Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and

Games
Eric Zimmerman
2004-07-07

Discipline?

Yes, discipline. On one level, this essay is about identifying a desperate need
for discipline and the delivery of that discipline to its well-deserved targets. A
kind of disciplinary spanking, if you will.

On another level, this essay is about games and stories. Undoubtedly, there is
a tremendous amount of interest in the intersection of games and stories these
days. Academic journals, conferences, and courses about computer-based
storytelling, digital interactivity, and gaming culture have flourished like a
species of virulent weed in the manicured garden of the university. On the
commercial end of things, game developers increasingly rely on filmic story
techniques in the design of their products, turning present-day computer and
video games into a kind of mutant cinema. Meanwhile, shelves of books like
this one are being written and published, tossed out like stepping stones into
the emerging terrain where design, technology, art, entertainment, and
academia meet.

Curiously, so much of this interest is driven by a kind of love/hate relationship

with the medium. For as much as we seem enamored by the possibilities of
digital media, we seem just as soundly dissatisfied with its current state.
Lurking just below the surface of most of the chapters in this volume is one
sort of frustration or another: frustration with the lack of cultural
sophistication in the gaming industry; frustration with the limitations of
current technology; frustration with a lack of critical theory for properly
understanding the medium. Perhaps frustration is a necessary part of the
process. But perhaps we can relieve some of that frustration with some good
old-fashioned discipline.

Looking Closer

Compared to the more robust fields that cluster about the theory and practice
of other media, it's clear that the "game-story" as a form remains largely
unexplored. Terms and concepts run amuck like naughty schoolchildren. And a
more disciplined look would indeed seem to be in order. But what would it
mean to take a closer look at games and stories?

Does it mean figuring out how to make games more like stories? Or how to
make stories more gamelike? Does it mean documenting and typologizing new
forms of game/story culture? Integrating games into learning? Mapping
relationships between digital media and other media? Inventing programming
strategies for storytelling? Understanding the ways that digital media operate
in culture at large? There are as many approaches to the question of "games
and stories" as there are designers, artists, technologists, and academics
asking the questions.

The truth, of course, is that there are no right or wrong approaches. It all
depends on the field in which a particular inquiry is operating and exactly what
the inquiry itself is trying to accomplish. However, there is common ground.
What everyone investigating the "game-story" would share are in fact those
two strange terms: "games" and "stories."

Concepts and terms do seem to be at the heart of the matter. This essay
tackles the terminological knot of the "game-story" by prying apart and
recombining the two concepts into four: narrative, interactivity, play, and
games. Each concept is considered in relationship to each other as well as to
the larger question of "games and stories." My goal is to frame these concepts
in ways that bring insight to their interrelations, with the larger aim of
providing critical tools for others who are attempting to create or study the
conundrum of the game-story.

Four Naughty Terms

Play. Games. Narrative. Interactivity. What a motley bunch. Honestly, have you
ever seen such a suspicious set of slippery and ambiguous, overused, and ill-
defined terms? Indeed, they are all four in need of some discipline, just to
make them sit still and behave. Before I roll up my sleeves and get to work on
them, however, allow me to lay some of my cards on the table, in the form of a
series of disclaimers.

Disclaimer 1: Concepts, Not Categories

In presenting these four terms (games, play, narrative, and interactivity), I'm
not creating a typology. The four terms are not mutually exclusive, nor do they
represent four categories, with each category containing a different kind of
phenomena. They are four concepts, each concept overlapping and
intersecting the others in complex and unique ways. In other words, the four
words are not the four quadrants of a grid or the four levels of a building. They
are "things to think with"; they are signs for clusters of concepts; they are
frames and schemas for understanding; they are dynamic conceptual tools;
they represent a network of ideas that flow into and through each other.

Disclaimer 2: Forget the Computer

While digital media is certainly a primary vector in the momentum of interest

that has led to this book, the phenomena we call games and stories -- as well as
play, narrative, and interactivity -- predate computers by millennia. Computer
media is one context for understanding them, but I'm going to try to avoid
typical technological myopia by examining these concepts in a broad spectrum
of digital and nondigital manifestations.

Disclaimer 3: Defining Definitions

For each of the four key terms, I do present a "definition." The value of a
definition in this essay is not its scientific accuracy but instead its conceptual
utility. I give definitions not in order to explain phenomena, but in order to
understand them.

