Marie-Laure Ryan Narratology for Computer Game Studies (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
Today, no generally accepted definition of video game narrative exists. The academic discourse has pointed out ontological and phenomenologi- cal differences to more traditional forms of narra- tive, and therefore, the relationship to established scholarship in narratology is complex. In the field of video game studies, narrative aspects of video games are often described in contrast to rule-based aspects. A wider scan of related fields reveals additional positions. Ludonarrative is variously understood as a structural quality of the video game artifact, as an experiential quality during the experience of a video game, or as a high- level framework to understand video games. Finally, a number of scholars emphasize the difference to traditional manifestations and there- fore work towards specific theories of video game narrative. While all legitimate by them- selves, these different usages of “narrative” in the context of video games are often not clearly distinguished in professional or academic dis- course and can lead to considerable confusion. It is therefore essential to scrutinize the particular context and underlying assumptions when approaching the topic. This state of affairs puts particular responsibility on scholars to identify the origins of their understanding of video game nar- rative and define their particular usage of the term in contrast to earlier applications.
The paper elucidates how video games approach narrative as well as the methodologies for conveying story available to the medium. By illuminating this topic, the paper seeks to create an understanding of narrative within the video game medium and to discuss the benefits and issues of narrative games. To do this, the paper first explored narrative as per Genette, Cobley, and Propp, and found especially Genette to be valuable to the discussion. Genette provided insight into the 'tense', 'order' and 'voice' of narratives, which refer to the temporality of events, the sequence of these, and the narrating instance. Ultimately, this was later used to frame the discussion surrounding the place and role of narrative within video games. Seeking to define games, the paper turned to Salen & Zimmerman, Juul, Crawford and Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al. The paper found that rules, artificial conflict, and quantifiable goals were essential traits in games.
Story and Narrative Structures in Computer Games
Computer games can involve narrative and story elements integrating different forms of interactivity and using different strategies for combining interaction with non-interactive story and narrative elements. While some forms of interactive narrative involve simple selection between fixed narrative sequences, computer games more typically involve the integration of narrative with game play based upon a simulation substrate. These three forms, simulation, game play and narrative, involve pre-authored time structures at different levels of time scale. Simulation involves the lowest levels of time structure, with authored principles specifying how time develops from frame to frame based upon physics, the representation of game objects and their behaviour, and discrete event simulation. Games involve pre-designed game moves, types of actions that may be realized as abstractions over patterns of low level changes at the frame level. Linear and interactive narratives form the highest level of predesigned time structure, framing low-level simulation processes and intermediate level game moves within a high level structure typically based upon classic models of narrative form. Computer games may emphasise one or more of these primary forms as the focus of meaning in the play experience. Story construction within computer games is a function of how these different levels of time structure interact in the play experience, being the result of pre-designed narrative content, story potential and the actual unfolding story created by the actions of the player. There are many strategies for integrating these forms. However, a crucial issue in the design of story content is the relationship between how the resulting game experience relates to user play preferences. In particular, categories of play style can be extended to include preferences for how story content is experienced, based upon audience, performance and immersionist orientations to story. Perceived tensions within computer game form, such as the tension between game play and narrative, are explained, not as fundamental formal issues, but issues of player preferences and how these are satisfied or not by different strategies for story content within a game system.
Narrative Methodology in Computer Games
Deveria o conteúdo da narrativa de jogos continuar tergiversado por narratologistas? A discussão teórica deste artigo está voltada para a narratologia de jogos, tomando diferentes abordagens de pesquisas baseadas em uma perspectiva funcional de jogos. A segunda parte do artigo faz uma alusão a pesquisas realizadas na área, de modo a discutir como o texto pode ser examinado por narratologias e qual a contribuição da análise deles.
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2014
In the last ten or fourteen years there has been a debate among the so called ludologists and narratologists in Computer Games Studies as to what is the best methodological approach for the academic study of electronic games. The aim of this paper is to propose a way out of the dilemma, suggesting that both ludology and narratology can be helpful methodologically. However, there is need for a wider theoretical perspective, that of semiotics, in which both approaches can be operative. The semiotic perspective proposed allows research in the field to focus on the similarities between games and traditional narrative forms (since they share narrativity to a greater or lesser extent) as well as on their difference (they have different degrees of interaction); it will facilitate communication among theorists if we want to understand each other when talking about games and stories, and it will lead to a better understanding of the hybrid nature of the medium of game. In this sense the present paper aims to complement Gonzalo Frasca’s reconciliatory attempt made a few years back and expand on his proposal.
Narratives in Digital Games: Their Place and Function in the Study of Digital Games
Expanding Practices in Audiovisual Narrative, 2014
Broadly speaking, digital games can be studied in three ways: the social sciences perspective focuses on the social context of games and their players; the humanities perspective takes games as cultural artifacts, and concentrates on their meaning as well as ways of meaning-making; and the design perspective views games as a set of design and programming problems. What distinguishes digital games from traditional ones like chess is their greater emphasis on representational and narrative elements. From the humanities perspective this raises a number of questions. What is the scope of literary theory and narratology in the game scholar's methodological toolbox? How should computer games as objects of study be defined? In the early years of game studies these questions were at the heart of the so-called "ludology versus narratology" debate. I believe that revisiting the debate could be edifying for humanities scholars working in adjacent areas. Additionally, while contemporary research tends toward more holistic approaches, as far as I know extant accounts of how narratives and game rules are intertwined have either reduced games to non-trivial cybernetic machines or interactive semiotic matrices, restricted themselves mostly to the expressive aspects of games, or left the interrelation between rules and narratives ultimately somewhat vague. After reviewing the ludology vs. narratology debate and some of its central points of contention, I will propose a holistic account of the relationship between games and narratives. Narrative will be treated as a cognitive strategy for making sense of the game's fictional world that is created by the rules of the game via semiotic means. Instead of reducing games to other kinds of entities, it will be shown that games qua games are the source of the semiotic processes which ultimately create fictional worlds and direct the player toward a narrative interpretation of the game's signs.
Event-Sequences, Plots and Narration in Computer Games
Writing, Reading and Playing in Programmable Media, 2007
Starting with the debate between ludologists and narratologists this essay tries to show that there is a narrative aspect in computer games which has nothing to do with background stories and cut scenes. A closer analysis of two sequences, taken from the MMORPG Everquest II and the adventure game Black Mirror, is the basis for a distinction between three aspects of this kind of narrative in computer games: the sequence of activities of the player, the sequence of events as it is determined by the mechanics of the game and this sequence of events understood as a plot, that is as a sequence of chronologically ordered and causally linked events. This kind of narrative is quite distant to the prototypical narrative which is the basis of most of the narratology. But actually all media, not only computer games, need their own narratology.
Narrative Reformulated: Videogames and Storytelling
I argue that the theoretical debate between ludology and narratology concerning narrative in game spaces is too restrictive. Of course traditional narrative models don't fully apply, as ludology argues, but no reason exists to argue that narrative can only be formulated as it already has. Ludology has argued far too restrictive a sense of time and temporal perspective in games.