Video Games:
An Evolution of the Narrative Form
By
Josh Samson
COM 546: Evolutions & Trends in Digital Media
University of Washington
Master of Communication in Digital Media
June 7, 2011
The first video games were pretty bad. They were low-tech, simplistic, rudimentary diversions and the industry was in its infancy. By drawing upon the narrative structures of more traditional media, in a technologically advanced and interactive way, the video game industry evolved into a dominant form of entertainment. Video games now compete in the same space as motion pictures and television, serving similar markets and reaching new ones. In the past 30 years, video games grew from niche entertainment to a multibillion dollar industry by developing new markets for their products, new technology to deliver them, and new ways to tell stories.
In the early 1960s, video games had just been invented. While audiences flocked to movie theaters for spectacle, celebrities, and escape, computer scientists unwittingly began developing a new form of entertainment for a much smaller demographic. At MIT, Steve Russell, Alan Kotok, and J. Martin Graetz (among others) created what is considered the very first video game, Spacewar, to show off the potential of their PDP-1 minicomputer. Distributed freely, this basic combat simulator became a plaything for a limited number of people (Lowood, 2009). Since the proliferation of the personal computer was still 20 years away, only computer scientists at universities and industrial labs had access to the software. The game consisted of stars, missiles, and space ships – all rendered as nothing more than differently-sized dots on a dark background. The game had no narrative, either incorporated into the game itself or in any sort of supplemental material. The novelty of interaction was enough to engage new users and would continue to do so for 30 years.
Atari’s Pong was the first video game that appealed to a broad user base. It succeeded because it was the first widely distributed game that the average person could play without needing a computer science degree. Released in 1972 and located primarily in bars and restaurants before making its way into the home via a dedicated console, it was lauded for its simplicity. The game’s casing had one direction, “avoid missing ball for high score (Poole, 2000, p, 19). Based on tennis, the concept and controls were easy for people to grasp. This afforded millions of people to pick up the game and have fun playing it. Like Spacewar Before it, Pong was just a fun activity, a pleasurable diversion created by engineers. Their sensibilities catered to actions that users would perform, rather than emotions they might feel while playing. Pong was credited for launching the video game industry. It showed the computer’s potential to many that considered it as little more than a rapid number cruncher, a tool for industry or academia, not the average person (Chatfield, 2010, p. 19).
The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a proliferation of games that first appeared in the increasingly popular video arcades of the time before migrating to in-home consoles and desktop computers. The iconic titles from the era such as Space Invaders, Galaga, and Defender mimicked each other in objective and gameplay – shoot “x” before it gets you. These derivative games remained limited in scope. The low quality of many new games left the market in crisis, with critics claiming that video gaming had been little more than a passing fad. The lack of complexity in these early games limited their expansion past a narrow user group made up primarily of teens and pre-teen males (Chatfield, 2010). Lacking basic narrative elements such as protagonists for players to identify with, these games remained nothing more than diversions. Intellectually, their offerings were basic at best.
The arrival of the ‘console wars’ between 1985 and 1995 in which Nintendo and Sega sold over 100 million hardware units and many hundreds of millions of games did little to persuade people outside of this demographic that video games could become more than a child’s plaything (Chatfield, 2010). However, the games grew more complicated thanks to the 8-bit processing power that these machines used. Increased processor performance and larger capacity game cartridges allowed Nintendo and Sega to build basic storylines into their games. Two of Nintendo’s most popular franchises, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda led the way in video game story creation. In Super Mario Bros., the player had to control Mario or his brother Luigi in a quest to save a princess held captive by the enemy, Bowser. Link, the protagonist in The Legend of Zelda, has a similar goal of rescuing Princess Zelda from her captors. However, the narratives of these games only loosely connected to the actual gameplay. Players could complete them and never know that a narrative existed. Interaction was more important than telling a compelling story.
