Real Story Interaction: The Role of Global Agency in Interactive Storytelling

Interactive Storytelling (IS) is a promising new entertainment technology synthesizing pre-authored narrative with dynamic user interaction. Research on user experiences in IS is sparse. The current experiment tested whether different player expectations regarding the impact of their actions yield different user experiences by framing user agency as “local” vs. “global” in the introduction to the story. Local agency influences character behavior and story events, whereas global agency influences story development and outcomes. A between-subject design involved N = 46 participants playing the interactive story “Dinner Date”. Findings suggest that experiential qualities (autonomy, flow, curiosity) reached higher levels when players believed to have an impact on the story outcome (global agency). Enjoyment did not differ between conditions. Systematic gender differences in user experiences are discussed.