Narrative Continued….

Following on from Eskelinen, people such as Eric Zimmerman, Katie Salen and Henry Jenkins tried to heal the rift between Ludology and Narratology (although Eskelinen is still stubbornly holding fast) by acknowledging and incorporating both schools of thought and in modern times it’s generally accepted that both schools of thought have merit.

Henry Jenkins believed in the merit of the compromise…

“I find myself responding to this perspective with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I understand what these writers are arguing against -- various attempts to map traditional narrative structures ("hypertext," "Interactive Cinema," "nonlinear narrative") onto games at the expense of an attention to their specificity as an emerging mode of entertainment. You say "narrative" to the average gamer and what they are apt to imagine is something on the order of a choose-your-own adventure book, a form noted for its lifelessness and mechanical exposition rather than enthralling entertainment, thematic sophistication, or character complexity. And game industry executives are perhaps justly skeptical that they have much to learn from the resolutely unpopular (and often overtly antipopular) aesthetics promoted by hypertext theorists.

The application of film theory to games can seem heavy-handed and literal-minded, often failing to recognize the profound differences between the two media. Yet, at the same time, there is a tremendous amount that game designers and critics could learn through making meaningful comparisons with other storytelling media¹. One gets rid of narrative as a framework for thinking about games only at one's own risk. In this short piece, I hope to offer a middle-ground position between the ludologists and the narratologists, one that respects the particularity of this emerging medium -- examining games less as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility.

Let's start at some points where we might all agree:

1. Not all games tell stories. Games may be an abstract, expressive, and experiential form, closer to music or modern dance than to cinema. Some ballets (The Nutcracker for example) tell stories, but storytelling isn't an intrinsic or defining feature of dance². Similarly, many of my own favorite games -- Tetris, Blix, Snood -- are simple graphic games that do not lend themselves very well to narrative exposition.

Eskelinen (2001) takes Janet Murray to task for her narrative analysis of Tetris as "a perfect enactment of the overtasked lives of Americans in the 1990s -- of the constant bombardment of tasks that demand our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught." Eskelinen is correct to note that the abstraction of Tetris would seem to defy narrative interpretation, but that is not the same thing as insisting that no meaningful analysis can be made of the game and its fit within contemporary culture. Tetris might well express something of the frenzied pace of modern life, just as modern dances might, without being a story. To understand such games, we need other terms and concepts beyond narrative, including interface design and expressive movement for starters. The last thing we want to do is to reign in the creative experimentation that needs to occur in the earlier years of a medium's development.

2. Many games do have narrative aspirations. Minimally, they want to tap the emotional residue of previous narrative experiences. Often, they depend on our familiarity with the roles and goals of genre entertainment to orient us to the action, and in many cases, game designers want to create a series of narrative experiences for the player. Given those narrative aspirations, it seems reasonable to suggest that some understanding of how games relate to narrative is necessary before we understand the aesthetics of game design or the nature of contemporary game culture³.

3. Narrative analysis need not be prescriptive, even if some narratologists -- Janet Murray is the most oft-cited example -- do seem to be advocating for games to pursue particular narrative forms. There is not one future of games. The goal should be to foster diversification of genres, aesthetics, and audiences, to open gamers to the broadest possible range of experiences. The past few years have been ones of enormous creative experimentation and innovation within the games industry, as might be represented by a list of some of the groundbreaking titles. The Sims, Black and White, Majestic, Shenmue; each represents profoundly different concepts of what makes for compelling game play. A discussion of the narrative potentials of games need not imply a privileging of storytelling over all the other possible things games can do, even if we might suggest that if game designers are going to tell stories, they should tell them well. In order to do that, game designers, who are most often schooled in computer science or graphic design, need to be retooled in the basic vocabulary of narrative theory.

4. The experience of playing games can never be simply reduced to the experience of a story⁴. Many other factors that have little or nothing to do with storytelling per se contribute to the development of great games and we need to significantly broaden our critical vocabulary for talking about games to deal more fully with those other topics. Here, the ludologist's insistence that game scholars focus more attention on the mechanics of game play seems totally in order.

5. If some games tell stories, they are unlikely to tell them in the same ways that other media tell stories⁵. Stories are not empty content that can be ported from one media pipeline to another. One would be hard-pressed, for example, to translate the internal dialogue of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past into a compelling cinematic experience, and the tight control over viewer experience that Hitchcock achieves in his suspense films would be directly antithetical to the aesthetics of good game design. We must, therefore, be attentive to the particularity of games as a medium, specifically what distinguishes them from other narrative traditions. Yet, in order to do so requires precise comparisons -- not the mapping of old models onto games but a testing of those models against existing games to determine what features they share with other media and how they differ.”

(Jenkins, [online] no date).

¹ Jenkins begins his article stating that both viewpoints have valid theory and reasoning behind them.
² This is an excellent analogy as it shows the view that just as ballet may have stories, they shouldn’t be judged on story alone, just as digital games though they may tell a story shouldn’t be judged on story alone.
³Jenkins states the importance of encompassing narrative into the study of digital games.
⁴ Jenkins reminds the reader that no digital game can be said to be just a narrative story as there are too many elements such as interactivity involved.
⁵ He then continues to explain that digital games have a unique way of telling the story.

The above piece by Henry Jenkins is a response to one of Markku Eskelinen’s many tirades against Ludology and indeed Ludologists. Jenkins immediately starts the piece by stating that he can see both viewpoints and agrees with the Lugological standpoint to a degree if narratology were to be the only way games should be viewed as a medium. He soon goes on to state the benefit of the middle ground, that they are benefits of the viewing of the narrative in digital games as the same as film, theatre etc. by stating there is much to be learned from that viewpoint and that is should not be dismissied offhand.

Jenkins’ piece is the complete antithesis of Eskelinen’s aggressive article. He tries to sooth Eskilinen by stating his He takes the standpoint that Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen take as well, that the Narratology Vs Ludology debate need not be a Fire Vs Ice issue, that there is a middle ground where both would be applied in the study of video games and that the study of video games would benefit from the middle ground.

Jenkins is certain to point out that narrative is not the only lens through which digital games should be viewed as it would detract from the study as a whole but that it is definitely something that should be taken into consideration.

From this article it is not surprising that this viewpoint would soon be the one that would be accepted by digital game theorists and designers as a whole.

In digital games there are two types of narrative, embedded and emergent:

Embedded narrative is where there is a pre-defined story arc put in place by the designers; this is in the majority of games. These games are the ones that have a linear structure closer to the ones in films and theatre. Examples of embedded narrative are games such as the aforementioned Resident Evil series, Assassins’ Creed etc.

Emergent narrative is when there is no story arc and the story of the game transpires as a direct result of the actions of the player. Games that exemplify this are ones the The Sims.