Eric Zimmerman conveys the need to understand that concepts and terms must be agreed upon with before further progress may be made in the development of games.
Narrative
I think to sustain interactivity, there needs to be a form of narration. I mean that’s how games work. Eric listed three areas of consideration of what narrative is but then again, do we confine them to what we perceive of narration. Taken, that there must be a series of varying events over time, but do we only limit the narrative to viewers of should we also explore narration executed by the user? And how far are we to go with narration?
Interactivity
I think bearing in mind the 4 types of interactivity that was highlighted, the most familiar one would of course be explicit interactivity. But it opened my mind when I read about the other three that Eric mentioned. I felt that we all sort of know what the different types of interactivity components are but aren’t learned enough yet to be able to theorize them. So, this was a useful read.
Play
Play, as Zimmerman puts it, would refer to having a proper system in place to allow for the components of narrative and interactivity to give a context to the game which then allows for the freedom to explore (or how one would call it, play). And I agree with him because of for a proper game to take place, there needs to be boundaries and limits to bring it to a level where the grounds are fair. So, unless there isn’t any system in place, no game would proceed smoothly.
Games
The hardest of them all to define, games, as I would understand from his text, is the combination of narrative, interactivity (explicit) and play. It is a conscious effort on the human brain for such a “game” to take place, with the considerations of the limits set in the first place.
Zimmerman shares that this whole idea of narrative interactive is but debatable and dependant on what one thinks of it and what it is. Games as it is, is already a narrative but what elements it involves, allows for the interactivity of the game.