Theory, play, & video games
After a spark of inspiration, during a lecture on story structure, I found myself diving into the realm of video games and how interactive media provides a unique opportunity to break down typical narrative story structures. How do we get from A to B? Does getting to B even matter? Did we even start at A? I’ve had the delightful opportunity to play games that have influenced how I tell stories, and taking a deep dive into how they do so has been immensely rewarding. There are many ways in which the story is broken and choice (or the illusion of choice is made) is given. Good story design is not an endless array of choices and possibilities. That’s both exhausting from a developmental and play standpoint, but more creating the illusion of choice that blurs the lines of A to B and creates a more natural form of exploration.
Much of my research has been in the entertaining world of dense academic theory. The kind of stuff that is dense meaty and warps your mind a little. Steve Dixon’s Digital Performance broke down the degrees of interaction artists have used in exhibition design that warps the idea of narrative structure. He gives us four unique forms of performance-based immersion: Navigation, Participation, Conversation, and Collaboration. Without getting too into the nitty-gritty of it, these four are united by the concept of play. Games being a form of play designed for immersive experiences we can see how the four can be interchangeable for many different games and gaming experiences.
The games that I am focusing on in my research are as follows:
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture: A game where the apocalypse begins in a small British countryside. It is an interesting mode of storytelling where you are given free rein of the game world to experience the final moments of its inhabitants in whatever way you want if you want to at all. It is a mystery rather than a puzzle.
The Outer Wilds: You are given the reins to your spaceship to freely explore the solar system. You are only given about 20 minutes before it, and you are destroyed. It is interesting because it gives you the narrative structure on your ship’s computer; a branching web of mysteries on each planet that explore the mysterious past of the inhabitants from before.
Kentuck Route Zero: 5 Dogwood Drive, the address to your final delivery, and an address that doesn’t seem to exist except through a mysterious highway called the zero. This is a fairly straightforward A-to-B narrative presented in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure. The choices you make are used to define the cast of characters in your own eyes. These choices do not change the stories outcome but change you. The game also takes some narrative twists that break the norm of the story a big one being removing the main character before the final act with no real resolution. A risk that plays off so heart-breakingly well.
All these stories are amazing literature and have had such a lasting impact on me. And I have been so satisfied sitting down to see how their gears turn. The paper will explore them further as well as other gaming phenomena like TWITCH plays pokemon amount other interactive experiences that put the choice in the players hands.
The notes are extensive and maddening
