The Art of the Environment in Interactive Walking Simulation Narratives: How GenAI Might Change the “Game”

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an essay and no empirical research.

The sources cited are important but limited. Some are a bit outdated although they pertain seminal works, so this is fine.

The first part, on Hardy and his work, feels sometimes a bit disconnected from  the real argument although one gets that it is about the role of the environment as co-author in the storytelling and is there just to set the scene.

Nice point of the space as a mnemonic device and of the space as co-author brought forward by GenAI.

This essay opens up the discussion on what we consider a story, what the purpose of a story is (especially if one is 'simply' generated by AI), of what is narratively effective, of what powerful stories are and of what is aesthetically desirable in a story. All very important questions.

In all of this, the role of the environment and of the environemt in games falls a bit in the background, departing from the title and from the original scope of the essay.

In this sense, some alignment would be needed.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language at points, especially at the start of the essay, is a bit weird and difficult. It is also a bit difficult to follow the argumentations at times.

Author Response

Summary of Changes made to submission:

After reviewing all four critical reviews, I identified the most substantial points beyond the simpler syntax changes most reviewers recommended. This was done as well, but I paid particular attention and agreed with the critic who challenged several key propositions and several references that seemed incomplete. I focused on these points, beginning with the challenge “that an understanding of the environment of (in this case) Hardy’s novels makes it possible for the reader to better “insert their own voice” into the conflicts of those novels, but this is not a well-explained or well-justified claim;” thus, I condensed the original eight paragraph focus on Hardy and Wessex into two paragraphs that emphasize instead Hardy’s use of Wessex as a device that underscores naturalism in novels of the period. Another critic recommended a similar reduction. The beginning moves now more quickly into my readings of the two walking simulators I chose to interpret as environmental, location-based literary works. This shift should satisfy the reviewer’s suggestion that “the two primary game objects are named … before the authors offer any close analysis of them. Like the novels in the introductory material, the games should be illustrated with some examples of environmental narrative (in those games), so that the reader can understand what sorts of things are being referred to.” The second section offers a general overview of the genre, drawing on an early digital literature critic’s introduction to it, noting the importance of player agency in these interactive works. This will help my specific focus on the two simulators I chose to analyze. In the breakdown presented in the third section, I look specifically at the relationship of ecology to the simulators with clearer examples. The key points are also attached to the same critics I introduced in the first version, but my use of Janet Murray provides more continuity and helps extend the analysis into the simulator Gone Home, using her insights into spatiality and what she describes as the specifically “rhizomatic” movement players end up taking. It also foregrounds my earlier study of how GenAI may signify a new kind of walking simulator. At this point in the essay, I respond in detail to one critic’s crucial note about missing an opportunity to introduce the critical work of Henry Jenkins on game design and narrative architecture. That deficit has been addressed, confirming the spatial elements in these landscape-based artworks. I believe it is essential to include the taxonomy Jenkins developed for these works. This section is thus extended to provide a more nuanced analysis of the two works I chose to exemplify, showing why walking simulators offer ecologically informed modes of narrativity. I disagree with one critic concerning how in their words, “the environment seems to play a supplementary (rather than primary) role: in Firewatch the environment becomes narrative by its association with an independent narrative, it amplifies or adds affective content to narrative elements that are not environmental. This misses the fact the story relies on landscape and ecological roles like being a “Firewatcher” in a national park, predating the current environmental crises now being experienced. There is metaphor, of course, in the title – since the “fire” we’re watching can be interpreted on a number of levels, but, in fact, is key to the narrative structure.

The final key point this critic argues needs attention is the actual exploration and analysis of GenAI in walking simulators, as I promised in my introduction. This writer understands it as indisputably the primary argument being made, especially as it is included. I wholeheartedly admit that I saw the September deadline more as an opportunity to submit a draft argument that I expected to rewrite with a stronger conclusion. There is a serious issue that must be addressed by contemporary “walking simulator” authors, since, as I note, expectations for “It is tempting to assume that the formal complexity of walking simulators—their combination of visual rendering, spatial navigation, ambient sound, and interactive objects—produces correspondingly complex narrative possibilities. But this assumption conflates sensory richness with semantic depth. I do think we are currently making decisions, as game producers, on how to balance these two elements better. Contemporary immersive art has similar challenges. But this interaction has long been a central issue in modern fiction. I do think there is a semantic richness to both Gone Home and Firewatch

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper examines an interesting subject matter—actually a few different interesting subject matters—and proposes some promising ways to think about those subject matters and to connect them to each other. The central subject matter is the genre of games known as walking simulators, and specifically the ways in which walking simulator games use the game’s environment to advance or enhance the game’s narrative dimensions. This central idea is bookended, at the outset of the essay, by some remarks on the use of environment as a narrative element in literature, and it is suggested that the environmentally fueled narratives of games are continuing this older literary device and drawing on similar principles. The bookend in the concluding section of the essay is about generative AI, and it speculatively examines ways in which AI might contribute to walking simulator games in order to make the games more “immersive” or more creative, with special attention to the use of AI to generate or modify features of the game’s environment in ways that preserve sense, respect the game’s action, but introduce genuine novelty and surprise.