As video games continued to evolve over the next 15 years, the concept of storytelling matured. Understanding people’s motivations for playing video games explains why narrative structure is inherently important: they want to escape from everyday life. People play games to feel emotions and have thoughts unrelated to work or daily stresses. Instead, they want to be engrossed within a compelling story (Lazzaro, 2004). The notion of escapism is the same reason people watch movies or scripted television programs. People want to be transported to worlds or situations they would not have access to in real life. Making a case for the importance of teaching storytelling to video game design students, game scholars believe that the industry is coming to a crossroads where narrative will become paramount (Sebastian & Whitehead, 2008). As the quality of graphics and gameplay become more standardized – which they are increasingly becoming out of necessity for cross-platform compatibility and consumer usability requirements, the stories that these games tell are becoming key differentiators upon which consumers make their buying decisions. Narrative is also important for immersion because it provides players with context for their actions and explains character motivations. This ultimately makes players feel like they have transcended the medium to enter the video game’s world (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005).
For the first time in 2008, video games surpassed movies in annual revenue, with $32 billion in sales to movies’ $29 billion (Connors, 2009). Despite this, the threat of usurping Hollywood’s role as the primary purveyor of narrative entertainment was a non-issue. If anything, video game sales helped boost film franchises through tie-ins and cross promotions. However, many movie-related games were of poor quality. 2008, Wired Magazine compiled a list of the worst movie games ever made. The biggest complaints stemmed from these games typically being, “slapped together on tight development schedules by B-list teams” (Kohler, 2008). The rudimentary imagery, shallow narrative depth, and lack of creative storytellers on video game development staffs posed little threat to Hollywood’s dominance in selling fiction. Video games were not a high priority for the movie studios, so they tended to license out the rights to others and had minimal involvement in game development. In the past, movie-based video games could really only provide consumers the opportunity to experience the action of a car chase or shoot out, rather than the drama that put the characters in those positions in the first place. Plot meant little more in the video game context than excuses for the action of the next mission to move elsewhere (Poole, 2000).
Current generation consoles have now advanced to the point where they can allow for much better storytelling. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 are stronger than previous platforms in their ability to process an immense amount of data to create increasingly lifelike renderings. Current consoles share more similarities with high-end desktop computers than with the older consoles from Nintendo and Sega that they supplanted. Moore’s Law, which posits that by shrinking the width of conductor lines on a semiconductor chip, the number of transistors on a given area of a silicon wafer will double every eighteen to twenty-four months (Christensen, 2004, Kindle location 3610). This rapid technological advancement has enabled video game designers to build increasingly sophisticated products. Processers once found in only the most powerful personal computers, broadband Internet connections, and large hard drives capable of holding staggering amounts of information have given developers the opportunity to create more complex games with near life-like graphics and multi-channel surround sound for deeply immersive experiences.
These advances have had a profound impact on games and the types of people that play them. There is no question that graphics and complexity in this space have improved. However, as the computers and consoles that these games ran on became easier to use, more people had an interest in purchasing them and thereby broadening the potential market for video game sales. The availability of easy-to-use, relatively inexpensive computer hardware caused a diffusion of technology to come about wherein computers became necessary tools for daily life. According to Microsoft Game Studios video game designer Bob Settles, “When computers first came out, the only people willing to buy them were those with an affinity for taking them apart, fixing them, and putting them back together – both on the hardware and software side. These people were the kind that had an interest in figuring things out. So the early games reflected that mentality. Games were designed for this niche user-base. When consoles came out, they appealed to a much broader market because the requirement of having technical knowledge became irrelevant. This invariably had an impact on the types of games that were made” (B. Settles, personal communication, May 27, 2011). Settles’ identifies the release of game consoles as a critical factor for breaking down barriers to entry, which led to massive industry growth. This follows Clayton Christensen’s theory of innovation. Consoles like the Atari 2600 and the ColecoVision of the early 1980s, and the Nintendo Entertainment System released in 1985 introduced relatively simple, affordable products that increased access and made it easier for people that lacked the finances or skills to buy the computers of the day, which required owners to have at least some understanding of how they worked.
In addition to being targeted to and developed by a narrow user base, early games had serious limitations in terms of the amount of information they could store and display. Even when new media such as CD-ROMs became available, game designers scrambled to figure out how to fill the disks with information. The games, as they had been designing them, were fairly basic. According to Settles, early CD-ROM-distributed games used archival and documentary footage interwoven with the gameplay to fill the discs (B. Settles, personal communication, May 27, 2011). This need to fill media evolved into the use of more elaborate cut scenes, or “narrative blocks” of non-interactive sequences that propel the story forward or provide exposition (Wei, 2010). Once game designers understood how they could use the extra storage space that CD-ROMs (and later DVDs and Blu-ray discs) to present cinematic cut-scenes marked the first time that video games showed they could truly become a disruptive force to Hollywood’s dominance as the de facto leader in modern day storytelling.