Disclaimer 4: Why I'm Doing This

Why does it matter to me to better understand "games and stories"? Because

I'm a designer of game-stories, and a closet Modernist to boot. I'm looking to
better understand the medium in which I work, in order to create new and
meaningful things that no one has ever experienced before. It's certainly not
the only kind of stance to take. But now you know where I'm coming from.

Narrative

First term: narrative. I'm going to begin with this close cousin to the "stories"
of the "games and stories" equation. My strategy of discipline for the term
narrative is to present a broad and expansive understanding of the concept, to
think beyond the normal limits of what we might consider narrative, to help
uncover the common turf of stories and games.

The Definition

I draw my definition from an essay by J. Hillis Miller: "Narrative," from the

book Critical Terms for Literary Study (1995). Miller's definition of the term
"narrative," grossly paraphrased, has three parts:

1. A narrative has an initial state, a change in that state, and insight brought
about by that change. You might call this process the "events" of a narrative.

2. A narrative is not merely a series of events, but a personification of events

though a medium such as language. This component of the definition
references the representational aspect of narrative.

3. And last, this representation is constituted by patterning and repetition. This

is true for every level of a narrative, whether it is the material form of the
narrative itself or its conceptual thematics.

It's quite a general definition. Let's see what might be considered narrative
according to these three criteria. A book is certainly a narrative by this
definition, whether it is a straightforward linear novel or a choose-your-own-
adventure interactive book, in which each page ends with a choice that can
bring the reader to different sections of the book. Both kinds of books contain
events which are represented through text and through the patterned
experience of the book and its language.

A game of chess could also be considered a narrative by this scheme. How?

Chess certainly has a beginning state (the setup of the game), changes to that
state (the gameplay), and a resulting insight (the outcome of the game). It is a
representation -- a stylized representation of war, complete with a cast of
colorful characters. And the game takes place in highly patterned structures of
time (turns), and space (the checkerboard grid).

Many other kinds of things fall into the wide net Miller casts as well -- some of
them activities or objects we wouldn't normally think of as narrative. A
marriage ceremony. A meal. A conversation. The cleverness of Miller's
definition is that it is in fact so inclusive, while still rigorously defining exactly
what a narrative is.

Because, what I wish to ask is NOT the overused question:

Is this thing (such as a game) a "narrative thing" or not?

Instead, the question I'd like to pose is:

In what ways might we consider this thing (such as a game) a "narrative

thing"?

What am I after? If I'm intersecting games and stories to create something new
out of the synthesis of both, my aim with the concept of narrative should not be
to replicate existing narrative forms but to invent new ones. The commercial
game industry is suffering from a peculiar case of cinema envy at the moment,
trying to recreate the pleasures of another media. What would a game-story be
like that wouldn't be so beholden to preexisting linear media? Good question.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're still two full terms away from games.
Next victim: interactivity.

Interactivity

Interactivity is one of those words which can mean everything and nothing at
once. So in corralling this naughty concept, my aim is to try to understand it in
its most general sense, but also to identify those very particular aspects of
interactivity which are relevant to "games and stories."

The Definition

Try this on for size, from dictionary.com:

interactive: reciprocally active; acting upon or influencing each other; allowing

a two-way flow of information between a device and a user, responding to the
user's input

OK. So there's an adequate common-sense definition. But if we're triangulating

our concept of narrative with this concept of interactivity, the problem is that
by this definition all forms of narrative end up being interactive. For example,
take this book you're holding. Can you really say that the experience of reading
it isn't interactive? Aren't you holding the book and physically turning the
pages? Aren't you emotionally and psychologically immersed? Aren't you
cognitively engaging with language itself to decode the signs of the text? And
doesn't the physical form of the book and your understanding of its contents
evolve as you interact with it? Yes and no.

If what we're after is relationships between our terms, it's important to find the
terrain of overlap between narrative and interactivity. But we don't want the
two terms to be identical. It seems important to be able to say that some
narratives are interactive and some are not -- or rather, that perhaps all
narratives can be interactive, but they can be interactive in different ways.