 

The strength of the paper lies in its very worthy questions and in the promise of the various connections it makes among its different subject matters. Further, most of the analysis is well constructed at the paragraph level, and some of the “close reading” (of some games) and specific analysis (of the potential of AI) are insightful and revealing. Overall, the pieces are in place and the questions are intriguing, so this is a good setup for a paper.

 

But the essay does not yet deliver sufficiently on its promising setup. Most of the ideas, including the big ideas, are offered as suggestions, with little substantiation and even less critical examination. The GenAI stuff, which the title of the paper would designate as the main payoff of the analysis, is almost wholly speculative and lacking specificity. With the exception of a few pages of fairly close analysis of Gone Home and of Firewatch, in the middle of the essay, the essay reads more like a research proposal than a completed analysis. It is an intriguing possibility that walking simulator games continue and extend a tradition of the use of environmental narrative in (some) literature, but, while the essay certainly asserts that this is the case, it doesn’t actually show it to be the case with closely examined examples or thoughtfully considered analysis. Similarly, the proposal that GenAI could play a significant, even revolutionary role in generating responsive and dynamic environments (and other elements) in walking simulator (and other) games feels exciting and possibly imminent, but the relationship between AI and gaming described in this paper has little specificity and does not undertake an examination of how GenAI works nor whether it could be effectively integrated into games. (And as I mention below, the most interesting question in this regard is raised at a couple of points in the paper but never addressed in earnest.) The most specific paragraph about the potential of AI, beginning “This shift has profound implications,” merely lists without comment three ways that GenAI might be able to generate more creative meaning in games, but these possibilities are not further articulated and are not examined as to how and even whether they could really work. Instead, the analysis goes on to insist that this use of GenAI in gaming would lead to greater immersion, a contested term in game studies and thus a dubious conclusion even if it were justified here.

 

This is forthright broad criticism of the essay, and I am aware that I am exercising higher—or at least different—standards than do many readers. I know Prof. Moulthrop to be a very generous reader and thinker, and he may well find quite satisfying the provocative suggestions in this essay, even if they are not (yet) subjected to assiduous critical scrutiny. Should the authors wish to win over readers like me, I point here to some specific places and ideas in the essay that could be further developed or more carefully examined to generate more compelling insight…

 