The trend toward intricate and compelling narrative structures in gaming marks the present era of deeply immersive video game stories. Game designer Graeme Devine noted in 2004 that, “An increased focus on story can only be a good step…because we’re not using real storytellers yet” (Sebastian & Whitehead, 2008). Devine’s assessment of the industry at that time was accurate according to Settles, “designers and engineers were doing the bulk of the writing, so stories were not very good because we didn’t have writers working with us. Narratives in games like Diablo were really just used to give people an excuse to shoot stuff” (B. Settles, personal communication, May 27, 2011). Just as feature films had to come up with innovative plots and special effects to keep audiences returning to the theater, video games had to evolve beyond the first-person shooter genre if the industry were to maintain its rate of growth.
Justin Villiers was an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker before transitioning to writing video games in 2007. A decade earlier, his career trajectory could not have unfolded the same way (Chatfield, 2010). According to Villiers, “In the old days the games industry fed on itself. You’d have designers who were brought up on video games and tired genre movies writing games themselves, so they were entirely self-referential…but now people with backgrounds in cinema and theater and comic books and television are entering the industry” (Chatfield, 2010, p. 113). Further limiting the growth of appealing narratives were the designers themselves. Game designers cared more about gameplay than story and as a result would edit scripts despite being inexperienced in creative writing (Potanin, 2010).
Building games that encourage users to shoot, kill, and destroy has been incredibly successful for the games industry. Even the incorporation of compelling narratives into games such as Halo or Gears of War hasn’t made these games more appealing to potential consumers outside of the traditional gamer. Most video games still cater to the tastes and preferences of the industry’s first adopter and continue to pursue him as he gets older despite the fact that over the past 10 years, the number of female gamers has increased dramatically (Lazzaro, 2004). According to the Entertainment Software Association, 38 percent of game players are female and have a significant presence in casual games and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). This is a far cry from the underserved female market of the 1990s that focused primarily on console gaming. Girls were not interested in technology and by extension, gaming (Kafai, et al, 2008). Despite the growth of this segment of the market, the big publishers have all but ignored female gamers. While the video game industry as a whole is beginning to disrupt traditional media in the storytelling space (more on that later), the big publishers and design studios still aren’t putting significant resources into developing narrative-based games for girls. This leaves an open chasm for independent companies to play disrupter to the likes of industry leaders like Electronic Arts, Infinity Ward, and Bungie. As Christensen argues, innovators in overshot market tiers can create new-growth companies by using low-end disruptive innovations to establish a beachhead among the incumbent’s least demanding customers (Christensen, 2004, Kindle location 861). In this case, female gamers should not be considered less demanding than males, just underserved. But that is beginning to change because small, independent companies have targeted nonconsumers as an entry point into the industry.
The current approach of catering to the traditional gamer demographic reduces market size (Kafai et al, 2008, p. 202). One of the earlier independent game studios that targeted girls was Purple Moon, which produced two games in 1997 for the preteen and early teen female demographic that were essentially interactive novels that focused on personal relationships and real world problems. Purple Moon toyed with various structures for interactive narrative and tried to do positive work for girls in the context of popular culture (Kafai et al, 2008, p. 174). Ultimately, the studio was acquired by Mattel in a clear example of Brian Winston’s law of suppression of radical potential wherein a bigger incumbent organization absorbed an upstart to maintain its business. Another entrant to this space, Her Interactive, is led by former filmmaker Megan Gaiser who is intent on creating compelling narrative games that appeal to female gamers. The company has had success developing a story-based game on the Nancy Drew series of books because it provided girls with a positive role model and a game that did not depend on violence (Kafai et al, 2008). This attention to the female demographic has not gone unnoticed by the incumbents. In 2007, publisher of major releases like the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry series of games announced that would launch a division with the sole purpose of creating games for girls. Games like Babyz and Figure Skater, which put players in the roles of caregiver and athlete respectively and encouraged a previously underserved market to become video game consumers.
