“I believe that it’s through stories that we relate our gameplaying experiences. These stories contextual our virtual experiences; for on the one hand, we are sitting on the couch, pushing buttons in a coordinated manner, but on the other, we are the Prince of Persia, saving the day. And the gameplaying experience of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is contextualized as a story that the Prince is telling Farah, a story of his “virtual” experience that has now never happened, but he did indeed save the day. And it is at this moment when you realize that while you have been playing the role of the Prince throughout the game, you have also been positioned as Farah listening to the Prince tell this story. This moment illustrates how the interactive experience of a videogame can make manifest a theory of reading in which the reader is just as active a creator in the meaning of the text as the author. You are both the “author” of the story (the Prince) and the “reader” of it (Farah). Your actions as the Prince are also your imagining of the story being told to you as Farah.”

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - Plotting the Story and Interactivity reads a bit clunky in places but that’s to be expected of academic prose I suppose.