1. As I mentioned above, the claim that walking simulator games are advancing (within their particular modality) a device used in some nineteenth-century literature is interesting but underdeveloped. The authors mention a few books a number of times, and Hardy’s Wessex county is singled out as exemplary of the use of the environment to contribute to narrative. But without a single example of how this works in practice, and with only general claims, it’s hard to know even what the authors mean by the environment contributing to narrative, much less whether this way of generating narrative through the environment is the same as what happens in walking simulators. I recommend reducing the overview in the opening pages of the essay (about literature) and instead offering one or two more concrete literary examples of environmental narrative. I know that Jude does a lot of walking, and I know that there are a number of important places in that novel, and I know that distance plays a key role, but how is any of that a specific kind of environmental narrative? Aren’t those things common to all sorts of novels? By providing some examples, the authors could help the readers see the specificity of (what they mean by) environmental narrative. And those examples might also afford an opportunity to demonstrate how walking simulator games perpetuate the environmental narrative techniques of those works of literature.
2. A much smaller point: the two primary game objects are named many times before the authors offer any close analysis of them. Like the novels in the introductory material, the games should be illustrated with some examples of environmental narrative (in those games), so that the reader can understand what sorts of things are being referred to.
3. Even less important but relatedly: the authors might want to give a definition or at least a general sense of what the genre of walking simulator is. (Or maybe it is just a matter of clarifying why walking simulators are particularly relevant to environmental narrative.) In recent games like Death Stranding and its sequel, the player actually controls the walking of the avatar, and walking from place to place is the main action of the game. Gone Home (though canonically included in the category of walking simulator) actually does not really focus on walking as an activity, as the action is mostly within an interior space and movement is just pressing directional buttons. So some description of this genre or of why it is the primary object of this analysis would help the whole essay to be clearer and more compelling. Presumably the focus on walking simulators in this essay is a recognition that games in that genre deemphasize many elements of gameplay in other genres and instead emphasize moving around a space and revealing things within that space. In such a genre, the environment is almost inevitably an important aspect of the game, because gameplay is conducted almost entirely by moving through the environment. (Also, I expected the authors to mention Henry Jenkins in this regard, as he, more than Janet Murray, undertook a study of the way that games involve their environments and their “maps” as narrative elements.)
4. On page 2. the idea that an understanding of the environment of (in this case) Hardy’s novels makes it possible for the reader to better “insert their own voice” into the conflicts of those novels is not a well explained or well justified claim. Why does knowing something about the environment where the action takes place, something perhaps unspecified in the particular passage one is reading, allow the reader to insert her own voice? Even if one can fill in implicit details about the specified narrative, aren’t those details derived from other novels (or other sections of the present novel), rather than one’s “own” voice? This is not an important part of the essay’s argument, but it typifies a kind of elliptical argument style, where connections and meanings are suggested without being carefully examined or followed through. And inasmuch as it serves as part of the motive for thinking anew about environment-as-narrative element in games, the blurriness of this argument actually weakens that motive.
5. The recurring claim—explicit in some places, implicit in others—that the multimodality of (audiovisual interactive) gaming tends to add complexity should not be so readily taken for granted. There is certainly a formal complexity about multimodality (versus print text), as there are additional “layers” of elements, including images and sounds. But if the focus is on narrative, it’s quite possible (and often true) that audio-visual representation, even when interactive, is actually less complex than print, inasmuch as it tends to preclude ambiguity, establish a determinate temporality for actions in the game, and in general specify things that, in a textual description, might remain unspecified. Moreover, the inclusion of the player in the game, usually through an avatar, tends to make the affordances of that avatar fairly simple or generic, for there are only so many buttons on the controller or only so many keys on the keyboard that the player can plausibly remember and associate with actions. Actions in games tend to be iconic rather than detailed in complexity, and narrative events initiated by the player are usually generic actions: getting over an obstacle is a matter of pressing the jump button, whether it’s a small log or a high ledge or a dead body. Opening a drawer or a cupboard or a refrigerator or a treasure chest is the “same” action, which is not (typically) the case in textual description. Indeed, this generic simplicity is a large part of what the authors hope to mitigate (by complexifying) with GenAI.
6. Just as the literary references in the introductory materials are not closely tied to the question of environmental narrative in gaming, so is there only a weak or loose connection between the discussion of the potential for AI in gaming and that same question of environmental narrative. Most of the remarks about AI in gaming are not specifically connected to the use of AI to modify or generate the gaming environment. It almost feels as though they are two separate papers, hastily conjoined, one paper on environmental narrative in games and another on the ways that AI might enhance gaming and address some of its weak points. The paper’s structure, wherein the AI material is only even mentioned in the concluding section, aggravates this sense of disconnection (or weak connection).
7. The AI section is suggestive but analytically thin. And the most interesting question—the tension between the creative potential of AI and the need for its contributions to preserve some sort of spontaneous “sense” within the game narrative and environment—this question is obliquely mentioned (a couple of times) but not pursued. Really examining this question would have better addressed the implicit issue of the essay, which is how AI might leverage environmental narrative specifically in order to make more engaging games. What are the constraints and what are the possibilities; what would an AI need to be able to do to write a game (or construct a dynamic game environment) that made narrative meaning complementary to the textual/dialogic and prescribed narrative elements, without seeming to be mere pattern matching or deterministic reactivity?
8. There are hints that this paper has undergone some elisions to achieve a word count; there seems to be a section (or some paragraphs) on Mark Sample that are missing, resulting in some unclarity in places where his work is still referenced. And there are some incomplete sentences, which do not finally obscure the paper’s meaning but do read awkwardly.
9. Finally, jumping back to the section on Gone Home and Firewatch… The readings of both of these games as narratives that rely significantly on environment almost work against themselves: in both cases, the environment seems to play a supplementary (rather than primary) role: in Firewatch the environment becomes narrative by its association with an independent narrative, it amplifies or adds affective content to narrative elements that are not environmental. In Gone Home, if there is a way in which the traversal of the house itself provides a strong sense of narrative, it isn’t mentioned; instead, the house serves as a spatially distributed backdrop hiding various notes that “tell” the narrative, again adding some environmental affect to the text and image narrative separate from the house. Knowing a bit about these games, I don’t think this is a true contradiction in the argument, but it could be better explained how the environment itself, in each case, develops the narrative rather than “merely” supplementing it.

