Introduction

"Interactivity" is one of the most common traits ascribed to video games, especially in order to contrast them with other media forms such as film, television or literature. The use of the term interactivity in relation to video games points to the fact that players are usually required to use an input device such as a controller, keyboard or mouse to communicate with the computer running the game software in order to engage in the act of gameplay. After the computer processes that input, the game reacts accordingly based on its programming. The player, in turn, reacts to the computer's output, which is usually audial, visual and sometimes haptic in the case of controller vibrations, and the process continues. Because gameplay requires this direct engagement on the part of the player, games have been conceptualized as an interactive medium. Although this seems straightforward, interactivity is notoriously difficult to define and its application to computing technology and digital gameplay has long been debated. What follows is an overview of how scholars have attempted to define and apply the concept of interactivity across the last few decades, followed by a look at the discussions and debates that have taken place regarding the nature, meaning, importance and effects of this ambiguous concept.

The Ambiguity of Interactivity

As early as 1988, Sheizaf Rafaeli observed that although interactivity is a "widely used term with intuitive appeal," it is also "an underdefined concept" (p. 110). Similarly, Edward Downes and Sally McMillan (2000) noted that "much of the literature, both popular and scholarly, uses the term 'interactivity' with few or no attempts to define it. Even when definitions are found they are often contradictory" (pp. 157–8). This is perhaps due to a conflation between human-computer interaction, or "HCI," and human-human interaction. While the same term is used for both forms of interaction, conflating the two can cause confusion, imprecision and unrealistic expectations regarding the kinds of experiences computers—and, by extension, video games—can provide. Yet, games do, to some extent, blur this distinction, particularly in the case of those in which players can converse with non-player characters (NPCs): although they are computer-controlled characters with pre-scripted dialogue and actions, for many players interacting with particularly believable NPCs can feel "real" and emotional responses to NPCs can "bleed" into real life (see Creane, 2021; Waern, 2015; see also Bleed). The blurred distinction between HCI and human-human interaction is also important to consider in online multiplayer games like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) or Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix, 2013) in which players interact with one another via their avatars. As Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska (2006) have noted, "in online role-playing games [...] players interact with others in the guise of their chosen characters: the attributes of character to some extent frame the manner in which players regard one another" (p. 42). This demonstrates Jennifer Stromer-Galley's (2004) observation that "it is possible that the degree or features of medium interactivity might affect outcome variables of human interaction" (p. 394). Given that the player must interact with the game in order to then interact with other players, a clear and consistent use of terms like interactivity is vital for researchers, developers and critics alike to communicate what kind of interactivity is being discussed, how the term is being defined, what tradition it is being drawn from and why it is relevant to consider.

This is a more challenging task than it seems, however. As Stromer-Galley (2004) has discussed at length, there have been several competing conceptualizations of interactivity, and debates have focused on whether computers can be more than just reactive and whether interactivity can even be a characteristic of a medium. While some scholars equate new media with interactive media, others have insisted that interactivity requires reciprocity and at least some degree of unpredictability that computer programs generally do not provide. For example, according to Peter Vorderer (2000), "interactivity is often used to describe a technological feature of the media as much as it is used to characterize a way of using the media" (p. 23), but he insists that there is no such thing as interactive media, but rather interactive ways of using media. Marie-Laure Ryan (2001) has defined interactivity broadly as anything that makes use of user input. Chris Crawford (2001) has described interaction using terms related to human communication as "a conversation: a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak" (p. 5). Dominic McIver Lopes (2001) has claimed that media with "strong interactivity" allow users to modify their intrinsic or representational properties. Sally McMillan (2002) has developed a typology to differentiate between user-to-user and user-to-system interactivity. Stromer-Galley (2004) differentiated between "interactivity-as-process," which refers to the process of communication between two or more people (whether mediated or in person), and "interactivity-as-product," which "occurs when a set of technological features allows users to interact with the interface or system itself" (p. 391). Aaron Smuts (2009) picked apart several proposed definitions to demonstrate their weaknesses and then attempted to define it himself in terms of responsiveness, stating that for something to be interactive it must respond in a way that is neither completely controllable nor completely random. Janet Murray (2011) considers interactivity as composed of procedural and participatory affordances, as well as the aesthetic pleasure of agency. These are some examples of how scholars have theorized, defined and described interactivity, though there are many others.

