Abstract: Many different approaches have been suggested for how stories can be told using interactive media. Forms have emerged which range from the collections of text fragments and links that one finds in hypertext fiction, the adventure-game-like experience of interactive fiction, the story-driven gameplay of Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation, 2004), through to the one-act-play drama of Façade (Procedural Arts LLC, 2005). All of these forms suggest different underlying models as to what makes a story “interactive”. This paper will explore the ways in which the materiality of the tools used to create an interactive story influence the form of the resulting work, with reference to works created using two different authoring tools: Flash (Adobe Systems Incorporated, 2007), and the NeverWinter Nights Aurora Toolkit (Bioware Corporation, 2002). A comparison of these works will be used to reflect upon the various forms of storytelling that may be possible within interactive media.

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I existed independently of time and matter, I felt myself departing from my body as I imagined a spirit would depart -emanating into the cockpit, extending through the fuselage as though no frame of fabric walls were there, angling upward, outward, until I reformed in an awareness far distant from the human form I left in a fast-flying transatlantic plane. But I remained connected to my body through a long extended strand, a strand so tenuous that it could have been severed by a breath.
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