New Narratives

Karin Wenz, Assistant Professor of English, University of Kassel

The space of computer games is a technical one which emerges through the fusion of computer and television. The audio-visual space of TV and its function as a medium of presentation converges with the digital space of the computer and its functions as a medium of storage, transfer and computing. The result is an intermedial system with newcapacities in regard to narrative time and narrative space. "New kinds of immersive narrative have begun to appear in which the "reader" interacts in new ways with a fictional environment. ... This new narrative form ... combines exploratory games and interactive narrative storyworlds" (Landow 1996: 233).