Cassandra Barkman | Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn (original) (raw)

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Papers by Cassandra Barkman

The University of Melbourne Undergradute Arts Journal, 2018

Refractory, 2021

This article will argue the narrative of videogame horror franchise Five Nights at Freddy’s can b... more This article will argue the narrative of videogame horror franchise Five Nights at Freddy’s can be understood as a combination of the fan engagement in forensic fandoms with that of the creepypasta. While each Fight Nights at Freddy’s (FNaF) contains a straightforward contemporary narrative that follows the player trying to survive murderous animatronics in an enclosed environment, a dense and intentionally ambiguous overarching storyworld has been created across the franchise’s many iterations. I will argue that FNaF’s story takes advantage of embedded videogame narrative design (Jenkins; Ryan; Wood) common in horror videogames (Kirkland) to facilitate a mode of fan engagement that combines the forensic fandom experience of dissecting a complex serialised television show such as Lost and Westworld (Mittell) with the open-sourced, epistemic play often found in the online creation of creepypastas (Blank & McHeill; Balanzategui). Not only does FNaF deal with similar subject matter to creepypastas like the utilisation of nostalgia, temporality and the digital gothic (Balanzategui), but the ambiguous and abstract nature of its ongoing mythology encourages communities on Reddit and YouTube to collectively propose and extrapolate on fan theories in a process that combines the speculative nature of forensic fandoms with that of creepypasta story creation. FNaF therefore expands on understandings of forensic fan practices and how they relate to other modes of online storytelling.

Journal of Games Criticism, 2021

Recent independent titles Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club are filled with instances in ... more Recent independent titles Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club are filled with instances in which the boundary between what is real and fictional is blurred. This article considers the transgressing of different worlds, what Genette called metalepsis, as a narrative device and explores its impact on both videogame’s storytelling and player experience. Both Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club reveal how metalepsis can be employed to disorient, either through interweaving the player’s lived reality more tightly with the gameworld, or through intentionally leaving them out of the cybernetic system that makes up gameplay and imbuing moments of inaction with narrative significance. Through discussing both games, this article expands on metalepsis’ relationship with videogame affordances and the impact it can have when used as a narrative device within the medium.

Conference Presentations by Cassandra Barkman

DiGRA Australia, 2024

Complex narratives, stories that are intentionally difficult to follow and challenge the narratee... more Complex narratives, stories that are intentionally difficult to follow and challenge the narratee (the receiver of a narrative), have become a normalised part of contemporary media. Scholars across film (Buckland 2009; 2014; Kiss & Willemsen 2017), television (Mittell 2006; 2015) and narratology more generally (Grishakova & Poulaki 2019; Ryan 2019; Walsh & Stepney 2018) have all explored ways narratives can be thought of as complex. Many scholars have also suggested that narrative complexity is related to videogames. Panek (2006, 87) suggests “an element of non-filmic interactive storytelling exists in these films. Younger audiences who are increasingly comfortable with the burgeoning interactive medium of videogames may find [complex] narratives appealing for this reason”. Lavender-Smith (2016, 78) outright claims complex film’s “narratives are video games, encouraging recursive learning and exploration, training audiences to become digital cinephiles”. Cameron (2008, 173) states: “just as computer games have taken on codes and structural elements from cinema, [complex] narratives arguably constitute a set of films that operate like games, challenging viewers with temporal and narrative puzzles”. Theorists have also compared complexity to games more generally: Elsaesser (2009, 14) titles his personal description of complex cinema as “mind-game films”, defined as “movies that are ‘playing games’” by withholding crucial information from characters, viewers or both. Buckland’s (2009; 2014) and Kiss and Willemsen’s (2017) description of complex narratives as ‘puzzle plots’ foreground a gamelike quality also; Buckland (2014; 2015) even directly explores the ‘videogame logic’ of complex films Source Code (Jones 2011) and Inception.