Intuitively, there is in fact some kind of difference between a typical linear

book and a choose-your-own-adventure book. And it seems that the difference
in some way is that naughty concept of interactivity. Here's one solution.
Instead of understanding "interactivity" as a singular phenomenon, let's
subdivide it into the various ways it can be paired up with a narrative
experience. Four modes of narrative interactivity are presented:

Mode 1: Cognitive Interactivity; or Interpretive Participation with a Text

This is the psychological, emotional, hermeneutic, semiotic, reader-
response, Rashomon -effect-ish, etc. kind of interactions that a participant can
have with the so-called "content" of a text. Example: you reread a book after
several years have passed and you find it's completely different than the book
you remember.

Mode 2: Functional Interactivity; or Utilitarian Participation with a Text

Included here: functional, structural interactions with the material textual
apparatus. That book you reread: did it have a table of contents? An index?
What was the graphic design of the pages? How thick was the paper stock?
How large was the book? How heavy? All of these characteristics are part of
the total experience of reading interaction.

Mode 3: Explicit Interactivity; or Participation with Designed Choices and

Procedures in a Text
This is "interaction" in the obvious sense of the word: overt participation such
as clicking the nonlinear links of a hypertext novel, following the rules of a
Surrealist language game, rearranging the clothing on a set of paper dolls.
Included here: choices, random events, dynamic simulations, and other
procedures programmed into the interactive experience.

Mode 4: Meta-interactivity; or Cultural Participation with a Text

This is interaction outside the experience of a single text. The clearest
examples come from fan culture, in which readers appropriate, deconstruct,
and reconstruct linear media, participating in and propagating massive
communal narrative worlds.

These four modes of narrative interactivity (cognitive, functional, explicit, and

cultural) are not four distinct categories, but four overlapping flavors of
participation that occur to varying degrees in all media experience. Most
interactive activities incorporate some or all of them simultaneously.

So, what we normally think of as "interactive," what separates the book from
the choose-your-own-adventure, is category number three: explicit
interactivity. As we hone in on our four terms, note that we've made enough
progress to already identify those phenomena we might call "interactive
narratives." The newspaper as a whole is not explicitly interactive, but the
letters-to-the-editor section is. Are games interactive narratives in this sense?
Absolutely. The choices and decisions that game players make certainly
constitute very explicit interactivity. We're getting closer to games. But
first: play.

Play

Perhaps more than any other one of the four concepts, play is used in so many
contexts and in so many different ways that it's going to be a real struggle to
make it play nice with our other terms. We play games. We play with toys. We
play musical instruments and we play the radio. We can make a play on words,
be playful during sex, or simply be in a playful state of mind.

What do all of those meanings have to do with narrative and interactivity?

Before jumping into a definition of play, first let's try to categorize all of these
diverse play phenomena. We can put them into three general categories.

Category 1: Game Play, or the Formal Play of Games

This is the focused kind of play that occurs when one or more players plays a
game, whether it is a board game, card game, sport, computer game, etc. What
exactly is a game? We're getting to that soon.

Category 2: Ludic Activities, or Informal Play

This category includes all of those nongame behaviors that we also think of as
"playing:" dogs chasing each other, two college students tossing a frisbee back
and forth, a circle of children playing ring-around-the-rosy, etc. Ludic activities
are quite similar to games, but generally less formalized.

Category 3: Being Playful, or Being in a Play State of Mind

This broad category includes all of the ways we can "be playful" in the context
of other activities. Being in a play state of mind does not necessarily mean that
you are playing -- but rather that you are injecting a spirit of play into some
other action. For example, it is one thing to insult a friend's appearance, but it
is another thing entirely if the insult is delivered playfully.

A quick structural note -- the latter categories contain the earlier ones. Game
play (1) is a particular kind of ludic activity (2) and ludic activities (2) are a
particular way of being playful (3). But what overarching definition could we
possibly give to the word "play" that would address all of these uses?

The Definition

How about:

Play is the free space of movement within a more rigid structure. Play exists
both because of and also despite the more rigid structures of a system.

That sounds quite abstract and obtuse for a fun-loving word like "play," doesn't
it? But it is actually quite handy. This definition of play is about relationships
between the elements of a system. Think about the use of the word "play"
when we talk about the "free play" of a steering wheel. The free play is the
amount of movement that the steering wheel can turn before it begins to affect
the tires of the car. The play itself exists only because of the more utilitarian
structures of the driving-system: the drive shaft, axles, wheels, etc.

