In his book Aarseth (1997) seeks to delve down into the difference in the use of text between a classically written text; a book, and an interactive text on the computer. In order to do this he seeks to define every area and at times this makes the book highly technical and dense. However without this minute section-by section definition, the complexity of the creation and participation with participatory digital text would be ignored in the greater analysis of what is literature.

Aarseth define his terms, to put down the markers that he will use in his very persuasive argument that a computer game is a piece of literature. As he says;

The differences in teleological orientation - the different ways in which the reader is invited to ‘complete’ a text – and the texts’ various self-manipulating devices are what the concept of Cybertext is all about. (p 20)

I was interested in the difference between text and Cybertext described in terms of linear and labyrinthine. Text, as in signs in linear form, becomes in Cybertext not only the multi-path journey but also the single twisting journey where there are choices to make. This use of the term labyrinthine is useful because it is such a visual description and helps to describe the difference between the reader of the text and the participator of the Cybertext. Aarseth define what he calls ‘ergonic literature’ and in defining this concept is looking to include the role of the participator or player. The reader reads the text but the reader of ergonic literature must read, play, participate and work the text.

The text ‘cybertext’ is not the simple read follow and interpret, of the novel. A Cybertext has the read interpret element but the decisions of the reader/player makes decisions on the pathway taken. You can take any of the multiple pathways but you will still have to end at the author’s conclusion. This is nevertheless, an important use of language that is also relevant to Digital Fiction. I am asking you to find your own pathway through my upgrade. Although I have created a structure I hope that I have also allowed the reader/player to create their own route.

As Aarseth defines then Montfort (2003), in Twisty Little Passages: An approach to Interactive Fiction; explores. Montfort is seeking to examine further the early exploration of interactive fiction and the definition of fiction within this context. He references Aarseth who he describes as the theorist who defined the ‘formulation of ergodic literature’, which is referred to as the production of narratives only when they are interacted with, or participated with. However Montfort feels there needs to be a specific definition of interactive fiction.  He gives four different definitions of this type of fiction:

• a text-accepting, text generating computer program
• a potential narrative, that is, a system that produces narrative during interaction
• a simulation of an environment or world; and
• a structure of rules within which an outcome is sought, also known as a game

Both these books are trying to define the narrative text experience that was created when the possibilities of the computer were pushed and developed into new creative medium. They needed to create new words and definitions that would describe this new form of creative interaction that was specific to this new computer world. But at the same time they both look forward and backwards in seeking to understand. As Montfort says:

The nature of interactive fiction as computer program, simulated world, generator of narrative, and game, means that it has many other ancestors. (p45)

All literature in Digital Fiction leads back to Espen Aarseth and his defining of the term Cybertext. Sometimes I wonder if without his defining of terms, others would not have had an area to leap forward from into a new digital world. Ergodic literature defines the new type of literature that needs more than the turning of pages, there must be the active participation of the 'reader', 'participator'. Cybertext is the type of text needed to create ergodic literature; this is text that needs your active participation.

Both terms above were appropriated by Aarseth and have since become the terms used in games studies. Aarseth was seeking to define text that did more than; 'Read, understand, read, write, think, enjoy'. Within his definition there were texts that were created by the active participation of the 'text reader', these texts were the 'cybertext'. This type of literature was 'Ergodic literature'. The circle, 'write, read, create', could only be completed by the active participation of the reader as player.

Many seek to trace a pathway from Hypertext, to Digital fiction, but I would rather seek to create a pathway back to the text and story novel via the graphic computer game. Aarseth talks about the death of the text based games and the rise of the graphics visual games in the late nineteen eighties. I come to digital fiction through the visual based medium, which as Aarseth implies, has a much larger public audience than the text based games work.

Digital literature is only that which fulfils Aarseth's description of Ergodic literature. If you look at the work such as; 'The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore' (a book as an iPad app), because there is only one pathway is this Interactive Fiction but not Ergodic? It is Cybertext because it cannot be accessed in any other way than on a digital device. Dreaming Methods is more random, and the reader or player makes the pathway. Because of the design nature of the work you follow different pathways every time you 'read', and thus you create the work making this ergodic literature. Both these works only exist in or on digital media. However the book, 'Mr Morris' is a book and the text is read through a linear process. However the works on Dreaming Methods can often be 'read', 'viewed', and ‘experienced’, from any point in the narrative.

 

The book ‘Electronic Literature, New Horizons for the Literary’ (2008), seeks to set Electronic Literature, what I have elsewhere defined as Digital Fiction, within a historical and academic timeline. Hayles, the author, is at the forefront of this electronic movement as both a maker, participator and academic on the subject. She has spoken of electronic literature as a 'hopeful monster'. As she says when describing works, 'By calling these works 'literature', my co-editors and I hope to stimulate questions about the nature of literature in the digital era'.