This paper expands on the loose connotations elicited by other scholars by exploring how exactly narrative complexity can be understood as gamelike. Adopting a term from Astrid Ensslin (2014, 11), I argue that complex narratives are cognitively ludic, meaning they elicit a cognitive mode of engagement that can be, and has been, compared to games, but remains distinct from more literal ludicity. This relates complex narratives to textual games such as riddles and, most notably, mysteries. Both are centered on the puzzling question of ‘what happened’ – as Ryan (2015, 121) describes, the narrative “asks a question, the [narratee] tries to answer, and the [narrative] wins if the [narratee] must be given the solution”. This interaction only occurs cognitively however, and the extent to which narratees are invested in ‘solving’ complexity will vary – indeed, the pleasure of both mysteries and complexity arguably comes from the cleverness of the solution rather than ‘winning’.

Thinking about complex narratives in this way is beneficial in how it foregrounds specific gamelike responses complexity can elicit in the viewer. These range from an appreciation for both story and discourse, the need to learn how a narrative works before understanding it and the desire to rewatch or ‘replay’ a narrative to improve one’s comprehension. The first relates to Mittell’s (2006, 36) concept of the operational aesthetic – “enjoying the [narrative’s] results while also marveling at how it works”, with Mittell arguing this is a key goal across “videogames, puzzle films and narratively complex television series”. The second refers to the ‘narrative mechanics’ at play in complex stories, such as nonlinearity, multiple levels of reality and ontological looping; the intricacies of which must be understood before the narrative itself can be comprehended. This relates complexity to the self-reflexive mode of engagement involved in playing a game - being conscious of the rules and mechanics while simultaneously inhabiting and enjoying the gameworld within that ludic structure. A key example Mittell (2009; 2011) explores is that of the serialised ‘complex TV’ show Lost (Abrams et al., 2004-2010). Finally, complexity also encourages repeat viewings to ‘resolve’ the challenges to comprehension, much as the same way games are replayed to master their mechanics. Buckland (2015, 197) foregrounds this through his discussion of the film Inception and its ‘videogame logic’ in how its complexity encourages a cult following and repeat viewings to “master the complexity just as games are played multiple times to master their rules”.

Therefore, in this paper I argue that complex narratives can be understood as cognitively ludic – they can elicit a mode of engagement like, but distinct from, games. This is productive in how it foregrounds key gamelike ways that narratees can respond to complexity. These range from taking pleasure in both a narrative and how it is told, the need to learn how a narrative works before understanding it and the desire to rewatch to improve one’s comprehension. Expanding on this connection between narrative complexity and gameness is therefore not only beneficial in considering the impact on the narratee, but also in exploring the connection between contemporary modes of storytelling and games. As a future avenue of research, it also has consequences for how to understand narrative complexity in videogames itself.

DiGRA Australia, 2022

This paper will offer a close analysis of time loops as a narrative device in two recent videogam... more This paper will offer a close analysis of time loops as a narrative device in two recent videogames, Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital 2019) and Deathloop (Arkane Studios 2021). While far from a new phenomenon in videogames, nor other media (David Bordwell 2002; Jan Simons 2008), recent years have seen the release of various titles like Outer Wilds, Deathloop, Twelve Minutes (Luis António 2021), The Sexy Brutale (Cavalier Game Studios 2017), Loop Hero (Four Quarters 2021), Returnal (Housemarque 2021) and more that place time loops as central to their experiences. I argue that time loops narrativize something that is already implicit across most videogames – repetition. As Brendan Keogh (2018, p. 145) argues, “through character deaths, saved files, checkpoints, action replays, Let’s Play videos, walkthroughs, skippable cutscenes, lag, fluctuating framerates and countless other phenomena, time travel is a banal feature of videogame play”. Every game with a save/load feature already contains time loops. Acknowledging them within the gameworld essentially narrativizes elements like repetition and failure that are frequently part of play but outside of a game’s storyworld. This paper therefore intends to offer a close analyse of their inclusion in Outer Wilds and Deathloop and determine what impact narrativizing repetition has on how videogame time loop’s function.

