I am giving a talk November 18 at the Institute for Film and Dramaturgy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz.
Title: Stories that Games Tell: The Future of Time and Narratives in Video Games
The talk will bridge my earlier work on games and narratives with my more recent work on casual games.
November 18, 19:00-21:00. Hörsaal der Filmwissenschaft, Medienhaus – Wallstraße 11, 55122 Mainz.
Out of curiousity, Jesper, do you feel there has been a resolution to the problems that were contested in ‘the great ludology/narratology’ debate? I sense that most game theory has moved away from dealing with those issues, as yours seems to, but I am still left with questions.
Good question – I’m interested in the answer myself, because I have observed a similar trend when reviewing literature for my current paper. I did find Frasca’s 2003 paper “Ludologists Love Stories Too” (http://ludology.org/articles/Frasca_LevelUp2003.pdf) kind of “resolving”, but there are still many questions left hanging.
On another note, there seems to be a large amount of interesting talks happening all over the world, but none in Singapore, where I live. Sigh.
Excellent question, Adam and Zhou!
I think it has become clear that there is no single resolution to the question, so in that sense it hasn’t been resolved, but we are no longer discussing the high-level question “are games are stories yes/no?”.
Below that, I think that people coming from film or literature have learned that games have unique qualities that aren’t explained by storytelling, and “ludologists” such as myself have learned to better appreciate using ideas from storytelling in both theory and design.
Was that an answer? What are the questions You think are left hanging?
That’s a good answer, Jesper, because I feel like I am one of those people who are attempting to come up with more subtle distinctions and perhaps more agile theories. I took some inspiration from your abstract, iconic, representational types of games as a starting point, because I feel there is a huge difference between Tetris to World of Warcraft to Grand Theft Auto 4, and I’m confidant that a theory that explains all 3 of those won’t tell us very much at all. For example, I’m interested in describing ‘how’ one is meant to play the game, alone, in a co-present group, or in an online multiplayer situation.
I am also very young, so when you say ‘people coming from literature’ or ‘ludologists’ I’ve never worked at a high academic level in anything other than videogames! I did study both English literature and information systems as an undergraduate though so I like to think I’m well-placed to be balanced between the two.
Yes, that is an excellent answer. Thank you! :)
It has become very apparent during the debate that games cannot be entirely explained by narratology, so that question has definitely been resolved. The questions left hanging are actually those fuelling my current research.
Games are not narratives, but games can tell stories. This mode of storytelling in games hint at a sort of collaboration between the game and the player to produce the “session” (Frasca, 1999) or “diegesis” (Klevjer, 2002). Therefore, in this dialogue between the player and the game:
1. Who is the narrator and who is the narratee?
(I hypothesis that the player is both to some extent)
2. What is the role of rules in this form of collaborative storytelling?
XM
What can I say – more research is needed!