End of story? Quest, narrative and enactment in computer games

In a recently published article (1) Espen Aarseth claims that all those computer games that have been described as ‘narrative games’ could better be described as ‘quest games’. Unless a valid counter-example can be found, he suggests that the long and heated debate between ludologists and narratologists about wether or not games are narratives has been settled in favour of the ludologists. My claim is that the computer game "Max Payne" (2) is the counter-example Aarseth is asking for. One central question in all theories of games must be: What is it that makes a game pleasurable? It seems clear that the huge popularity of "Max Payne" can not be contributed to graphics and gameplay alone – after all, the game has been widely criticized for minimizing player freedom through a strict, linear design. The pleasure of playing Max Payne can simply not be fully understood without regard to the innovative storytelling aspects of the game. As in a classic Hollywood movie the game starts with the end, the winning situation, and throughout the rest of the game the player is guided by a voice-over narrating in retrospect the events as the player experiences them (3). The rules of the game are all but clear; staying alive seems to be the one objective of the gameplay. So if any game is narrative, "Max Payne" is, but is it a quest game? If so, it is a very different kind of quest than the ones that Ragnhild Tronstad is talking about, and one must distinguish between the player’s quest and the avatar/main character’s quest. In puzzle-solving quests the central problems of the quest are identical for the player and the main character. However, while the central character in "Max Payne" is on a complex film noir quest of unraveling conspiracy and dealing with his own guilt, most of the player’s quest can be described with an algorithm consisting of the three instructions ‘walk’, ‘aim’ and ‘shoot’. I do not wish to discard the fundamental ontological divide between games and narratives that Aarseth and other ludologists have argued convincingly for. However I wish to focus on the way in which story and game can be integrated in each other in hybrid forms that are indeed new media, with equal emphasis on both words. I suggest that a different concept should be used to describe the pleasure of using such media; the concept of enacting. Disregarding the story aspect of these games may contribute just as much to the perception of computer games as an inferior art form as disregarding the ludus aspect; for even if these games tell stories, they do it in ways that are significantly different from traditional storytelling. Interestingly, "Max Payne" uses game design techniques with similarities to those proposed by Gonzalo Frasca for the purpose of developing "serious" games (4). Thus "Max Payne" is able to create something – wether you call it a "gamestory" (5) or a "story cleverly disguised as a game" (6) – that needs to be studied from more than one perspective to be fully understood. References: 1) Aarseth, Espen, "Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse", in Marie-Laure Ryan (ed.): "Narrative Across Media", University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Aarseths central claim builds on Tronstad, Ragnhild: "Semiotic and Non-Semiotic MUD Performance" http://www.cosignconference.org/cosign2001/papers/Tronstad.pdf. 2) "Max Payne", PC version, Remedy Entertainment Ltd, 2001 3) Contrary to the claim that flashbacks are not compatible with computer games – see Juul, Jesper: "Time to Play", in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, MIT Press 2003 http://www.jesperjuul.dk/text/timetoplay/ 4) See Frasca, Gonzalo: "Videogames of the Oppressed: Videogames as a Means for Critical Debate and Debate", Masters Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001. Available online at http://www.ludology.org 5) Zimmerman, Eric. "Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games", in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Harrigan, Pat, MIT Press, 2004 6) See Aarseth, id

End of story? Quest, narrative and enactment in computer games

Espen Aarseth recently claimed that all games referred to as ’narrative games ’ could better be described as ’quest games’. The writer of this paper suggests that Max Payne is a possible counter-example to this hypothesis; i.e. a game with a strong focus on narrative which is not easily understood as a quest game. The writer suggests that this, and other similar games, could better be understood in terms of a theory of ’enactment’, which is seen as related to, but not similar to theatrical acting. Extending this idea, the concept of ’the estrangement effect ’ in theatre theory is used to analyze a collection of small computer games from the perspective of theory about ”serious games”

