Henry Jenkin’s ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’ favours Narratology while Gonzalo Frasca’s ‘Simulation versus Narrative’ favours Ludology. Despite this they don’t completely dismiss the other area of studies significance altogether. Instead they describe alternatives in the analyses of games with their own appoaches. The following will indicate each theorist’s key factors to determine whether which ones concepts are more favourable.
Gonzalo Frasca, ‘Simulation versus Narrative’
According to Frasca, narrative describes while simulation includes models of behaviour that reacts to certain stimuli. Video games structure simulation while narrative structures representation. Narrative and simulation seem to be similar because people perceive the output of a medium. That is why it is easier to apply narratology to the study of games.
Games can be used as a medium through simulation to give the player a different experience to narrative. For example, games are beginning to be used for advertising so that players can get an experience of products rather than only be informed about them. Also they could be used as propaganda such as depicting urban dynamics and dictatorships.
Games also are not a binary medium with fixed sequences of events. An author can express multiple possibilities rather than one such as in a book or film. Therefore there can be multiple interpretations.
“Simauthors” can incorporate different degrees of fate while “Narrauthors” can only incorporate a predetermined and fixed fate.
Games have behaviour rules that allow each experience of the game to be different. One may play the same part of the game multiple times yet outcomes may be different because of the behavioural rules of the game’s artificial intelligence. One is responsible for their own actions. The game is not only stated info but also a model of difficulty.
Interactive narrative pretends to give freedom to the player yet still maintains narrative coherence.
Narrauthors have control of the outcome while Simathours set some rules so the outcome of the game may not be so certain.
Plaida refers to the form of play present in early children while Ludus represents games with social rules. Ludus games are more fixed like narrative because there are only two possible endings such would winning or loosing. Plaida on the other hand goes beyond this and allows games to have greater possibilities.
Interactive narrative is the most used manner of creating games, which pretends to give freedom to the player while holding onto narrative coherence.
Most games use goal rules but Frasca proposes manipulation rules which do imply a winning scenario. Games would have rules that determine how the player attains the outcome instead of determining if the player gets the outcome.
There are three different ideological levels of simulation:
1. Simulation shares with narrative and deals with representation and events.
2. Manipulations rules: what the player is able to do within the model.
3. Goal Rules: what the player must do in order to win.
4. Meta Rules: how rules can be changed
Simulation is also limited because it is an approximation. It is an alternative to narrative and not a replacement. It does not deal with what happened or is happening but rather with what may happen.
Henry Jenkins, ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’
Jenkins argument is that game designers tend to apply film theory to games instead of recognizing the differences between games and film. Choices about design and organization of game spaces have narratological consequences. In his article he discusses the unique forms of narrative that games can covey.
First he discusses factors of games such as:
1. Not all games tell stories. Interface design and expressive movement.
2. Many games do have narrative aspirations
3. Narrative analysis needs not to be prescriptive. The goal should be a diversification of genres.
4. The experience of playing games can never be reduced to the experience of a story. There are more elements to games that do not relate to narrative at all.
5. If some games tell stories, they are unlikely to tell them in the same ways as other media. Transitions of stories may not work well from one medium to another because they are constructed to suite the medium they were intended for.
Ludologists dismiss the idea of the use of narrative and also do not fully understand it. Therefore they do not acknowledge the relationship between narrative and games.
Spatial stories and environmental Storytelling
Game designers don’t only tell stories but also ‘design worlds’ and ‘sculpt spaces’. Game designers should be considered less as storytellers and more as narrative architects though spatial storytelling.
Environmental storytelling creates preconditions for an immersive narrative experience in at least one of four ways:
1. Spatial stories can evoke pre-existing narrative associations
2. They can provide a staging ground where narrative events are enacted
3. They may embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene:
4. They provide resources for emergent narrative.
Evocative Spaces
Through transmedia story-telling spaces can be created in a manner in that they evoke of a story from another medium by also being part of a larger narrative economy.
Enacting Stories
Because a storyline is normally fixed, ‘spatial stories’ are not regarded because they are episodic. Spatial stories are not badly constructed stories but rather are stories that respond to alternate aesthetic principles, privileging spatial exploration over plot development.
Micronarratives
These are short narrative units that intensify emotional engagement such as ‘attractions’. These are any element in a work that produces profound emotional impact.
Game designers struggle to determine how much plot will create a compelling framework and how much freedom players can enjoy without ruining the larger narrative trajectory. Game designers are yet to develop craft through a process of experimentation and refinement of basic narrative devices, becoming better at forming narrative experiences without restricting the space and freedom within the game.
Embedded Narratives
In film, the viewer pieces stories together through a mental map. In games, the player has to act upon those mental maps.
The game designer has to steer the player in the correct direction yet the player may not pick up on clues set by the designer.
The game designer can use two kinds of narrative:
1. Unstructured and controlled by the player as they explore the game space and unlock secrets.
2. Pre-structured but embedded within the mise-en-scene.
Therefore there is a balance between the flexibility of interactivity and the coherence of a pre-authored narrative.
Games are not locked into the eternal present. The art of game design come from in finding artiful ways of embedding narrative information into the environment without destroying its impressiveness or without letting the player feel as if they are being dragged trough the narrative. Using clues, artefacts and transformed spaces can do this. Game Designers could study ‘medoldrama’ because it provides a model for how the embedded story may work.
Environmental storytelling
Not retelling the story but evoking a nostolgai and an atmosphere. Working on ones pre-existing knowledge.
Emergent Narratives
The player’s have control to make determine their own results and create their own narrative.
Conclusion
Frasca favours simulation over narrative yet he does not completely disregard narrative. Though Jenkins favour’s narrative more he still also attempts to take a more of a middle ground between Ludologists and Narratologists.
I cannot identify with either Ludology or Narratology because both of these authors reveal relevant information about the structure of games. The focus of game study should not be to force the field into either Ludology or Narratology because games vary in their genre and structure. Some games do have structures that revolve more around story telling yet others may have structure that focus more on gameplay and simulation.
The focus should not be on which form of study is correct or incorrect but rather on how they are both relevant. This would allow the study if games to be far more diverse and complex because all factors would be considered instead of being dismissed. Therefore the best factors should be extracted out of both Ludology and Narratolgy and be combined into a new terms and a new area of study for video and computer games so that there would be no more discrimination.
Works Cited:
Fasca, Gonzalo, "Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology", The Video Game Theory Reader, 2003, Routledge.
Jenkins, Henry, "Game Design as Narrative Architecture", The Game Design Reader, 2006, MIT Press.
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