Author Response

Summary of Changes made to submission:

After reviewing all four critical reviews, I identified the most substantial points beyond the simpler syntax changes most reviewers recommended. This was done as well, but I paid particular attention and agreed with the critic who challenged several key propositions and several references that seemed incomplete. I focused on these points, beginning with the challenge “that an understanding of the environment of (in this case) Hardy’s novels makes it possible for the reader to better “insert their own voice” into the conflicts of those novels, but this is not a well-explained or well-justified claim;” thus, I condensed the original eight paragraph focus on Hardy and Wessex into two paragraphs that emphasize instead Hardy’s use of Wessex as a device that underscores naturalism in novels of the period. Another critic recommended a similar reduction. The beginning moves now more quickly into my readings of the two walking simulators I chose to interpret as environmental, location-based literary works. This shift should satisfy the reviewer’s suggestion that “the two primary game objects are named … before the authors offer any close analysis of them. Like the novels in the introductory material, the games should be illustrated with some examples of environmental narrative (in those games), so that the reader can understand what sorts of things are being referred to.” The second section offers a general overview of the genre, drawing on an early digital literature critic’s introduction to it, noting the importance of player agency in these interactive works. This will help my specific focus on the two simulators I chose to analyze. In the breakdown presented in the third section, I look specifically at the relationship of ecology to the simulators with clearer examples. The key points are also attached to the same critics I introduced in the first version, but my use of Janet Murray provides more continuity and helps extend the analysis into the simulator Gone Home, using her insights into spatiality and what she describes as the specifically “rhizomatic” movement players end up taking. It also foregrounds my earlier study of how GenAI may signify a new kind of walking simulator. At this point in the essay, I respond in detail to one critic’s crucial note about missing an opportunity to introduce the critical work of Henry Jenkins on game design and narrative architecture. That deficit has been addressed, confirming the spatial elements in these landscape-based artworks. I believe it is essential to include the taxonomy Jenkins developed for these works. This section is thus extended to provide a more nuanced analysis of the two works I chose to exemplify, showing why walking simulators offer ecologically informed modes of narrativity. I disagree with one critic concerning how in their words, “the environment seems to play a supplementary (rather than primary) role: in Firewatch the environment becomes narrative by its association with an independent narrative, it amplifies or adds affective content to narrative elements that are not environmental. This misses the fact the story relies on landscape and ecological roles like being a “Firewatcher” in a national park, predating the current environmental crises now being experienced. There is metaphor, of course, in the title – since the “fire” we’re watching can be interpreted on a number of levels, but, in fact, is key to the narrative structure.

The final key point this critic argues needs attention is the actual exploration and analysis of GenAI in walking simulators, as I promised in my introduction. This writer understands it as indisputably the primary argument being made, especially as it is included. I wholeheartedly admit that I saw the September deadline more as an opportunity to submit a draft argument that I expected to rewrite with a stronger conclusion. There is a serious issue that must be addressed by contemporary “walking simulator” authors, since, as I note, expectations for “It is tempting to assume that the formal complexity of walking simulators—their combination of visual rendering, spatial navigation, ambient sound, and interactive objects—produces correspondingly complex narrative possibilities. But this assumption conflates sensory richness with semantic depth. I do think we are currently making decisions, as game producers, on how to balance these two elements better. Contemporary immersive art has similar challenges. But this interaction has long been a central issue in modern fiction. I do think there is a semantic richness to both Gone Home and Firewatch

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

The article appears to be relevant and well-written. However, the authors may incorporate the following corrections/suggestions:

• In the abstract, in the opening, the authors may present a broad context.
• In the abstract, the authors may avoid using examples.
• The abstract may be kept concise and present a broad context, the research question/objective/s, method etc.
• In the abstract, the sentence “Contemporary scholars have built on these……” has a punctuation error. Even if this error is addressed, the sentence would seem too wordy. The authors may address this issue.
• Section B, in the sentence “For literary theorists, these functions…..,” the authors may specify/reiterate the functions for better clarity and improved readability.
• Discussion section, the authors may specify/reiterate/name “(these) contextual, overlapping relationships….” for better clarity and improved readability.
• Discussion section, the authors must hyphenate the expression, “Choose your own story structure.”
• In The Evolution of Interactive Walking Simulators… section, in the sentence, “Contemporary AI driven non players characters….,” the authors must address a grammatical error.
• Same section, in the sentence, “Here the environment plays…,” the authors must address a grammatical error.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The authors must address a few grammatical and punctuation errors. 