The past decade has seen increasing effort applied to the creation of meaningful and engaging stories in game development. Stephen Dinehart, the narrative designer of the game Companies of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, points out that game studios are determined to transplant the player “into a believable drama where he is actor” [sic] (Wei, 2010). Recent releases like Heavy Rain for PlayStation 3, Alan Wake for Xbox 360, and the cross-platform title, L.A. Noire, mark the potential for the greatest disruption to Hollywood’s traditional media because they represent a burgeoning trend in games, the creation of “interactive movies.” These games are identifiable by their immersive, complex narratives, traditional three act structures (with second act plot twists), and the implementation of character arcs in which the protagonists (played by the gamer) overcome obstacles and grow from their experience. The role of the user in these games is to steer the protagonist through the story. Gameplay is relatively simple and the film-like feel of the games appeal to broader audiences because the narratives are front and center, and require problem-solving skills beyond shooting to kill.
Possibly the most telling sign that this emerging genre of games poses a disruptive threat to traditional media is the attempts of film-makers to suppress them through critique. An increasingly common practice has developed recently of dismissing the most vacuous traditional media as “like video games” (Chatfield, p. 134). This downplaying of the medium is a clear example of Winston’s law of suppression of radical potential. Filmmakers feel threatened because a newer medium is serving the same purpose as their own and arguably in a more engaging fashion. The crime drama, a staple of movies and television since their inception is losing traction with younger viewers because they are more likely to spend time on Facebook, Twitter, or video games (Davis, 2010). Video games have already overtaken traditional media in terms of annual revenues and are continuing to expand. But this latest merger of technology and storytelling may very well usurp Hollywood’s role as the dominant storyteller in popular culture.
The 2011 release of L.A. Noire marks a radical blurring of the lines between traditional Hollywood media and modern video games and it represents the future of the medium in which games are appropriating cinematic conventions in an effort to supplant them. Not only does the game have an absorbing storyline that follows a young police officer’s rise through the LAPD (with an equally entertaining backstory of his time in the marines during World War II), it uses a new technology called “MotionScan” that scans the actors while they read their lines for the game. These images are then transplanted to the avatars in the game. In essence, consumers are no longer just playing as avatars dreamed up by video game artists. They are controlling real actors and taking an active role in the story rather than staying passive viewers. Game reviewer for the Guardian, Steve Boxer, notes that, “From start to finish, LA Noire feels like a film – LA Confidential, in fact, along with any similarly hard-boiled example of film noir adapted from stories by the likes of Chandler and Hammett (Boxer, 2011). Movies had tried using well-known actors’ likenesses in the past. The 1994 release of Wing Commander III used full-motion video and starred film actors Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell in its cut scenes (B. Settles, personal communication, May 27, 2011). At the time, the use of celebrity actors and cinematic cut scenes was novel but proved too jarring for players. Jumping from video to gameplay did not appeal to a large enough audience. Learning their lesson, game designers created less polished expository narrative scenes to provide a more seamless experience (Brooker, 2009). With L.A. Noire, the game industry has achieved its long-standing ambition of creating a playable movie and future titles will continue this trend, forcing consumers to really consider which medium best serves their need for escapism and story.
Narrative has become so important to the video game industry that even casual mobile games, which are identified by simple gameplay and short-range time commitments, have storylines built into their design. Design studio Rovio’s Angry Birds has made millions of dollars through sales in Apple’s App Store and the Android Marketplace. Similar games are available on those platforms, such as Catapult, but have not shared Rovio’s success. What makes Angry Birds compelling is the story crafted to give the player motivation. The basic storyline involves a nefarious group of pigs that steal the birds’ eggs, which makes them angry. It’s basic, but it’s there and cut scenes in between levels tell the story in an amusing way that effectively makes the player want to defeat those pigs. It has become so popular, that the publisher has distributed multiple game packs to coincide with different seasonal events or holidays. A cinematic game trailer that intentionally resembles an old Looney Tunes cartoon (Rovio Website) was even created to promote the game. The trailer does not contain a frame of gameplay. Rovio is promoting the title through story instead of graphics or user controls.
