, E.J.: Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (1997)
Plott. Sean S. A Case Study of Day [9] TV: How Interactive Web Television Parallels Game Design. Masters thesis. USC (2011)
Douglass, J.: Command Lines: Aesthetics and Technique in Interactive Fiction and New Media. Dissertation. UC Santa Barbara, p. 66 (2007)
Douglass, J.: Personal interview via telephone, 6 June 2016
Buckingham, D.: Game literacy in theory and practice. J. Educ. Multimedia Hypermedia 16(3), 323–349 (2007)
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by the project eLITE-CM: Electronic Literary Edition (reference: H2015/HUM- 3426) within the Program of Research and Development among Research Teams of the Community of Madrid in Social Sciences and the Humanities, and 50 % co-financed by the European Social Fund for the programming period 2014–2020.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Goicoechea, M., Marino, M.C. (2016). Can You Read Me that Story Again? The Role of the Transcript as Transitional Object in Interactive Storytelling for Children. In: Nack, F., Gordon, A. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10045. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48279-8_27
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48279-8_27
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48278-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48279-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)