Hi everyone,
I’m writing a Master’s thesis about interactive literature (visual novels, gamebooks, text-adventure games, etc.), and more specifically, about the future of interactive literature. And I would like to ask for your opinion on the following possible future scenarios for interactive literature on how likely you think they are and to what extent.
You don’t have to give an opinion on every one of the scenario, just the ones you find the most interesting or likely, but you are more than welcome to.
And if you come up with any additional scenarios feel free to add them in. I’m interested to see what kind of scenarios I didn’t think about.
The scenarios:
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Text-adventure games and gamebooks will be implemented as interactive audiobooks, played on hardware such as the Amazon Alexa (like in the Skyrim: Very Special Edition trailer).
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Interactive books, such as gamebooks and choose-your-own-adventure books will once more achieve mainstream popularity thanks to e-books.
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Text-adventure games will start to leverage AI more as a content generator or a ”dungeon master”, constantly generating new content and adapting to the players’ actions, such as with AI Dungeon.
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Text-adventure games will implement AR and VR to complement the text-display (maybe in the style of Matrix’ “you see the text everywhere” or by way of pop-ups: images, characters, videos, “holographic” depictions of events, as seen in many sci-fi/cyberpunk detective works).
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Hyperfiction stories and platforms (such as Twine) achieve mainstream popularity
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Hyperfiction and point and click games will implement AR and VR to at least moderate success.
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Visual novels without text displays will become popular (being like interactive, illustrated audiobooks or interactive cartoons or comic books with voice acting) with speech recognition used for interactivity.
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Visual novels will fade out of popularity and be replaced by more cinematic interactive stories, the likes of Detroit: Become Human.
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VR Visual novels, such as Tokyo Chronos and Koikatsu VR, will become popular.
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Visual novels have reached their zenith state and will be the most popular form of interactive literature just as they are.
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Visual novels will be implemented in AR (Augmented Reality), readable/playable with, for example Google Glass.
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“True” gamebooks, such as the Fighting Fantasy series, will achieve mainstream popularity.
I’ll use the results in my thesis to see what readers, developers, and otherwise interested parties think about the various future possibilities for interactive literature, and whether or not there is one or two scenarios that standout above the rest. I won’t be gathering any names or anything, only the opinions in general context.
If you would like to talk about the topic more in private, you can DM/PM me.