Video games have come a long way from the basic pixelated ambiguous shapes that defined the medium at its inception. Advances in technology afforded game designers the processing power and storage needed to render more life-like visuals and more complicated gameplay. Technology growth gave rise to market expansion into other demographics such as female gamers. Broadening the user base gave the industry a critical mass of players to allow for more elaborate narratively-driven games that appeal to gamers beyond the hard-core users typically associated with the medium. In the future, games designed as interactive fiction will become more widespread and provide consumers with greater options in where they go for deeply engaging, visually stunning storytelling experiences.
Annotated Bibliography
Boxer, S. (2011, May 16). La noire – review. Retrieved from Guardian.co.uk.
This video game review from the Guardian’s website exemplifies the thoughts many top video game reviewers have had on the recent release of Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire. Believing that the game is more of an interactive drama than a traditional video game, Boxer asserts that the use of real expressions of the actors providing character voices creates a rich, deeply engaging experience in which the ability to read a character’s “tell” is more important than the video game controller dexterity typically required for the enjoyment of video games. His thinking is lock-step with my view that video games are evolving into a medium that melds old and new media.
Bradford, C. (2010). Looking for my corpse: Video games and player positioning. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy. 33 (1), 54-64.
This article differentiates between ludology, or the study of games through their form and adherence to genre conventions, and narratology, or the examination of narratives in the medium. The author argues that scholars have had difficulty analyzing games in the past because they were trying to use techniques traditionally applied to literature or film studies. She suggests that games are a hybrid medium that has specific form and narrative elements that impact people’s emotions and processes differently than traditional media. She discusses the commentary that video games make on society and how players’ values and ethics affect their interaction with artificial worlds.
I used this article as a foundation for my assertion the incorporation of rich narrative experiences have played a role in attracting female gamers like the author.
Brooker, W. (2009). Camera-eye, CG-eye: Videogames and the “cinematic”. Cinema Journal, 48 (3), 122-128. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Approaching his analysis of video games from a cinema studies perspective, Brooker observes how cinematic techniques have influenced video games. Brooker supports his argument that visual and narrative techniques are finding common ground in film and gaming by suggesting that game conventions are being used in movies like “The Matrix” and film conventions like lens flares are intentionally added to gameplay to convey a cinematic feeling in games. The article also discusses technical limitations that prevented games from developing narratives earlier in their history. He concludes by suggesting that games are moving away from using now-traditional cut-scenes to incorporating exposition into actual game play for fully immersive playable “interactive movies.”
This article applies to my term project because of its examination of cinematic technics in games as well as its references to game motifs within Hollywood movies. It supports my assertion that the two media are strongly influencing one-another beyond oft-shared underlying source material.
Chatfield, T. (2010). Fun inc.: why gaming will dominate the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Pegasus Books.
Chatfield takes the position that video games will continue to grow in both annual revenue and influence on popular culture. His examination of the industry and its place alongside popular movies and television programs attempts to break misconceptions about who modern-day video games are designed for and who’s actually playing them. He cites the fact that 40 per cent of all video game players are women, that most of the bestselling console games of all time involve no real-world violence at all, and how World of Warcraft’s online community of over 12 million players is changing our understanding of what it means to be sociable in the modern world. He addresses other uses for games beyond entertainment for mass engagement in military, economic, and human rights issues.
The author’s arguments echo my own in projecting where the future of gaming might lead. He provides a brief history of the medium that served as a launching off point for identifying key moments in video game development.
Christensen, C. (2004). Seeing what’s next: Using the theories of innovation to predict industry change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Clayton Christensen theorizes on how innovation opens up new markets within established industries. He examines aviation, health care, and the computer industry as case studies upon which readers can take his ideas and apply them to other fields to make conjectures on how they might evolve. He breaks his argument into three sections to guide the reader through his understanding of how industries have changed in the past and how they might in the future. He begins by laying out his theories, then provides case studies for analysis, and concludes with considerations of how telecommunications may evolve in the future.
I use Christensen’s theories on underserved markets and disruptive forces as a framework for my understanding of how the video game industry has grown to put itself in the position of creating successful products that appeal to consumers beyond its traditional young male user base.
Connors, D. (2009, January 26). Video games outsell movies in 2008. Retrieved from Tom’s Guide US.