DiGRA Australia, 2021

This paper will propose a way to think of emergent narratives as narratively complex through the ... more This paper will propose a way to think of emergent narratives as narratively complex through the discussion of two case studies, XCOM 2 (Firaxis 2016) and Magicka 2 (Pieces Interactive 2015). Narrative complexity has been discussed across cinema and television (see Warren Buckland 2009; 2014; Jason Mittell 2015; Miklós Kiss & Steven Willemsen 2017) but remains largely unexplored in videogames. It draws from the cognitive approach (Marie-Laure Ryan 2006; Marina Grishakova & Maria Poulaki 2019) that describes narrative as a cognitive process during which the narratee is perpetually engaging with a story through a process of meaning-making and comprehension. Complexity refers to narratives that, either temporarily or permanently, challenge this process of comprehension and require meaningful cognitive effort to decipher. Narratives in other media frequently do this through devices such as nonlinearity, diegetic overstimulation and logical impossibilities (Jason Mittell 201...

DiGRA Australia, 2020

The narrative tradition of separating the ‘telling’ from the ‘told’ is described in Gérard Genett... more The narrative tradition of separating the ‘telling’ from the ‘told’ is described in Gérard Genette’s Discours du récit (Narrative Discourse Genette 1979, 229) through its breakdown of storytelling into distinct narrative levels and the definition of intrusions between those levels as metalepsis. While this theory has been used to describe what occurs in films like Adaptation (Jonze 2002) and Stranger than Fiction (Forster 2004) (Milkos Kiss & Steven Willemsen 2017; Matthew Campora 2009), this paper applies Genette’s theory to two recent metaleptic and experimental narrative games Pony Island (Daniel Mullins Games 2016) and Doki Doki Literature Club (Team Salvato 2017). I also expand on Alexander Galloway’s (2006, 34) brief mention of metalepsis in relation to nondiegetic machine acts. Both Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) embody what Galloway (2006, 36) refers to as “the play of the nondiegetic machine act” through “the various semiotic layers of the vid...

The University of Melbourne Undergradute Arts Journal, 2018

Refractory, 2021

This article will argue the narrative of videogame horror franchise Five Nights at Freddy’s can b... more This article will argue the narrative of videogame horror franchise Five Nights at Freddy’s can be understood as a combination of the fan engagement in forensic fandoms with that of the creepypasta. While each Fight Nights at Freddy’s (FNaF) contains a straightforward contemporary narrative that follows the player trying to survive murderous animatronics in an enclosed environment, a dense and intentionally ambiguous overarching storyworld has been created across the franchise’s many iterations. I will argue that FNaF’s story takes advantage of embedded videogame narrative design (Jenkins; Ryan; Wood) common in horror videogames (Kirkland) to facilitate a mode of fan engagement that combines the forensic fandom experience of dissecting a complex serialised television show such as Lost and Westworld (Mittell) with the open-sourced, epistemic play often found in the online creation of creepypastas (Blank & McHeill; Balanzategui). Not only does FNaF deal with similar subject matter to creepypastas like the utilisation of nostalgia, temporality and the digital gothic (Balanzategui), but the ambiguous and abstract nature of its ongoing mythology encourages communities on Reddit and YouTube to collectively propose and extrapolate on fan theories in a process that combines the speculative nature of forensic fandoms with that of creepypasta story creation. FNaF therefore expands on understandings of forensic fan practices and how they relate to other modes of online storytelling.

Journal of Games Criticism, 2021

Recent independent titles Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club are filled with instances in ... more Recent independent titles Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club are filled with instances in which the boundary between what is real and fictional is blurred. This article considers the transgressing of different worlds, what Genette called metalepsis, as a narrative device and explores its impact on both videogame’s storytelling and player experience. Both Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club reveal how metalepsis can be employed to disorient, either through interweaving the player’s lived reality more tightly with the gameworld, or through intentionally leaving them out of the cybernetic system that makes up gameplay and imbuing moments of inaction with narrative significance. Through discussing both games, this article expands on metalepsis’ relationship with videogame affordances and the impact it can have when used as a narrative device within the medium.

