Volitional Narrative

I'll begin my trek towards legitimizing video games by coining a term: volitional narrative. Pretty much any long term discussion requires a certain short hand, but rather than employ secret handshake terms I'd like to build a new vocabulary that any new reader can catch onto.
So what is volitional narrative?

It is a narrative whose content, telling and progression is controlled, in part, by the one experiencing it.

But first, let's start simpler. What is narrative?

A quick search suggests narrative is 'a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious' (Dictionary.com) and/or '...a construct created in a suitable format that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events.' (Wikipedia)

Which means, essentially, that narrative is the glue of causality. It describes the passage of perceived time, where events follow one another in a distinct sequence. One things leads to another.

I need to impress on you the fact that narrative rules our entire lives. History, memory, logic and even identity rely on the sequential production of events, one coming after another. Even in the absence of a bridge, a 'non sequitur', we feel it necessary to note the absence of the expected bridge. Non-relation itself becomes the relation between events, and that events can be 'mis-sequenced' points to a steady belief in the validity of narrative. We expect things to come in sensible sequence. We feel confusion if they don't.

Narrative, in short, makes sense. I mean that literally. It produces the experience of sense. This is not unlike the 'cooperative principle' that's so well summarized in Dinosaur Comics. We connect the dots, fill in the blanks, find a statue in the block of marble, always assuming it was already there and we are just putting together the puzzle.

So I'll start by criticizing my own proposed term. All narrative is volitional in that one must necessarily consent to experiencing it, and accept/produce the sense that goes along with it. Not everyone is capable of this. Schizophrenics and others suffering from a so-called 'thought disorders' experience loose association, the practical upshot of which is that the narrative building power of the individual breaks down. Their words and writing don't make sense. And even amongst those of us who are not psychotic, interpretations of any given story vary widely.
Narrative does not occur without our involvement, so all narrative is, to some degree, volitional.
But there is a spectrum. And video games inhabit the far end towards true volition.

What does this mean? It means that video game makers rely heavily on players to create their own experiences, to guide the story, to make key decisions and interact directly with the process of narration. It provides a level of involvement not just in the interpretation but in the actual execution of the story.

Video games aren't the first notably volitional narratives. If anyone scours a young adult library they'll probably find a collection of small white books promising a reader the chance to choose their own adventure. But video games come much closer to the simulation of actual real time experiences, come closer to life experience, and will only get closer. A film can show you what appears to be a real space, with seemingly real people within it. A video games actually lets you move about in that space and converse with those people. They are all of them, even those not labeled as such, simulations, experiences we immerse ourselves in, or want to. And, often times, the better the game the more fully we immerse.

So video games promise to tell us a great deal about our relationship with narrative, and thus our relationship with the whole of our lives and ourselves. What better way, after all, to have art bring out truth in people, than to have those people reflect themselves in that art, to participate in its creation?

And that's just for starters.