ABSTRACT
Quests in games can actually provide an interesting type of bridge between game rules and game fiction in that the games can contain predefined sequences of events that the player then has to actualize or effect. Quests take their place in an increasing consensus that games and narratives can work productively together, allowing the reader to move beyond the debate between ludologists and narratologists. As the debate between the ludologists and the narratologists dies down, many game theorists and game designers increasingly focus on meaning and interpretation as central to game design and narrative. The argument about the intersection of interpretative and configurative meaning in games and narrative is not just a theoretical one. The history and theory of quest games takes up where the work of Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye leaves off, making literal a potential for interactivity that was always present in quest narratives.
