Enacted experiences require tight action–feedback loops

To create an Enacted experience, feedback loops need to be sufficiently tight to sustain the perception that participants are bringing about the experience. Tight feedback loops, in turn, require actions to be fairly fine-grained.

Consider choose-your-own-adventure books versus Infocom-style interactive fiction. The stakes feel much greater in the latter, but the medium is really quite similar, even though Zork runs on a computer. I suspect that my sense of “being one with Zork” comes from its finer-grained feedback loops and larger state space.

Last updated 2023-07-13.