• In the abstract, the sentence “Contemporary scholars have built on these……” has a punctuation error. Even if this error is addressed, the sentence would seem too wordy. The authors may address this issue.
• Section B, in the sentence “For literary theorists, these functions…..,” the authors may specify/reiterate the functions for better clarity and improved readability.
• Discussion section, the authors may specify/reiterate/name “(these) contextual, overlapping relationships….” for better clarity and improved readability.
• Discussion section, the authors must hyphenate the expression, “Choose your own story structure.”
• In The Evolution of Interactive Walking Simulators… section, in the sentence, “Contemporary AI driven non players characters….,” the authors must address a grammatical error.
• Same section, in the sentence, “Here the environment plays…,” the authors must address a grammatical error.

 

Author Response

Summary of Changes made to submission:

After reviewing all four critical reviews, I identified the most substantial points beyond the simpler syntax changes most reviewers recommended. This was done as well, but I paid particular attention and agreed with the critic who challenged several key propositions and several references that seemed incomplete. I focused on these points, beginning with the challenge “that an understanding of the environment of (in this case) Hardy’s novels makes it possible for the reader to better “insert their own voice” into the conflicts of those novels, but this is not a well-explained or well-justified claim;” thus, I condensed the original eight paragraph focus on Hardy and Wessex into two paragraphs that emphasize instead Hardy’s use of Wessex as a device that underscores naturalism in novels of the period. Another critic recommended a similar reduction. The beginning moves now more quickly into my readings of the two walking simulators I chose to interpret as environmental, location-based literary works. This shift should satisfy the reviewer’s suggestion that “the two primary game objects are named … before the authors offer any close analysis of them. Like the novels in the introductory material, the games should be illustrated with some examples of environmental narrative (in those games), so that the reader can understand what sorts of things are being referred to.” The second section offers a general overview of the genre, drawing on an early digital literature critic’s introduction to it, noting the importance of player agency in these interactive works. This will help my specific focus on the two simulators I chose to analyze. In the breakdown presented in the third section, I look specifically at the relationship of ecology to the simulators with clearer examples. The key points are also attached to the same critics I introduced in the first version, but my use of Janet Murray provides more continuity and helps extend the analysis into the simulator Gone Home, using her insights into spatiality and what she describes as the specifically “rhizomatic” movement players end up taking. It also foregrounds my earlier study of how GenAI may signify a new kind of walking simulator. At this point in the essay, I respond in detail to one critic’s crucial note about missing an opportunity to introduce the critical work of Henry Jenkins on game design and narrative architecture. That deficit has been addressed, confirming the spatial elements in these landscape-based artworks. I believe it is essential to include the taxonomy Jenkins developed for these works. This section is thus extended to provide a more nuanced analysis of the two works I chose to exemplify, showing why walking simulators offer ecologically informed modes of narrativity. I disagree with one critic concerning how in their words, “the environment seems to play a supplementary (rather than primary) role: in Firewatch the environment becomes narrative by its association with an independent narrative, it amplifies or adds affective content to narrative elements that are not environmental. This misses the fact the story relies on landscape and ecological roles like being a “Firewatcher” in a national park, predating the current environmental crises now being experienced. There is metaphor, of course, in the title – since the “fire” we’re watching can be interpreted on a number of levels, but, in fact, is key to the narrative structure.

The final key point this critic argues needs attention is the actual exploration and analysis of GenAI in walking simulators, as I promised in my introduction. This writer understands it as indisputably the primary argument being made, especially as it is included. I wholeheartedly admit that I saw the September deadline more as an opportunity to submit a draft argument that I expected to rewrite with a stronger conclusion. There is a serious issue that must be addressed by contemporary “walking simulator” authors, since, as I note, expectations for “It is tempting to assume that the formal complexity of walking simulators—their combination of visual rendering, spatial navigation, ambient sound, and interactive objects—produces correspondingly complex narrative possibilities. But this assumption conflates sensory richness with semantic depth. I do think we are currently making decisions, as game producers, on how to balance these two elements better. Contemporary immersive art has similar challenges. But this interaction has long been a central issue in modern fiction. I do think there is a semantic richness to both Gone Home and Firewatch

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

To begin, there is lots to like in this paper, but also lots to do before it would be ready for publication.

Notes on the Abstract and the Point of the Paper

The abstract of the article promises that it will "examine the growing interest in what most contemporary scholars consider still a new and underdeveloped mode of environmental storytelling in video games; secondly to "reconsider traditional environmental storytelling within new innovative, post-GenAI narrative frameworks" and thirdly  to "deepen current academic understandings of narrative spaces in games.”