These various attempts at clarification—none of which are without flaws or exceptions—speak to the inherent ambiguity of the concept of interactivity: as Smuts (2009) observed, "while everyone seems to have something to say about the significance of interactivity, no one seems to have a clear understanding of just what makes something interactive" (p. 53). Although many attempts at definitive definitions have been made, Carrie Heeter (2000) points to the ongoing problem with the vagueness and overapplication of the term:

Interactivity is an overused, underdefined concept. Everything a human does to or with another human can be called an interaction. Human interactions that use media are mediated human interactions. Everything a human does to or with a computer is a human-computer interaction. (p. 3)

This underscores the importance of precision when it comes to terminology, but also suggests that the term "interactive" might not be very useful, especially for researchers trying to apply interactivity as a concept. Indeed, Espen Aarseth (1997) criticized interactivity as "a purely ideological term, projecting an unfocused fantasy rather than a concept of any analytical significance" (p. 51). James Newman (2002) similarly argued that the application of the term "interactive" "in a variety of contexts as qualitatively and experientially diverse as videogames and DVD scene access menus has rendered it meaningless and of use only to the marketer" (para. 6).

The muddiness of interactivity is perhaps unsurprising, since, as Smuts (2009) points out, "this theoretical imprecision is coupled with a general looseness in our everyday use of the term" (p. 54). As a common term applied to a wide range of experiences and phenomena, there may be an intuitive cultural aspect to our understanding of interactivity. Crawford's definition of interaction as an alternating, cyclic conversation is, as he admitted later, an overly vague comparison, but he insisted that his "concern is with interactivity that has some blood in its veins" (2002, p. 6). As David Myers (2003) observed of Crawford's statement, "defining interactivity according to the amount of 'blood in its veins' is a functional approach appealing more to common sense—or humanist intuition—than to the observation of any formal property of game design or quantitative measurement of play behavior" (p. 74). In other words, interactivity is perhaps something we intuitively experience rather than something we can empirically observe.

Video Games as an Interactive Medium

Game scholars have also struggled to define interactivity, which is perhaps unsurprising given how close the fields of game studies and HCI are. As Susanne Eichner (2014) observes in her book Agency and Media Reception:

Video games are widely considered as paradigmatic interactive media, distinguished from 'traditional' media by interactivity, thus providing the positive pleasure of agency for their players. More often than not, however, the nature of interactivity and agency is not further explicated. (p. 53)

Indeed, in scholarship as well as popular writing and game marketing, video games are often highlighted and even praised for their interactivity, especially in comparison to "old" media. For some, interactivity is the very definition of a game; for example, designer Greg Costikyan (2002) has declared that "every game is interactive; 'interactive game' is a redundancy" (p. 11). He claims that all games are interactive—both analog and digital ones—because the game state and outcome differ based on player decisions. In other words, "if it isn't interactive," according to Costikyan, "it's a puzzle, not a game" (2002, p. 11). Yet, there are many games that primarily or even solely involve puzzle solving, like Candy Crush Saga (King, 2012), Baba Is You (Teikari, 2019), Portal (Valve, 2007) or even the short-lived internet sensation Wordle (Wardle, 2021).

Interactivity in the context of games is rarely satisfyingly defined or explained, but it is sometimes articulated as games requiring "active" rather than "passive" consumption or being a "lean-forward" rather than a "lean-back" medium. This comparison speaks to how users are generally required to physically engage with interactive media, thereby potentially requiring more concentration and focus than some other media. For example, Sherry Turkle (1984) has claimed that "television is something you watch. Video games are something you do, something you do to your head, a world that you enter, and, to a certain extent, they are something you 'become'" (p. 67). Similarly, Jeroen Jansz (2005) has noted that "video games are typically lean forward media because their content comes into existence in response to the gamer's efforts" (p. 222). These ideas are perhaps developed out of Marshall McLuhan's (1964) discussion of media as either "hot" or "cool" depending on how many of the user's perceptual senses are engaged, and likely relate to the understanding that interactive media usually require some kind of "effort" on the part of the user—what Espen Aarseth (1997) has called non-trivial or "ergodic" effort.

