This site focuses on mapping the plot structures of interactive narratives, and in particular gamebooks – that is, playable print stories. The project data mines, analyzes, and visualizes the branching plot structures of hundreds of interactive stories, with examples from different decades, nations, and languages.
Examples are principally drawn from the Demian Katz Gamebook Collection housed in the The Department of Special Research Collections in the UC Santa Barbara Library, and works are identified here by their Katz collection box-folder ID (BB-FF).
An overview of project background and methods:
The Transverse Reading Project is studying the media structures in comic page layouts, poetic rhyme schemes, and video game plots.
Research for this portion of the project was conducted with the generous support of the John Arnhold Summer Undergraduate Research Fund.