But even though the play only occurs because of these structures, the play is
also exactly that thing that exists despite the system, the free movement within
it, in the interstitial spaces between and among its components. Play exists in
opposition to the structures it inhabits, at odds with the utilitarian functioning
of the system. Yet play is at the same time an expression of a system, and
intrinsically a part of it.

This definition of play does in fact cover all three kinds that we mentioned
previously. Playing Chutes and Ladders occurs only because of the rigid rules
of the game -- but the gameplay itself is a kind of dance of fate which occurs
somewhere among the dice, pieces, board, and game players. Playing a
musical instrument means manipulating within the free space of audio
possibilities that the structure of the instrument was designed to engender.
Being playful in a conversation means playing in and among the linguistic and
social structures that constitute the conversational context. Play can manifest
in a dizzying variety of forms, from intellectual and physical play to semiotic
and cultural play.

One way to link this understanding of play to narrative and interactivity is to

consider the play of an explicitly interactive narrative. The challenge for the
creator of an interactive narrative is to design the potential for play into the
structure of the experience, whether that experience is a physical object, a
computer program, an inhabited space, or a set of behaviors.

And the real trick is that the designed structure can guide and engender play,
but never completely script it in advance. If the interaction is completely
predetermined, there's no room for play in the system. The author of a choose-
your-own-adventure creates the structure that the reader inhabits, but the play
emerges out of that system as the reader navigates through it. Even if the
reader breaks the structure by cheating and skipping ahead, that is merely
another form of play within the designed system.

Games

We have arrived at our fourth and final term: games. With this concept, we
have a new kind of naughtiness. Play, interactivity, and narrative threatened us
with overinclusion. "Games," on the other hand, needs some discipline because
it's difficult to understand exactly and precisely what a game is. My approach
with this concept is to define it as narrowly as possible so that we can
understand what separates the play of games from other kinds of ludic
activities. We are, after all, looking at games and stories, not play and stories.
The Definition

The fact that games are a formal kind of play was referenced before. But how
exactly is that formality manifest? Here is a definition that separates games
from other forms of play:

A game is a voluntary interactive activity, in which one or more players follow

rules that constrain their behavior, enacting an artificial conflict that ends in a
quantifiable outcome.

It is a bit dense. Here are the primary elements of the definition, teased out for
your perusal:

Voluntary
If you're forced against your will to play a game, you're not really playing.
Games are voluntary activities.

Interactive Remember this word? It's referencing our third mode of

interactivity: explicit participation.

Behavior-Constraining Rules
All games have rules. These rules provide the structure out of which the play
emerges. It's also important to realize that rules are essentially restrictive and
limit what the player can do.

Artificiality
Games maintain a boundary from so-called "real life" in both time and space.
Although games obviously do occur within the real world, artificiality is one of
their defining features. Consider, for example, the formal limits of time and
space that are necessary to define even a casual game of street hoops.

Conflict
All games embody a contest of powers. It might be a conflict between two
players as in chess; it might be a contest between several teams, as in a track
meet; a game might be a conflict between a single player and the forces of luck
and skill embodied in solitaire; or even a group of players competing together
against the clock on a game show.
Quantifiable Outcome
The conflict of a game has an end result, and this is the quantifiable outcome.
At the conclusion of a game, the participants either won or lost (they might all
win or lose together) or they received a numerical score, as in a videogame.
This idea of a quantifiable outcome is what often distinguishes a bona fide
game from other less formal play activities.

Games embody the same structure-play relationship of other ludic activities,

where play emerges as the free space of movement within more rigid
structures. But the fact that games are so formalized gives them a special
status in this regard. To create a game is to design a set of game rules (as well
as game materials, which are an extension of the rules). The rules of a game
serve to limit players' behaviors. In a game of Parcheesi, for example, players
interact with the dice in extremely particular ways. You don't eat them, hide
them from other players, or make jewelry out of them. When it is your turn,
you roll the dice, and translate the numerical results into the movement of
your pieces. To take part in a game is to submit your behavior to the
restrictions of the rules.

Rules might not seem like much fun. But once players set the system of a game
into motion, play emerges. And play is the opposite of rules. Rules are fixed,
rigid, closed, and unambiguous. Play, on the other hand, is uncertain, creative,
improvisational, and open-ended. The strange coupling of rules and play is one
of the fascinating paradoxes of games.

Mixing and Matching

We've arrived at a relatively clear understanding of exactly what constitutes a

game. So how do games intersect with the other three concepts at hand?