These are excellent aspirations for a critical literature review, but “examining,” "reconsidering" and "deepening" must lead to a substantive argument of some kind. The absence of a thesis that builds through the paper to a conclusion, diminishes the significance of the analyses it contains.

What I was waiting for was something like, "after reconsidering traditional environmental storytelling, etc....which deepens current academic understandings of etc... I /we will argue that [something exciting and significant here] .... 

Evidentiary sources needed regarding the player experience of AI

"This personalization deepens emotional engagement, producing storyworlds that feel both singular and lived rather than generic or replayable.

In the early years of VR games, everyone was claiming that immersion created empathy. When researchers later looked to see if this was true, it turned out that no, that wasn’t necessarily so, and also that it's really hard to test for a change in empathy that lasts beyond the end of an experience. So here it is asserted that AI personalizations “deepens engagement” and makes the story feel “lived”. How do you know this? Has this been demonstrated, or is only only asserted, and then those assertions cited? How can other scholars believe and build upon, or critique and refute these claims without evidence (yours or someone else’s, which is credible)?

Importantly, these dynamics align with ecological models of interconnection, reminding players that agency is distributed and that small acts may ripple outward in unexpected ways.

Along the same line, this is a poetic reading of AI in games, and maybe a fair interpretation in critical discourse, but you are speaking confidently here about player experience – there is a whole world of interdisciplinary research around that. Claims regarding subjective player experience are an empirical thing and can’t be asserted without evidence.

“It seems logical to conclude that new AI-driven adaptation extends immersion by layering real-time co-authorship onto narrative space."

It is not logical to assume anything about immersion in the absence of evidence. Again, you are free to hypothesize this, and use the opinion of experts in the field to make it credibleIt may be that the experience of immersion is “extended” (not a precise term, so I read it as “increased”) by co-authorship, but it could be just as credibly argued that the opposite might be found to be true, that AI in games where the player is aware of it, creates a kind of metalepsis in which players understand that the world has been constructed, because they are co-constructing it, and that snaps them out of their diegetic immersive state. Not saying this wouldn’t be a cool experience, but it’s not necessarily an experience of immersion, and it wouldn’t be for everybody even were it true for some. It might be true the first time, but then become increasingly less immersive as it is no longer a new experience. The point is, you don't know, and you don't cite people who can say so with empirical confidence.

One possible methodology to address this would be "close play" observation of an AI generating environment, which would provide autoethnographic evidence that AI created worlds feel more "singular and lived" to the authors, or that you, while playing, felt agency and interconnection. But you still, in that case, would have to own your positionality, since you might be inclined to feel those things. 

Notes on Clarifying Sources in Discussion of Games

This work examine some games in depth and compares them, but these passages, for me, lacked adequate citations and sourcing. It is not clear whether the game descriptions came from published articles, or review on social media, or from the author(s) own playing experiences of the games.

There were several places in the article that claims were made regarding “critics” or “reviewers” but without any citation. Assertations of theoretical concepts were sometimes made casually, but used to make a second point. I was curious, for example who authoritatively compared NPCs to vaudevillians? Was there a source omitted or was this a thought that occurred to the author just to make the joke about the name of the game they were discussing? Another example is the comment about Hardy, asking us to imagine how excited he would be with digital tools; we might equally well imagine he would have hated them!  If you interject a personal, especially a whimsical, observation, it must be owned, using the pronoun “I” (more on pronouns below), putting the author in the frame. 

The Other Side of the argument only appearing in the conclusion

Although the author(s) tellus that they will look at the promise and the challenges of AI, the challenges don’t appear until the one-paragraph conclusion of the article: “Reviews note that while NPCs generate abundant dialogue, the coherence and narrative weight of these exchanges often falter, producing filler rather than story. The system struggles with memory across longer arcs, leaving the player with improvisational fragments rather than sustained consequences.”

This is a powerful set of statements, both unsourced, which significantly challenge the rosier picture that the previous sections of the article provide. Possibly this was added in a revision, following feedback, or maybe time ran out, and since there wasn’t a conclusion yet, it was made to do double duty. In any event, putting it here in the conclusion, where it appears for the first time doesn’t work for the paper as a whole.  

The lack of sources is especially problematic here. What reviews? What NPCs? What games? Since these criticisms undercut the more optimistic accounts of AI's contributions to IF, they should not appear last. They are the only explanation for the final concluding sentence which is quite good: “the ongoing need for careful critical attention to coherence, authorship, and design ethics to produce worlds that can accomplish their ecological promise of interconnected, meaningful narrative play.”

