First the author seems to be of a mind that the progression from many paths without a clear best ending in the early books toward linearity and clearly defined best endings in the later books reflects a maturation of the form. I find this claim dubious. I’ve always found the earlier more dynamic books to be far more pleasurable and immersive. The early bokos feel more like one can have an impact on the narrative as opposed to needing to discover the correct narrative as in the later books. More likely this move towards linearity reflects the fact that writing non-linear narrative is hard. The movement towards linearity is likely the result of seasoned writers more comfortable with the leaner form getting involved in the series as well as preasures to churn out books to keep up with the popularity of the series.

Second, the animations are neat and all, but what are they really showing us about the structure of the narratives? The author himself points out in the body of his analysis that slightly different page orders lead to radically different particle animations. So the animations reflect page order which is interesting to a certain extent, but page order is hardly a defining aspect of the form. I have trouble believing that changing the page order of any given CYOA would radically alter the reading experience. The author’s own online example of the Zork book is driven by hyperlinks and completely bypasses the notion of page order. This doesn’t substantially change the experience of the narrative, but does render the particle animations for the novel relatively meaningless. It seems that a tree structure is a far more informative visualization, but admittedly less pretty.

But to be clear I am a fan of anyone will to spend time analyzing CYOAs or other non-linear narratives. This is clearly a nicely put together site and I quite enjoyed exploring it.

C.