Q8: Are games of progression purely computer-based?

In my opinion, narratives and games of progression are a match made in heaven, considering the fact that narratives achieve the best effects when revealed in the manner intended by the author, which goes down very well with the stage by stage revelation in games of progression. To turn such a combination into a non-computer game would also not be much difficulty since non-computer games offer greater flexibility in terms of stimulus and response. As an example, just think of project 1 by Achu & co. except that it’s modified such that each piece of evidence is revealed in a stage-by-stage manner upon completion of a certain challenge i.e. solving an anagram, piecing torn pieces of paper to form a letter etc. by the player at each stage.

The reason why it is hard to name a non computer-based version of such a game is that games of such kinds can be informal in nature and may take many forms such that there is no standardised way of playing or a standard narrative used to give the game the form of prominence that can earn it a name or even a genre that it can call its own. There are others, however, that have managed to circumvent these limitations, which we shall find out below.

Interactive fiction of the Choose Your Own Adventure kind is a good example of such a combination. These textual adventures have a strong sense of structure, such that they would pass the ‘walkthrough’ test with flying colours. Structurally, they resemble text adventures of the likes of Zork & Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, although books do not allow for a word-parsing component. The challenge in such adventures is to select the right options that will lead to a progression towards the desired ending. Choosing a wrong option will lead to less desirable endings, which can be constituted as a ‘lose’ state in terms of quantifiable outcomes. With much of the control maintained by the author, the adventures maintain a well-formed narrative arch regardless of its endings. Recently, DVD editions of the series have also been released, thus providing another example of a non-computer game of progression.

Despite the rigidity and specificity of the rules in such progression games, there seems to exist, possibilities still, for the development of emergent behaviours. Readers can choose to ignore the rules and read through the entire narrative thus moving in a direction not prescribed by the author. In this sense, the rules do not have full regulation on the player and points out the fact that emergence is an aspect that is hard to avoid in games because there are always game players who seek a varied experience. That probably explains why cheat codes, trainers and walkthroughs (sometimes provided by game developers themselves) exist as forms of meta-emergence even for the purest examples of computer-based games of progression.