DiGRA Australia, 2024

Complex narratives, stories that are intentionally difficult to follow and challenge the narratee... more Complex narratives, stories that are intentionally difficult to follow and challenge the narratee (the receiver of a narrative), have become a normalised part of contemporary media. Scholars across film (Buckland 2009; 2014; Kiss & Willemsen 2017), television (Mittell 2006; 2015) and narratology more generally (Grishakova & Poulaki 2019; Ryan 2019; Walsh & Stepney 2018) have all explored ways narratives can be thought of as complex. Many scholars have also suggested that narrative complexity is related to videogames. Panek (2006, 87) suggests “an element of non-filmic interactive storytelling exists in these films. Younger audiences who are increasingly comfortable with the burgeoning interactive medium of videogames may find [complex] narratives appealing for this reason”. Lavender-Smith (2016, 78) outright claims complex film’s “narratives are video games, encouraging recursive learning and exploration, training audiences to become digital cinephiles”. Cameron (2008, 173) states: “just as computer games have taken on codes and structural elements from cinema, [complex] narratives arguably constitute a set of films that operate like games, challenging viewers with temporal and narrative puzzles”. Theorists have also compared complexity to games more generally: Elsaesser (2009, 14) titles his personal description of complex cinema as “mind-game films”, defined as “movies that are ‘playing games’” by withholding crucial information from characters, viewers or both. Buckland’s (2009; 2014) and Kiss and Willemsen’s (2017) description of complex narratives as ‘puzzle plots’ foreground a gamelike quality also; Buckland (2014; 2015) even directly explores the ‘videogame logic’ of complex films Source Code (Jones 2011) and Inception.

This paper expands on the loose connotations elicited by other scholars by exploring how exactly narrative complexity can be understood as gamelike. Adopting a term from Astrid Ensslin (2014, 11), I argue that complex narratives are cognitively ludic, meaning they elicit a cognitive mode of engagement that can be, and has been, compared to games, but remains distinct from more literal ludicity. This relates complex narratives to textual games such as riddles and, most notably, mysteries. Both are centered on the puzzling question of ‘what happened’ – as Ryan (2015, 121) describes, the narrative “asks a question, the [narratee] tries to answer, and the [narrative] wins if the [narratee] must be given the solution”. This interaction only occurs cognitively however, and the extent to which narratees are invested in ‘solving’ complexity will vary – indeed, the pleasure of both mysteries and complexity arguably comes from the cleverness of the solution rather than ‘winning’.

Thinking about complex narratives in this way is beneficial in how it foregrounds specific gamelike responses complexity can elicit in the viewer. These range from an appreciation for both story and discourse, the need to learn how a narrative works before understanding it and the desire to rewatch or ‘replay’ a narrative to improve one’s comprehension. The first relates to Mittell’s (2006, 36) concept of the operational aesthetic – “enjoying the [narrative’s] results while also marveling at how it works”, with Mittell arguing this is a key goal across “videogames, puzzle films and narratively complex television series”. The second refers to the ‘narrative mechanics’ at play in complex stories, such as nonlinearity, multiple levels of reality and ontological looping; the intricacies of which must be understood before the narrative itself can be comprehended. This relates complexity to the self-reflexive mode of engagement involved in playing a game - being conscious of the rules and mechanics while simultaneously inhabiting and enjoying the gameworld within that ludic structure. A key example Mittell (2009; 2011) explores is that of the serialised ‘complex TV’ show Lost (Abrams et al., 2004-2010). Finally, complexity also encourages repeat viewings to ‘resolve’ the challenges to comprehension, much as the same way games are replayed to master their mechanics. Buckland (2015, 197) foregrounds this through his discussion of the film Inception and its ‘videogame logic’ in how its complexity encourages a cult following and repeat viewings to “master the complexity just as games are played multiple times to master their rules”.