This blog post reports the first year that video games overtook traditional movies in annual revenue. Despite strong sales of Blu-ray-based media, box office ticket sales were predicted to decline while steady growth of video game sales was projected. Generating more annual revenue is a strong indicator that video games are becoming a more influential form of media than movies. I used figures from this post to support my contention that they will become more significant vehicles for narrative-based entertainment in the future.
Davis, J. (2010). Is heavy rain in the forecast?. World Literature Today, 84(4), 9-11. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Written shortly after the release of the game Heavy Rain for the PlayStation 3 console, Davis’ article discusses the waning interest that the youth market has in televised procedural dramas, but believes that the genre can make a resurgence through interactive dramas like Heavy Rain. He discusses the potential for newer interactive narrative games to give users an emotional response the way traditional media has done so successfully, which he argues traditional video games cannot. Mind-blowing gameplay was not the ambition for the game’s designers, compelling storytelling was. This understanding of what video games can be is a pillar of my argument that games can be as dominant as movies and television in portraying emotionally compelling narrative drama.
Kafai, Y, Heeter, C, Denner, J, & Sun, J. (Ed.). (2008). Beyond barbie & mortal combat. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
This collection of journal papers and interviews with industry leaders focuses on female gamers and game designers. The various papers look at what role gender plays in how games are created, played, and understood. The collection looks at major console titles, casual games, and “serious” games whose goals go beyond entertainment to the betterment of society. The contributors discuss the rise of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and how female players engage with these communities – deciding whether to control male or female avatars, what activities they participate in, and how they are perceived by their male counterparts. Interviews and papers that address the rise of the female gamer market and how it can be exploited through the hiring of more female game designers factors in to my contention that tapping into this demographic has had an impact on how games are designed and the need for companies to put more emphasis on narratives to capture a broader range of consumers.
Kohler, C. (2008, July 2). Tainted tie-ins: worst movie games ever. Wired, Retrieved from Wired Magazine.
Wired magazine compiled a list of the worst movie-based video games ever made. The two media have had an interesting history. Games made as movie tie-ins have traditionally been just awful – often ruining any goodwill the names and images on the box art had. Storylines in the games rarely remained faithful to the movies and often felt like they were created before the movie was made for some other purpose, only later to have artwork and voice overs added so that they could sell more copies. High expectations of the people that bought these titles were rarely met because they were generally created by less talented design teams. I use points made in this article to address the history that movies and video games have had to support my argument that in the past, video games could not compete with movies for various reasons in the narrative space.
Lazzaro, N. 2004. Why we play games: Four keys to more emotion without story. Retrieved from Xeodesign.com.
This article details a study conducted to understand how best to create more emotion in video games. The researchers wanted to know at what points in games emotions ran highest – during gameplay or while watching cut scenes. Also important to the research were the types of emotions elicited from playing video games. The goal of the study was to provide game designers with evidence that would inform their decision-making processes to create the most compelling entertainment possible. Emotions during the study ran the gamut of anger, excitability and sadness. They looked at already-produced games to see what designers are having success with and where they could improve in connecting with their consumers. I think narrative is vital to emotional response in games and by more deeply incorporating story into every aspect of game design, producers will be able to create more deeply engaging entertainment.
Lowood, H. (2009). Video games in computer space: the complex history of pong. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 31(3), 5-19. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
The article discusses the history of the video games “Computer Space” and “Pong” and how they evolved from academic diversions for computer scientists to accessible entertainment for the general public. The author explains how early video games were developed at university research centers and laboratories and were later used to create a new industry based on computer-driven interactive entertainment. The conception, development, and creation of Pong, the first commercially successful video game, is detailed as is Atari’s rise to dominance of the early days of video game creation. Explanations of early gaming pioneers depicted in the article were used to shape the past section of my paper and detail how rudimentary the early games appear by today’s standards.
Mallon, B., Webb, B. (2005). Stand up and take your place: Identifying narrative elements in narrative adventure and role-play games. Computers in Entertainment. 3 (1).
This article summarizes a study developed to identify which components of video game design factor into achieving the deepest engagement for gamers. Specifically, the authors aim to assess the importance of narratives, role-playing, characterization, motivation, plot, etc. when applied to a non-traditional media form such as video games. Testing two groups of gamers in a controlled environment, they seek to better understand how narrative impacts engagement. Their results demonstrated a need for further study to better grasp conflicts between the game, player participation, non-linear structures, and story. They conclude that these issues have prevented talented screenwriters and novelists from pursuing expanding their reach into video games. The authors ultimately express concern over the growth importance of powerful narratives in adventure and role-playing titles.
