The word linear, when applied to video games, is death. We denigrate shooters on rails as trivial diversions best played with a beer in one hand and a light gun in the other. We treasure games like Grand Theft Auto, Deus Ex, The Sims, even Crayon Physics because they are profoundly nonlinear. They let us solve problems in unique ways and they let us design our own experience in large part. Then, surely, if our games are nonlinear, the stories that are bound to them must be too.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that video game storytelling is an entirely new medium. The history of nonlinear narrative runs further back than you’d think, but most of it is hidden like the mass of an iceberg. Academics tend to cite two things most often as the creative roots of nonlinear storytelling: a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1941 called “The Garden of Forking Paths,” and a French literary movement in the 1960s called Oulipo — a contraction that when translated reads workshop of potential literature. But in truth, only academics really talk about these things.

What you surely do remember, however, was the Choose Your Own Adventure series. It’s where the concept first found commercial success, where it was offered to the mass market and miraculously accepted. The first published CYOA, Sugarcane Island, was written in 1969 and first published in 1976. But the series only found legs in the early 80s.

I remember my public library had two long, long shelves of the books then. Granted, they were shelved next to the slush pile of comic books some hapless nerd had donated to the library — but that didn’t stop anyone. The books were among the most popular in the children’s section; there were always many available, but you had to be persistent if you wanted to get one of the good ones.

(An aside on quality. CYOAs are juvenile; there’s no denying that. The storylines are often pure wish fulfillment — witness You Are A Shark and The Luckiest Day of Your Life. But these came later, when the concept was worn down by repetition. More importantly, I think they were also aimed at children because they were the audience then that would be the most willing to accept an unfamiliar way of storytelling.)

But why did it take so long for interactive narrative to hit the mainstream, and why was it that the early 80s brought them such success? The answer, I think, is technology. I really do believe it was no accident that CYOAs took off in the first video game boom, in the era of Pac-Man and the Atari 2600. It was because of the box copy deficit.

Does this…

Here’s what was printed on the back of the box of an Atari 2600 shooter named MegaMania:

Imagine being the hard-working pilot of an intergalactic cruiser. After a tough day in the cosmos, you naturally stop off for a little snack.

Two deluxe pepperoni pizzas and a quart of chocolate mint ice cream later, you’re beginning to see things funny. Somehow, you manage to make it home, falling fast asleep. But, your sweet dreams quickly turn into some kind of nightmare. A space nightmare. It’s called MegaMania™.

When you actually play the game, it turns out the point is to shoot down purple hamburgers, green beetles, and yellow irons with a spaceship that eerily, but not copyright-infringement worthily similar to the Enterprise. This is not to say that MegaMania is a bad game; it’s actually a lot of fun. But there was a huge gulf between the story you read on the box and the experience you actually had.

…Equal This?

This was mainly because the technology of video games hadn’t matured yet. The closest people came in that initial boom to games with coherent storytelling were games like Adventure and Superman for the 2600 where you complete tasks to solve puzzles and complete a quest. But it would take the NES, after the crash of the 80s, to provide games that even had dialogue.

(A second aside: what about adventure games like Zork or King’s Quest? I would argue that the well-plotted adventure games were an anomaly of the time, and rightly revered after that time had passed.)

CYOAs chose the other side of the technology tradeoff. (And books are technology, by the way, just the same as pencils and toothbrushes are.) They had little interactivity, but a lot of story. The beautiful thing about that time is that you could have both kinds of experiences. If you want to blast radial tires, play MegaMania. If you want to pretend you’re a spy, read Your Code Name Is Jonah.

Of course the box copy deficit disappeared once games became more sophisticated. In fact, I’d argue that the deficit has been reversed. I think videos of gameplay are much more representative now of the experience they offer than any textual description can be. The range of interaction is just too broad.

CYOAs did not prosper in the same way that video games have. Their attempts to offer more complexity led them become gamebooks that began incorporating dice rolls and character stats. They eventually became poor substitutes for pen-and-paper role-playing games, and I think they should have zagged instead of zigging into what turned out to be a dead end. Instead of becoming more like games, they should have strove to become more like stories, like — I hope it is okay if I use this word — literature.

It became impossible over time for books to compete technologically with video games. In a way, it was an accident that they even were able to compete at all. I think they shouldn’t have played a losing game when there was one they could have won handily, and still might.

We don’t care how stories are delivered to us. We watch them in the dark in movie theaters, we read them in books, we listen to friends, we even play them on our game console. We don’t care about illustrations or polygons or THX sound when we’re in their grip. Technology is useless to us then, and for better or worse, video games still are all about technology. Almost all of them decay instantaneously as technology advances, while good stories grow as they get older.

And — this is the part that I only believe, but don’t have proof of — there is something compelling at the heart of interactive narrative after you discard all its technologies, a new way to structure a story. Choose Your Own Adventures were like little toddlers bumbling into walls, once in a while finding something brilliant hidden in a kitchen cabinet. They may yet grow up.