In this vein, Nick Bowman (2018) considers gameplay a cognitively, emotionally, physically and socially demanding activity using an interactivity-as-demand model. He defines interactivity simply as "the dialogue between the player and the program" and adheres to the belief that "the user's relationship with the medium shifts from that of a more passive recipient of information to a more active and lean-forward engagement with it" (p. 3). Although this effort is often a celebrated attribute of the medium—for example, Murray (1997) has claimed that players desire a subjective experience of power and control and Grodal (2000) has discussed at length the pleasures of player control over video game worlds—some game scholars have argued for the value of more passive gameplay experiences like walking simulators (e.g., Milligan & Bohunicky, 2019). Indeed, Bowman's (2018) work has demonstrated that the more interactive a game is, the more demanding it is on players, which does not necessarily translate to a positive gameplay experience. However, as René Weber, Katharina-Maria Behr and Cynthia DeMartino (2014) have noted, the effects of interactivity on players are somewhat difficult to study since "interactive media can individualize the process of media consumption" meaning that "different users/players may generate very different content" and also have very different experiences (p. 80).

On the other hand, the idea of older media being more "passive" than new media like video games has been widely debated, as many media scholars have noted that all media consumption potentially requires, or at least results in, some form of active engagement on the part of the consumer. Others have questioned whether video games are interactive at all. For example, Dominic Arsenault and Bernard Perron (2008) have suggested that video games, like all computer-based media, are reactive rather than interactive: "a chain of reactions" in which "the player does not act so much as he reacts to what the game presents to him, and similarly, the game then reacts to his input" (pp. 119–20). Toby Smethurst and Stef Craps (2014) have attempted to encompass both terms with the portmanteau "interreactivity," as they say, "in order to acknowledge the fact that during gameplay, it is not only the game that reacts to the player but also the player who reacts to the game" (p. 5). Charles Bernstein (2001) has pointed out that "the much-admired interactiveness of video games amounts to less than it might appear given the very circumscribed control players have" (pp. 164–5). His observation that "joysticks and buttons (like keyboards or mice) allow for a series of binary operations" underscores his point that "computers don't respond or give forth, they process or calculate" (pp. 162–4). Indeed, Crawford's (2001) use of "listen," "think" and "speak" in his definition of interactivity evokes human behaviour that cannot accurately be ascribed to a computer; rather, "input," "process" and "output" would likely be the computational equivalent of those verbs. This is important because it reminds us that video games are software, and everything that happens in a game is based on its programming.

Adhering to Smuts' (2009) requirement that for something to be interactive it must respond in a way that is neither completely controllable nor completely random would mean that video games are, for the most part, not interactive—excepting glitches, randomly generated content and player-to-player interaction, video games are completely controllable, and will respond the same way to the same input based on how they are programmed. That programming has been understood as the rules that define the game and the gameplay experience, and rules are considered necessary for a game to exist. Lev Manovich (2001) has observed that "as the player proceeds through the game, she gradually discovers the rules that operate in the universe constructed by this game" (p. 222), and Alexander Galloway (2006) has stated that "to play the game means to play the code of the game" (p. 91). Jesper Juul (2005) has similarly defined a game as a "rule-based system" in which "the player exerts effort to influence the outcome" (p. 36). In video games the rules are built into the software and cannot be broken or negotiated except through modding, code manipulation or other forms of what Galloway (2006) calls "countergaming" or even "cheating," which, as Mia Consalvo (2007) has explored, are legitimate approaches to gameplay. In general, however, the consequences of a video game's unbreakable rules are that gameplay is an inherently limited experience. As Gareth Schott (2006) states, "play is a bilateral process by which one side (either player or game) responds to the other," therefore "meaning is not jointly produced, since the choices available to the player [...] are, to a greater or lesser extent, already circumscribed" (p. 133). Similarly, according to Newman (2013), "videogames do not present endlessly variable scenarios in response to player performance [...] No matter how creative, exploratory, resistant or deviant the player's performance might be, it is bounded by rules" (p. 102).

Yet, as Eichner (2014) has observed, agency is often assumed to go hand-in-hand with interactivity, and games are widely lauded for offering players control over their narratives and gameplay, especially through the decisions they make as their character. For example, Murray (1997) articulated video game agency as "the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices" (p. 126), and Costikyan (2002) likewise stated that interactivity means making purposeful decisions, which in games specifically means struggling towards a goal. But because video games are consistent and controllable rule-based systems, other game scholars have argued that even if games are interactive, that does not necessarily mean they offer players agency or the opportunity for co-creation or co-authorship. Indeed, even Murray (1997) admitted that "there is a distinction between playing a creative role within an authored environment and having authorship of the environment itself" (p. 152). Alec Charles (2009) sees the assumption that interactivity grants agency as potentially insidious, suggesting that a game "gives its user the illusion of meaning, power and active participation, and which, in appearing to satisfy its audience's desire for agency, in fact sublimates and dilutes that desire" (p. 289). Edmond Chang (2015) has called this the "interactive fallacy"—"the assumption that video games offer players unlimited power, control, and opportunities for identity play and self-fashioning" (p. 7). Similarly, Sarah Stang (2019) has discussed this in terms of the illusion of agency:

Videogame interactivity, and the sense of control that it elicits in players, is illusory. Player input causes the game system to react in a specific, pre-coded way and, given our current lack of true artificial intelligence able to adapt and generate content in reaction to unpredictable human behaviour, player choice is necessarily limited. (para. 3)

In other words, it remains unclear whether interactivity in games—if they are indeed interactive—offers the player agency through decision-making, or simply an illusory sense of agency.

Interactivity has also been discussed in relation to presence or immersion —two similarly vague, overapplied and underdefined terms which refer to the illusion of being in an unmediated environment, or "losing oneself" in the gameplay experience (see Heeter, 1992; McMahon, 2003). For some scholars, feelings of presence and immersion are strengthened by the ability to directly control a character on the screen. Henry Jenkins (2007) has discussed this in terms of player behaviour in relation to the game:

As many observers have noted, we don't speak of controlling a cursor on the screen when we describe the experience of playing a game; we act as if we had unmediated access to the fictional space. We refer to our game characters in the first person and act as if their experiences were our own. (pp. 31–2)

On the other hand, both Murray (1997) and Ryan (2001) have demonstrated how interactivity can actually decrease feelings of presence and immersion because of the need to interact with an interface that reminds users of the mediated nature of the content and experience. However, Ryan (2001) also notes that interactivity in virtual reality environments can reinforce feelings of presence and immersion depending on how convincing the experience of interacting with objects is and how subtle and intuitive the interface is. According to King and Krzywinska (2006), "interactivity via the actions of the player-character has the potential to increase the illusion of presence, but also to reduce it—depending on the extent to which it is or is not constrained by excessively arbitrary limitations or inconsistencies" (pp. 120–1). In this sense, interactivity has been found to be ambiguous not only in its definition and application, but also in its effects on other aspects of the gameplay experience.

Summary

As these discussions and debates have demonstrated, the exact nature, meaning and effects of interactivity remain unclear. While the term has been widely applied to video games, and all computational media, scholars have debated whether games are interactive or simply reactive; if interactivity means video games are an "active" rather than "passive" medium; if interactivity results in less freedom, control and agency for players/users than is often assumed; and if interactivity undermines feelings of presence and immersion in game environments. The usefulness of the term itself has been questioned as well—either because all games are interactive or because none are. It is therefore important to use the term carefully, to acknowledge its complicated and contradictory theorization and to make it clear why and how the concept is being applied.

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Author Information

Dr. Sarah Stang is an Assistant Professor in Brock University's Centre for Digital Humanities. She received her PhD from the Communication & Culture program at York University. She is the Secretary for the International Communication Association's Game Studies Division and the former editor-in-chief of the game studies journal Press Start. Her research primarily focuses on gender representation in both digital and analog games and her published work can be found in Game Studies, Games and Culture, Analog Game Studies, Loading, and Human Technology.

Citation Information

Stang, S. (2022). Interactivity. In Grabarczyk, P. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms (Spring 2022 Edition). URL: https://eolt.org/articles/interactivity/

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