Mallon and Webb’s study deepened my understanding of the interplay between active, enjoyable game play and the cohesive benefits that engaging narratives can have on the enjoyment of video games. I plan to follow this with the implications this can have on video game’s growth in disrupting more traditional narrative-driven media.
Poole, S. (2000). Trigger happy. New York, NY: Time Warner Book Group.
Trigger Happy examines the history of the video game industry and the rise of consoles as the dominant delivery mechanism of gaming software. Poole argues what makes some games more successful than others and the audiences that are willing to invest the time and money to play them. The book also takes a look at video games in the context of other media such as films, television, and graphic novels. Poole believes that games have matured enough that they should be given the same critical treatment and study that traditional media have received because user response and engagement is similar. This book influenced my understanding of the video game industry’s history and its importance in today’s culture. Poole addresses the importance of narrative in game design and how it can be used to broaden the market.
Postigo, H. (2003). From pong to planet quake: Post-industrial transitions from leisure to work. Information, Communication & Society. 6 (4), 593-607.
This article aims to explain the importance that video games will have in the coming years. It suggests that analysts and academics interested in how and people spend leisure time (and why) start paying serious attention to gaming as a mainstream medium. The author summarizes how economics and a global workforce can cheaply develop and distribute games for big profits. With parallels to the hardware tinkerers in the 1970s that led to today’s dominant computer companies, the article suggests that hobbyist programmers and designers will become increasingly important to the industry. Interested in why people work for free, the author concludes that innovations will come from those seeking to catch the eye of companies that recognize their value.
My interest in this article is purely for background and the brief history it gives of the video game industry. It helped me better define my argument early in the research process.
Potanin, R. (2010). Forces in play: the business and culture of videogame production. Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on fun and games (pp. 135-143). New York, NY: ACM. Retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
This paper is a cultural analysis of the business of videogame production, the industry’s personalities, its development practices and market influences. It paints a dire picture of rampant misogyny not only in the depictions of women in games, but within the companies that produce these games. As an industry professional, Potanin believes that wholesale changes are required to allow women to have equal footing as men. Until there is more equity in the video game workforce, successfully pursuing the female demographic will be an uphill challenge. The author’s position made me embarrassed that such behavior exists in my industry, but it also made me thankful that I have not witnessed it firsthand. She makes the argument that designers have traditionally cared more about gameplay than story design to the detriment of expanding beyond the industry’s core demographic.
Sebastian, F, & Whitehead, A. (2008). It’s all greek to me: a case for the classics in game development education. Proceedings of the 2008 conference on future play: research, play, share. Retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
The authors provide an overview of Classical Greek literature and argues that it is important to the overall enjoyment of video games. Definitions, examples, and benefits of Greek storytelling and literature are given to support the rationale for using it in video games because early releases were lacking basic storytelling motifs. As the Greek storytelling medium evolved, the sense of the tragic hero and narrative complexity evolved. Similarly, as generations of video game players evolve, their demand for more complex characters and more fully developed storylines will also evolve. The same elements and structure found in classical Greek narrative are now beginning to appear in video games. The authors make a case for including classical narrative structure in video game development and design curricula for future video game professionals.
Most significant for my work was the detailing of the elements of classical Greek narrative structure and how it can be applied to interactive fiction. I drew on concepts and ideology from the article to better inform my understanding of these applications.
Tavinor, G. (2005). Video games and interactive fiction. Philosophy and Literature. 29 (1), 24-40. Retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
The article discusses the role gamers play in the development of what the author refers to as interactive fiction. In this medium (which is considered an outgrowth of older video games) the player has a direct and deep engagement with the narratives of the gameplay. Using the example of “Grand Theft Auto III” the author explains how the act of directly controlling a character’s interactions within the context of a playable narrative elicits differing and additional emotions (both positive and negative) than traditional media of books, movies, or television shows. Further, these emotions have direct impact on how people play after experiencing them. The author also discusses the importance of manipulating “props,” within the game world (cars, doors, weapons, and other objects) and how these interactions parallel the positive impact play has on young children.