La narración de las interacciones

Programa Oficial de Doutoramento en Sociedade do Coñecemento: Novas perspectivas en Documentación, Comunicación e Humanidades. 566V01[Resumen] El objetivo de esta tesis es establecer un modelo que señale cómo a través de la interacción se puede generar narración en un videojuego. A ese modelo lo llamaremos el modelo de la narración de las interacciones. Con ese fin estableceremos el papel del jugador como actante y narratario en dos tiempos distintos separados por un instante en el que no es ninguna de las dos cosas y llamamos micro-offline, señalaremos dónde se encuentra el narrador dentro de lo que proponemos y su catálogo de enunciadores para indicar cómo se configura en la narración de un videojuego en caso de existir. No hemos encontrado un modelo similar al que presentamos pero sí investigación acerca de los términos que le competen, también un punto de partida en otro presentado por Planells (2010) que involucra en un mismo proceso al narrador, personaje y jugador con la involucración de las interacciones, el conocido como “esquema de la interactividad”. Este modelo pretende aunar, complementar y matizar lo que se entiende hoy por narrador, narración, narratario y actante a través de un modelo que los unifique y prepare un flujo entre ellos, un proceso con marcado carácter proceduralista que se adscribe en la corriente de pensamiento de Bogost y Murray al buscar lo único de este medio de expresión, pero también tomando ideas de Juul, Aarseth, matizaciones del proceduralismo de Sicart, la base de Genette y Gaudreault y lo enseñado por Arsenault para plantearnos preguntas y cimentar las bases del texto. Creemos que usando este modelo un desarrollador de juego podrá definir mejor el diseño de la narración de su videojuego. El diseño metodológico para afrontar este trabajo parte de la investigación directa de videojuegos desde 1972 hasta el año 2014, poniendo a prueba el modelo de la narración de las interacciones en ellos, comprobando así no solo su validez sino también extrayendo un catálogo de enunciadores del narrador y su uso. Este repaso nos aporta también una reformulación de la historia del medio a través de la evolución de las ideas en un apartado concreto, lejos de las recurrentes visiones centradas en la industria y la tecnología. Empezamos en 1972 por el hito que supuso la aparición de Pong (Atari, 1972) y su relación con Table Tennis (Baer, 1972) y terminamos en 2013 con Dark Souls II (From Software, 2013) por ser la fecha en la que se inicia esta investigación. Los juegos elegidos para este estudio son escogidos por su repercusión en su año, novedades aportadas a través de sus enunciadores e influencia en obras posteriores, y la justificación de su elección se detalla en el apartado dedicado a la metodología. Nuestra propuesta está planteada como una herramienta metodológica que sirva a, y sea probada por, otros investigadores y analistas. Con ella pretendemos contribuir al debate conceptual y metodológico sobre la narrativa en el videojuego y enriquecer el ya amplio abanico metodológico de nuestro campo. También creemos que el medio, aunque relativamente joven (pues hablamos de varias décadas), cuenta ya con un desarrollo lo suficientemente sólido como para permitir análisis históricos alejados de los meros datos.[Abstract] The aim of this dissertation is to establish a model that shows how narration can be generated through the interaction in videogames. We call this the narration of interactions model. To do so we describe the role of the player as actant and interlocutor in two different times separated by an instant we call micr-offline. We also will tell where is the narrator in our proposal and how it´s composed by a collection of enunciators we will describe in here. We need to this so we can say demostrate how it works in our model. We have not found a model like the one we suggest, but there is abundant academic production related to this subject like the one made by Planells (2010) that represents the starting point of our work, the “interachtivity scheme”. This model tries to complement and clarify what is understood today by narrator, narration, narrative and interaction, bringing a model that unifies them all; a flux with a proceduralist soul which is next to Bogost, Murray and Sicart's in seeking the unicity of this way of expression, but also taking ideas from Juul, Aarseth, Genette and Arsenault to raise questions and lay the groundwork for this text and next investigations. We believe that using this model a game developer can define the design of the narration of his video game the best. The methodological design to tackle this work starts from the direct investigation of videogames from 1972 to 2014, testing our model in them, thus verifying not only their validity but also extracting a catalog of enunciators from them. We start in 1972 by the landmark that is the appearance of Pong (Atari, 1972) and its relationship with Table Tennis (Baer, 1972) and we will end in 2014 with Dark Souls II (From Software, 2014), date on which this research has started. The games we select for this study are chosen for their impact in their year, their contribution through their enunciators and influence in the games that came after them. We invite other authors to take this same model and pass it through the filter of another series of video games. The medium is young and doing it is the way to extract new conclusions that enrich it and make the design of the narration of each video game better

Le rapport à l'avatar, une expérience de consommation dans les univers virtuels : cas de Second Life

Les univers virtuels connaissent un essor important. L'engouement pour ces univers s'explique par l'originalité de l'expérience que les résidents y vivent et à laquelle ils participent. La présente recherche vise la compréhension de ce phénomène en le positionnant comme une expérience de consommation ludique durant laquelle les consommateurs découvrent des aspects de leur soi en interagissant avec les autres usagers. Dans de tels univers, le consommateur se choisit un personnage (un avatar) lui servant d'identité virtuelle. Les travaux en la matière considèrent que l'anonymat et la liberté de choix de cette identité virtuelle constituent des aspects très motivants pour les résidents. S'insérant dans le cadre d'une démarche exploratoire, l'objectif premier de cette recherche est l'étude des principaux facteurs qui influencent le rapport à l'avatar dans l'expérience de consommation des univers virtuels. En choisissant comme terrain le monde virtuel Second Life, une recherche qualitative a été menée ainsi qu'une analyse de contenu de données provenant de sources variées (individuelles et collectives, dans et en dehors de Second Life) à savoir quatre-vingts entrevues individuelles, trois entrevues de groupe ainsi qu'une observation non participante d'un blogue et de quatorze forums de discussion portant sur Second Life. L'analyse et l'interprétation du sens que donnent les sujets aux aspects d'eux-mêmes qu'ils décident de mettre ou ne pas mettre dans leurs avatars a permis deux contributions originales dans le domaine particulier de la consommation dans les univers virtuels. L'ébauche d'un modèle conceptuel regroupant les différentes composantes du rapport à l'avatar, les facteurs ayant une influence sur ces composantes et, enfin, leurs implications en termes de consommation. Par ailleurs, l'analyse de la distance consommateur/avatar a également conduit à la genèse d'une typologie identifiant trois profils de consommateurs (confusion, flottement et rupture) sur base du choix de l'avatar, des facteurs influençant ce choix et des implications en termes de consommation