The problem is that we haven’t seen "coherence, authorship and design ethics" discussed at any depth. There was no case made to lead to this excellent conclusion.

Some notes on discussions of IF

In discussing IF, the work of “critics,” some named and some unnamed, are used as a foil: “Clearly, for Barber, IF’s potential to advance learning outweighs what other critics dismiss as a decline in literacy when using digital media, allowing readers as players to miss the nuance of syntax in a written work, and subsequently losing many important structural components for creating meaning.”

A source is needed, because “other critics of digital media” whoever these may be, are not necessarily saying things that are  relevant to IF which, especially in works written in Twine, can have all the "nuance of syntax" one might ever want. It's not clear whether the authors have played/reviewed any works of IF, or if they are relying on the second hand experience of published scholars or unpublished reviews on social media to make their claim. There were other points where discussion of narrative video games is applied to image-less IF. The difference between narrative design in these two different play experiences is significant, even if there are many areas for common conversation.

When the topic is AI generation in games, the differences are enormous, since there will be any number of visual generations, in addition to generated text in a video game, but only texts  in IF.

The analysis leads to a prediction with facts not in evidence: "Advances in large language models and multimodal transformers suggest that interactive fiction will increasingly operate not from a fixed set of  authored fragments but from dynamically produced narrative outcomes that respond to player choices in real time.”

Source? How do “advances” prove there will be increased use of one thing and decreased use of another? The potential popularity of transformers in no way requires a lessening of authorship in traditional IF forms. There is a fierce anti-AI backlash among narrative designers, particularly in IF, (a different author demographic from electronic literature). But anti-AI feelings from creatives are not discussed. A big lapse when trying to predict the future of a design feature or mechanic. A lot of people believed in the metaverse, and here we are – not working in the metaverse!

An unfinished hook

This tough to parse sentence promises a political analysis which never does follow, but I would like to have seen made explicit, or returned to after the long section that follows it: "To compare narrative environments and how different IF and design companies use them as narratological devices, it’s helpful to begin with a number of subtler political issues that develop in each work when the players/readers are typically expected to appear as part of the game or any strategy-based slow walk-through.”

Problems emerging from lack of clarity in citations

In terms of contributions to scholarship, I liked the application Murray's "rhizomatic exploration" to AI generated game content, but because of inconsistent sourcing, I wasn’t sure where the theory ended and the original writing began. I often did not feel confident in identifying original ideas, or when I was reading something paraphrased from something found in the literature which was not sourced, (or from ChatGPT, which has no sources). I didn’t feel certain, for example, whether the long description of the narrative details of Firewatch came from author experience, or were lifted from Alenda Chang's work.  This is something that a “close play” methodology would address, as well with increased author presence in the text, as discussed next..

Regarding Pronoun Usage

There is recurring awkward over use of second person plural which makes some passages sound like they are happening in a classroom. We are asked to “look at” and “see” and “consider” things together with the authors (which ironically creates an imagined environment– in which the author and reader are experiencing the article together, though I don’t think this was intentionally done)

Suppose we return quickly…

Let us even imagine for a moment that if Hardy, as…

…we must now ask how generative systems might extend or complicate such structures."

In Pite’s view, we might see it as a region

what we might call situational engagement

There are other uses of “we” in the paper which make the overuse of the classroom “we” problematic. Early on in the paper the pronoun is used strategically to discuss Hardy’s novels as immersive for the reader as “we the reader of Hardy” wander through Wessex through his works.

But soon after, it shifts back to “we the reader of this article” considering with the author its points: “in storytelling from approaches we see authors like Hardy explore over a century ago…. Any primary differences we see in contemporary walking simulators…”

There is a point where the text specifically identifies who is included in the “we the author plus readers of this article”: “multiple meanings we have grown accustomed to as readers of advanced novels and short stories after four centuries of development and experimentation.”

This “we as academic literature scholars” is probably a true description of part of the audience for this article but it might be off-putting for game scholars who have not read a lot of “advanced” novels, and even insulting to people who like genre fiction, and didn't know that was a bad thing for some scholars. 

There are moments in the paper when I thought maybe that the “we” referred to “we the authors of this work” I I really have no way to know if this is “we the authors” or “we the authors showing the readers around a metaphorical gallery where the discussed works are displayed.”