Most likely, this article will serve as background research for me. However I can see bringing it into my paper to address the importance narratives play on driving video games further into the mainstream.
Taylor, T. L., & Kolko, B. E. (2003). Boundary spaces: Majestic and the uncertain status of knowledge, community and self in a digital age. Information, Communication & Society. 6 (4), 497-522. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
This article explorers ideas of what the authors refer to as “mulit-modal” gameplay, which means that in order to complete a game, players must use both in game and real world communications systems to complete it. The authors focus their attention on a now defunct game called Majestic. This conspiracy theory video game required players to use real websites, faxes, phones, email, instant messaging with real people and bots, and the game itself. This sweeping use of technology and real world assets blurs the line between game and reality. It also relies heavily on knowledge communities to work together to solve puzzles and progress through the narrative. The article dissects the gameplay to provide insight into how cultural norms are used within the context of a game environment and what effect that has on behaviors.
I plan to use the authors’ critique and analysis of the game Majestic to address the idea of immersion – a powerful concept that traditional media cannot provide and may be a possible future for the medium. It would be far more challenging for a novel or movie to engross their audiences in a narrative beyond the screen in front of them.
Sweetser, P, & Wyeth, P. (2005). Gameflow: a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games. Computers in Entertainment, 3(3). Retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
The authors attempt to come up with a model to measure player enjoyment in video games they call “Gameflow.” Elements from user interface, gameplay mechanics, and narrative all play a factor but the authors wanted to know if some aspects are more important to overall enjoyment than others. Their Gameflow model consists of eight elements — concentration, challenge, skills, control, clear goals, feedback, immersion, and social interaction. Each element includes a set of criteria for achieving enjoyment in games. Essentially, this model (once honed and perfected) may offer designers an advanced look at whether or not their games will be successful at launch. Conversely, third party analysis could provide consumers with a data-driven guide of what types of games may best suit them. Types of games examined included strategy, roll-playing, and first-person shooters. The authors discuss the importance of narrative for aiding players in feeling like they’ve become immersed in a game’s artificial world. I use this assertion to support my belief that narrative is crucial to the enjoyment of a game.
Wei, H. (2010). Embedded narrative in game design. FuturePlay ’10 Proceedings of the International academic conference on the future of game design and technology (pp. 247-250). New York, NY: ACM. Retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
This paper studies narrative embedding in games, which is still a relatively new concept in game analysis. To understand the issues better, the author looks for insights into embedding from narrative theory. The author then applies the framework to game narratives and examines how narrative embedding is implemented in games, how it helps structure the narrative content, and how it influences the narrative experience. By relating theoretical discussions to game examples, the findings of this study can potentially help game narrative designers make more informed decisions when embedding narrative in games. I reference Wei’s ideas throughout my paper, as he is on the forefront of the narratological examination of video games, which places more importance on the stories that games can tell than on their gameplay mechanics. His position is in line with my own and supports my argument that narratives have had an important effect on the growth of the video game industry.
Weil, P., & Peña, N. (2008). Avatar mediated cinema. Proceedings from ACE ‘08: International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (209-212). Yokohama, Japan: ACM. Retrieved from ACM Digital Library.
This article reports on findings of an experiment that integrates documentary video footage within a virtual world to make the film become more “real” for the participant viewers. Recreating the Guantanamo Bay Prison in Second Life, the researchers want to put audiences, via their avatars, in the prison so they can experience what it would be like to be held there. This is done in support of the documentary, “Unconstitutional.” The authors hope to better comprehend how delivering a narrative spatially to an avatar viewership creates identity with that avatar for the person controlling it. Games have historically paused game play with cut scenes to relay story information. By integrating the two, the researchers want to create a more immersive experience in which the user remains active throughout, thus removing the passivity of watching cinematics that often result in disruption of the experience. The article argues that avatar viewing and experience will prove central to evolving techniques of storytelling and narrative.
More games are eliminating cut scenes or at least allowing players to interact with them in some way to keep engagement high throughout the gaming experience. As narratives become more interwoven into the actual gameplay of video games, the stories they can tell will get more complex and appealing to wider audiences.
Leave a comment