Slides introducing the topic of games and narrative.

1. NARRATIVE IN DIGITAL SPACE
STORYTELLING, REPRESENTATION, AND
FICTIONAL WORLDS

2. LUDOLOGY VS. NARRATOLOGY
WHAT WERE THE LUDOLOGY VS. NARRATOLOGY WARS?
▸ Symptom of struggles to define the field of game studies
▸ What should be studied?
▸ Games and games? Or games as a new means for
storytelling?
▸ Debates are somewhat exaggerated—was a symptom of
early debates about how to define the field

3. LUDOLOGY VS. NARRATOLOGY
WHAT IS LUDOLOGY? WHO WERE LUDOLOGISTS?
▸ Ludology refers to “the study of games”
▸ Term first used by game scholars in 1999 to refer to the discipline that
studies game and play activities. Ludologists were academics such as
Espen Aarseth, Gonzalo Frasca, Greg Costikyan, and Markku Eskelinen
▸ Storytelling and narrative were seen as extraneous; not essential to
games
▸ Gaming situation is different than narrative situations
▸ Formalist: focus on formal elements. Focus on rules, not fiction or
narrative

4. “LUCKILY, OUTSIDE THEORY, PEOPLE ARE USUALLY
EXCELLENT AT DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN NARRATIVE
SITUATIONS AND GAMING SITUATIONS: IF I THROW A BALL AT
YOU, I DON'T EXPECT YOU TO DROP IT AND WAIT UNTIL IT
STARTS TELLING STORIES.”
Markku Eskelinen. 2004
LUDOLOGISTS POKING FUN AT NARRATOLOGISTS

5. THE KEY ELEMENTS [OF VIDEO GAMES],
THE NARRATION AND THE GAMEPLAY,
[ARE] LIKE OIL AND WATER, [AND] ARE
NOT EASILY MIXED”
Espen Aarseth, 2004
LUDOLOGY VS. NARRATOLOGY

6. LUDOLOGY VS. NARRATOLOGY
CRITIQUE OF EARLY LUDOLOGISTS
▸ Seen by many as a reductive formalism. Janet Murray
describes ludologists as game essentialists
▸ Ludologists fall into the trap of abstract formalism. They
treat games as a special activity, with no relation to other
media forms

7. “[LUDOLOGY] FUNCTIONS AS BOTH AN IDEOLOGY AND A
METHODOLOGY. THE IDEOLOGY CAN PERHAPS BE CALLED
GAME ESSENTIALISM (GE), SINCE IT CLAIMS THAT GAMES,
UNLIKE OTHER CULTURAL OBJECTS, SHOULD BE INTERPRETED
ONLY AS MEMBERS OF THEIR OWN CLASS, AND ONLY IN
TERMS OF THEIR DEFINING ABSTRACT FORMAL QUALITIES.
Janet Murray
LUDOLOGY VS. NARRATOLOGY

8. “NO ONE GROUP CAN DEFINE WHAT IS APPROPRIATE FOR
THE STUDY OF GAMES. GAME STUDIES, LIKE ANY
ORGANIZED PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE, IS NOT A ZERO-
SUM TEAM CONTEST, BUT A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL, OPEN-
ENDED PUZZLE THAT WE ALL ARE ENGAGED IN
COOPERATIVELY SOLVING.”
Janet Murray
LUDOLOGY VS. NARRATOLOGY

9. LUDOLOGY VS. NARRATOLOGY
NARRATIVE AND NARRATOLOGISTS
▸ Scholars focused on games as a storytelling medium
▸ Focus on narrative dimensions
▸ Focus on representational, fictional elements of games
▸ Critique of narrative approach by ludologists/formalists:
▸ Ideology of story fetishism; that everything is a story

11. JANET MURRAY, HAMLET ON THE HOLODECK
FOUR ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES OF
DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTS
▸ Procedurality: games are software
run on a computer (they execute a
series of rules)
▸ Participatory: responsive to input
▸ Spatial: represent space we move
through. Have power to represent
“navigable space.”
▸ Encyclopedic: data intensive;
infinite resources

12. GAMES AND NARRATIVE
▸ Two forms of expressions featured in video games
▸ Gameplay: any action in the game that occurs by way
of interaction between player and game
▸ Narrative: description or series of events
▸ What are common techniques for integrating narrative into
gameplay, and vice versa?
GAMEPLAY AND NARRATIVE

13. NARRATOLOGY
DIEGETIC AND EXTRADIEGETIC ELEMENTS
▸ Diegetic and Extradiegetic elements
▸ Terms from film studies, where diegetic elements belong
to the fictional world and can be experienced by
characters within it
▸ Extradiegetic elements are for the players and don’t
belong in the world of the game

14. SEYMOUR CHATMAN
STORY AND DISCOURSE: NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN FICTION AND FILM
▸ Narratives are textual structures with a content plane
(which Chatman calls “story”) and an expression plane
(which he calls “discourse”).
▸ Discourse is how the content is presented, which is the
narrator's responsibility.

15. GERARD GENETTE
NARRATION VS. DESCRIPTION
▸ Genette distinguishes between
▸ “the representations of actions and events,” “the properly
narrative parts of a story” AND
▸ the“representations of objects and characters, which
belong to what one nowadays calls description”
▸ Narration is concerned with the “temporal and dramatic”
parts of a story
▸ Description “suspends time” and “displays the story spatially”
(Genette, 1969).

16. ESPEN AARSETH
USER FUNCTIONS OF GAMES
▸ Games and cybertexts
invite different kinds of
action
▸ Interpretative
▸ Explorative
▸ Configurative

17. TWO USER FUNCTIONS
CONFIGURATION VS. INTERPRETATION
▸ Configuration: Primary user function in games
▸ Interpretation: Primary user function in arts (paintings, film, literature,
etc.)
▸ Def. of Configuration: an arrangement of elements in a particular form,
figure, or combination
▸ Actions like manipulating, arranging, configuring, combining, etc.
▸ Def. of Interpretation: that action of explaining the meaning of
something
▸ Actions like reading, watching, witnessing, interpreting, etc.