Narrative: As we observed with chess, games are in fact narrative systems.

They aren't the only form that narrative can take, but every game can be
considered a narrative system.

Interactivity: Games are interactive too. They generally embody all four modes
of interactivity outlined in this essay, but they are particularly good examples
of the third kind: explicit interactivity.
Play: Games are among the many and diverse forms of play. The formal quality
of games distinguishes them from other ludic play-activities.

What does this mean? It is possible to frame games as narrative systems, or as

interactive systems, or as systems of play. Whereas this seems like an obvious
set of conclusions to draw, remember that the goal wasn't to place the concept
of games inside some categories and keep it out of others. Armed with very
particular understandings of narrative, play, and interactivity, these three
concepts become frames or schemas that we can use to tease out particular
qualities of the complex phenomena of games. And it goes without saying that
there are innumerable other terms we might bring to bear on the concept of
games as well: games as mathematical systems, ideological systems, semiotic
systems, systems of desire. It's an endless list. I chose play, narrative, and
interactivity in order to shed light on the game-story. So let's get back to that
important question.

Stories and Games

So. We've disciplined our four naughty terms until they've finally behaved and
we've come full circle, back to the original question of games and stories. This
essay began by observing a general dissatisfaction with the current state of
game-story theory and practice. Perhaps it can end with some suggestions for
future work.

A story is the experience of a narrative. And the dissatisfaction with game-

stories is a dissatisfaction with the way that games function as storytelling
systems. Remembering the concept of narrative, story-systems function by
representing changes of events though pattern and repetition. This act of
representation -- or, we might say, signification -- is how narrative operates.

So one relevant question to ask is: How can games represent narrative
meaning? Or rather: How can games signify? Remember, it's not a question of
whether or not games are narrative, but instead how they are narrative. And if
my agenda with this investigation of the "game-story" is to inculcate genuinely
new forms of experience, then we need to ask not just how games can be
narrative systems, but we need to ask how games can be narrative systems in
ways that other media cannot.
It's clear that games can signify in ways that other narrative forms have
already established: through sound and image, material and text,
representations of movement and space. But perhaps there are ways that only
games can signify, drawing on their unique status as explicitly interactive
narrative systems of formal play.

Example: Ms. Pac-Man

This much we know: one way of framing games is to frame them as game-
stories. So let's take a well-known example -- the arcade game Ms. Pac-
Man (figure 13.1) -- and look closely at the diverse ways that it signifies
narrative.

13.1. Ms. Pac-Man (Namco)

First observation: there are many story elements to Ms. Pac-Man that are not
directly related to the gameplay. For instance, the large-scale characters on
the physical arcade game cabinet establish a graphical story about the chase
between Ms. Pac-Man and the ghosts. There are also brief noninteractive
animations inside the game, which appear between every few levels. These
simple cartoons chronicle events in the life of Ms. Pac-Man: meeting her beau
Pac-Man, outwitting the ever-pursuing ghosts, etc.

But while these story-components are important parts of the larger Ms. Pac-
Manexperience, they are not at the heart of what distinguishes Ms. Pac-Man as
a game -story. The arcade cabinet graphics and linear cartoon animations sit
adjacent to the actual gameplay itself, where a different kind of narrative
awaits. As the player participates with the system, playing the game, exploring
its rule-structures, finding the patterns of free play that will let the game
continue, a narrative unfolds in real time.

What kind of story is it? It's a narrative about life and death, about
consumption and power. It's a narrative about strategic pursuit through a
constrained space, about dramatic reversals of fortune where the hunter
becomes the hunted. It's a narrative about relationships, in which every
character on the screen, every munchable dot and empty corridor, are
meaningful parts of a larger system. It's a narrative that always has the same
elements, yet unfolds differently each time it is experienced. And it's also a
kind of journey, where the player and protagonist are mapped onto each other
in complicated and subtle ways. This is a narrative in which procedures,
relationships, and complex systems dynamically signify. It is the kind of
narrative that only a game could tell.

Quick reminder: although I may have focused on the gameplay elements of

the Ms. Pac-Man narrative, ultimately the player's experience of the game-
story is composed of the entire arcade game. This includes not just the
gameplay itself but the cabinet graphics and the cartoon animations, the sound
of a quarter dropping and the texture of the joystick, the social and
architectural dynamics of the arcade itself, the gender ideologies of the game
and its historical relationship to the original Pac-Man, the marketing of the
character and its penetration into pop culture at large.