The confusion comes again when they are discussing a game, and the prior use of we, makes it impossible for the reader to know if the “we” is “we the article author and its readers” or “we the real and potential players of this game” the audience imagined by the game designers, not the readers of this work: “Plot-wise, we begin immediately in the POV lens of senior university student returning to the family home in Seattle after her third year abroad at a different institution. She has literally “Gone Home” or so she thinks

Sorry if this feels nitpicky, but it’s a significant problem for clarity, and is also a kind of trap. Because of the multiple uses of “we” in the text, the authors don’t have the pronoun “we” available to themselves (and I couldn’t find an “I” anywhere either, if it turns out this is single-authored). The hesitance to be present as an author in the article (except as a we with the reader) is probably why I was never sure when you were were asserting your thoughts or ideas or representing the works of others.

My recommendation is to remove all uses of “we” other than for representing your authorship and your arguments. "We" should be reserved for claiming original arguments and clarifying the ways in which those arguments are different than what other theorists have said, distinguishing that from their reporting of what others have said, both the sourced scholars and unsourced reviewers. If you are a solo author, still get rid of all those "we"s, or choose one usage and don't use it for anything else. Don't be afraid to use "I" and "we" -- own your ideas, and tell us they are yours!

Author Response

Summary of Changes made to submission:

After reviewing all four critical reviews, I identified the most substantial points beyond the simpler syntax changes most reviewers recommended. This was done as well, but I paid particular attention and agreed with the critic who challenged several key propositions and several references that seemed incomplete. I focused on these points, beginning with the challenge “that an understanding of the environment of (in this case) Hardy’s novels makes it possible for the reader to better “insert their own voice” into the conflicts of those novels, but this is not a well-explained or well-justified claim;” thus, I condensed the original eight paragraph focus on Hardy and Wessex into two paragraphs that emphasize instead Hardy’s use of Wessex as a device that underscores naturalism in novels of the period. Another critic recommended a similar reduction. The beginning moves now more quickly into my readings of the two walking simulators I chose to interpret as environmental, location-based literary works. This shift should satisfy the reviewer’s suggestion that “the two primary game objects are named … before the authors offer any close analysis of them. Like the novels in the introductory material, the games should be illustrated with some examples of environmental narrative (in those games), so that the reader can understand what sorts of things are being referred to.” The second section offers a general overview of the genre, drawing on an early digital literature critic’s introduction to it, noting the importance of player agency in these interactive works. This will help my specific focus on the two simulators I chose to analyze. In the breakdown presented in the third section, I look specifically at the relationship of ecology to the simulators with clearer examples. The key points are also attached to the same critics I introduced in the first version, but my use of Janet Murray provides more continuity and helps extend the analysis into the simulator Gone Home, using her insights into spatiality and what she describes as the specifically “rhizomatic” movement players end up taking. It also foregrounds my earlier study of how GenAI may signify a new kind of walking simulator. At this point in the essay, I respond in detail to one critic’s crucial note about missing an opportunity to introduce the critical work of Henry Jenkins on game design and narrative architecture. That deficit has been addressed, confirming the spatial elements in these landscape-based artworks. I believe it is essential to include the taxonomy Jenkins developed for these works. This section is thus extended to provide a more nuanced analysis of the two works I chose to exemplify, showing why walking simulators offer ecologically informed modes of narrativity. I disagree with one critic concerning how in their words, “the environment seems to play a supplementary (rather than primary) role: in Firewatch the environment becomes narrative by its association with an independent narrative, it amplifies or adds affective content to narrative elements that are not environmental. This misses the fact the story relies on landscape and ecological roles like being a “Firewatcher” in a national park, predating the current environmental crises now being experienced. There is metaphor, of course, in the title – since the “fire” we’re watching can be interpreted on a number of levels, but, in fact, is key to the narrative structure.

The final key point this critic argues needs attention is the actual exploration and analysis of GenAI in walking simulators, as I promised in my introduction. This writer understands it as indisputably the primary argument being made, especially as it is included. I wholeheartedly admit that I saw the September deadline more as an opportunity to submit a draft argument that I expected to rewrite with a stronger conclusion. There is a serious issue that must be addressed by contemporary “walking simulator” authors, since, as I note, expectations for “It is tempting to assume that the formal complexity of walking simulators—their combination of visual rendering, spatial navigation, ambient sound, and interactive objects—produces correspondingly complex narrative possibilities. But this assumption conflates sensory richness with semantic depth. I do think we are currently making decisions, as game producers, on how to balance these two elements better. Contemporary immersive art has similar challenges. But this interaction has long been a central issue in modern fiction. I do think there is a semantic richness to both Gone Home and Firewatch.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf