Interactive books, and stories.

Today I was reading the Arts section of the New York Times web site, and I found this story by Noah Berger about an interesting sort of “interactive novel” which reminded me of Penguin Book’s we tell stories project that won Web Award at SXSW this year.

PLENTY of authors dream of writing the great American novel.

Bradley Inman is starting Vook, a platform for e-books that will combine text, video and social networking.
Bradley Inman wants to create great fiction, dramatic online video and compelling Twitter stream — and then roll them all into a multimedia hybrid that is tailored to the rapidly growing number of digital reading devices.

While I don’t think that this sort of format will ever really replace the book, I do think that it is a new media space that will become more an more popular as time goes on.

I also see it as something that grew out of the Alternate Reality Games (ARG) scene… In fact it also reminds me of the table top / Live Action Role Playing Game (LARP) “Vampire: The Masquerade” by white wolf games. I say this because Vampire was a RPG that came along as the internet was becomeing more and more used among the general population, and among the players of that game. As people played they used the internet(s) to communicate with one and other, and with the White Wolf. This had a HUGE effect on the direction that the “story” of the game took as it progressed.