But at the center of this expansive game experience is the game of Ms. Pac-
Man -- that artificial conflict with a quantifiable outcome. The gameplay of Ms.
Pac-Man is in some sense the kernel at the center of the machine, the engine
that drives all of the other elements, putting the game in the game-story.

And as a story, it is compelling enough to have found Ms. Pac-Man a worldwide

audience of dedicated players. It's important to note that the "story" of the Ms.
Pac-Man game-story certainly does not provide the same pleasures of a novel
or film. But why should we expect it to? The question is, what pleasures can it
provide that books or film cannot?

Wrap-up and Send-off

Because games are always already narrative systems, the question that weaves
through this book -- the question "Is there a game-story?" -- is ultimately moot.
Recognizing that narrative is one of many ways to frame a game experience,
for me a more important question is: How can we capitalize on the unique
qualities of games in order to create new kinds of game-stories? What if
dynamic play procedures were used as the very building blocks of storytelling?

There are already many wonderful examples of this kind of thinking. The
children's board game Up the River by Ravensburger uses a modular game
board to procedurally recreate the rhythmic flow of a stream. And The Sims, a
computer game mentioned often in this volume, is a game-story too. Instead of
presenting a prescripted narrative like most digital "interactive
narratives," The Sims functions as a kind of story-machine, generating
unexpected narrative events out of complex and playful simulation.

But much more needs to be done. Any observation made about games, play,
narrative, and interactivity could be used as the starting point for a new kind
of game-story. Here are some examples that cannibalize statements I made
earlier in this essay:

The concept of "narrative" casts a wide net. Many experiences can be

considered narrative experiences, like a meal or a marriage ceremony. How
would we make a game-story about these kinds of subjects?

Interactivity can occur on a cultural level. How could a game-story be designed

with meta-interactivity in mind, so that the narrative emerged as the sum of
many different player experiences in otherwise unrelated games?

Mischief is a form of play. What would a game be like that encouraged players
to break the existing rules in order to form new ones?

Games are about conflict. OK, so we're drowning in fighting games. What
about a game that told a story of the feints, bluffing, trickery, and intimidation
of a good argument?

Yes, these are difficult kinds of challenges. But if we're going to move through
our collective dissatisfaction with the current state of the game-story, it's time
to rethink the terms of the debate and arrive at new ways of understanding
game-stories, and new strategies for creating them. This essay attempted to
re-present some of those terms. In this painfully brief space, I have been able
to do no more than gesture towards some of these new avenues. There are
many more concepts in need of discipline. And the rest is up to you.

Responses

Jesper Juul responds

Chris Crawford responds

Eric Zimmerman responds

Notes

Many of the ideas in this essay were generated in collaboration with Frank
Lantz, with whom I have taught Game Design and Interactive Narrative Design
for many years. Many ideas also stem from my collaborations with Katie Salen,
with whom I am currently co-authoring a Game Design textbook for MIT Press.

The four categories of Narrative Interactivity first appeared in print in an essay

called, "Against Hypertext," for American Letters & Commentary.

The definition of games presented here is loosely inspired by a definition of

games presented by Elliott Avedon & Brian Sutton-Smith in The Study of
Games. However, elements are also borrowed from Roger Callois's Man, Play,
and Games, as well as Johannes Huizinga's Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play
Element in Culture and Bernard Suit's Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia.

Lastly: despite my extensive and gratuitous use of the disciplinary metaphor, I

do not advocate spanking children in any context. Disciplinary activity that
occurs between two consenting adults is another matter entirely. In any case
don't let the bad pun distract you -- the "discipline" I am talking about in this
essay is a discipline: the field of game design.

References

Avedon, Elliott, and Brian Sutton-Smith (1971). The Study of Games. New
York: John Wiley & Sons.

Callois, Roger (1961). Man, Play, and Games. New York: Free Press.
Huizinga, Johannes (1955). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in
Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.

Miller, J. Hillis (1995). "Narrative." In Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited
by Thomas McLaughlin and Frank Lentriccia. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

Suit, Bernard (1990). Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia. Boston: David R.
Godine.

Zimmerman, Eric (2000). "Against Hypertext." American Letters &

Commentary no.12 (2000).