P. 126: "the more realized the immersive environment, the more active we want to be within it... However, we do not usually expect to experience agency within a narrative environment."
P. 128: Digital interactive productions differ from earlier forms in that user decisions can affect the entire system, not just a part of it.
P. 128: "...activity alone is not agency."
PP. 128-29: "Agency... goes beyond both participation and activity. As an aesthetic pleasure, as an experience to be savored for its own sake, it is offered to a limited degree in traditional art forms but is more commonly available in the structured activities we call games."
P. 129: "The ability to move through virtual landscapes can be pleasurable in itself, independent of the content of the spaces."
P. 132: The trouble with mazes and quests--they seem committed to singular solutions.
P. 133: "In trying to create texts that do not 'privilege' any one order of reading or interpretative framework, the postmodernists are privileging confusion itself. The indeterminate structure of these hypertexts frustrates our desire for narrational agency, for using the act of navigation to unfold a story that flows from our own meaningful choices."
PP. 134-35: "The potential of the labyrinth as a participatory narrative form would seem to lie somewhere between the two ["maze" and "rhizome"], in stories that are goal driven enough to guide navigation but open-ended enough to allow free exploration and that display a satisfying dramatic structure no matter how the interactor chooses to traverse the space."
P. 135: "violence hubs"
P. 142: "The superiority of the losing endings of Myst suggest a basic opposition between game form and narrative form. How can we tell significant stories in a form that always has to end happily? How can we impose endings that yield complex story satisfactions on a form that is based on win/lose simplicity?"
P. 144: The social purpose of games: practicing for real life.
P. 147: "We need to find substitutes for shooting off a gun that will offer the same immediacy of effect but allow for more complex and engaging story content."
P. 149: MUDs as "constructivist adult make-believe."
P. 152: "Authorship in electronic media is procedural. Procedural authorship means writing the rules by which texts appear as well as writing the texts themselves. It means writing the rules for the interactor's involvement, that is, the conditions under which things will happen in response to the participant's actions."
P. 153: "The interactor is not the author of the digital narrative, although the interactor can experience one of the most exciting aspects of artistic creation--the thrill of exerting power over enticing and plastic materials. This is not authorship but agency."
