Reading Again for the First Time: A Model of Rereading in Interactive Stories

When a non-interactive story is reread, the experience may change, even though the text remains the same. But what if the text is potentially different in each reading session, as is the case in an interactive story – how does rereading change in the context of interactive stories? In our earlier empirical studies of rereading we found that, surprisingly, readers of interactive stories reported that they do not feel that they are rereading until after they reach an understanding of the story, even if the story is unchanged between readings. To explain this, we propose a model of rereading in interactive stories in which readers are initially rereading to reach some form of closure. After achieving this goal, readers do feel that they are rereading, focusing on their understanding of the story as invariant. We demonstrate this model by using it to explain why inexperienced readers of Mateas and Stern’s Façade initially reread to explore the story, but quickly shift to “playing with the system”, and do not continue to reread for long.