Therefore, in this paper I argue that complex narratives can be understood as cognitively ludic – they can elicit a mode of engagement like, but distinct from, games. This is productive in how it foregrounds key gamelike ways that narratees can respond to complexity. These range from taking pleasure in both a narrative and how it is told, the need to learn how a narrative works before understanding it and the desire to rewatch to improve one’s comprehension. Expanding on this connection between narrative complexity and gameness is therefore not only beneficial in considering the impact on the narratee, but also in exploring the connection between contemporary modes of storytelling and games. As a future avenue of research, it also has consequences for how to understand narrative complexity in videogames itself.

DiGRA Australia, 2022

This paper will offer a close analysis of time loops as a narrative device in two recent videogam... more This paper will offer a close analysis of time loops as a narrative device in two recent videogames, Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital 2019) and Deathloop (Arkane Studios 2021). While far from a new phenomenon in videogames, nor other media (David Bordwell 2002; Jan Simons 2008), recent years have seen the release of various titles like Outer Wilds, Deathloop, Twelve Minutes (Luis António 2021), The Sexy Brutale (Cavalier Game Studios 2017), Loop Hero (Four Quarters 2021), Returnal (Housemarque 2021) and more that place time loops as central to their experiences. I argue that time loops narrativize something that is already implicit across most videogames – repetition. As Brendan Keogh (2018, p. 145) argues, “through character deaths, saved files, checkpoints, action replays, Let’s Play videos, walkthroughs, skippable cutscenes, lag, fluctuating framerates and countless other phenomena, time travel is a banal feature of videogame play”. Every game with a save/load feature already contains time loops. Acknowledging them within the gameworld essentially narrativizes elements like repetition and failure that are frequently part of play but outside of a game’s storyworld. This paper therefore intends to offer a close analyse of their inclusion in Outer Wilds and Deathloop and determine what impact narrativizing repetition has on how videogame time loop’s function.

DiGRA Australia, 2021

This paper will propose a way to think of emergent narratives as narratively complex through the ... more This paper will propose a way to think of emergent narratives as narratively complex through the discussion of two case studies, XCOM 2 (Firaxis 2016) and Magicka 2 (Pieces Interactive 2015). Narrative complexity has been discussed across cinema and television (see Warren Buckland 2009; 2014; Jason Mittell 2015; Miklós Kiss & Steven Willemsen 2017) but remains largely unexplored in videogames. It draws from the cognitive approach (Marie-Laure Ryan 2006; Marina Grishakova & Maria Poulaki 2019) that describes narrative as a cognitive process during which the narratee is perpetually engaging with a story through a process of meaning-making and comprehension. Complexity refers to narratives that, either temporarily or permanently, challenge this process of comprehension and require meaningful cognitive effort to decipher. Narratives in other media frequently do this through devices such as nonlinearity, diegetic overstimulation and logical impossibilities (Jason Mittell 201...

DiGRA Australia, 2020

The narrative tradition of separating the ‘telling’ from the ‘told’ is described in Gérard Genett... more The narrative tradition of separating the ‘telling’ from the ‘told’ is described in Gérard Genette’s Discours du récit (Narrative Discourse Genette 1979, 229) through its breakdown of storytelling into distinct narrative levels and the definition of intrusions between those levels as metalepsis. While this theory has been used to describe what occurs in films like Adaptation (Jonze 2002) and Stranger than Fiction (Forster 2004) (Milkos Kiss & Steven Willemsen 2017; Matthew Campora 2009), this paper applies Genette’s theory to two recent metaleptic and experimental narrative games Pony Island (Daniel Mullins Games 2016) and Doki Doki Literature Club (Team Salvato 2017). I also expand on Alexander Galloway’s (2006, 34) brief mention of metalepsis in relation to nondiegetic machine acts. Both Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) embody what Galloway (2006, 36) refers to as “the play of the nondiegetic machine act” through “the various semiotic layers of the vid...