The presence of narrative in video games
has been the subject of much debate over the relatively short history of the
electronic medium, splitting those with an interest in video games into two
distinct factions. Ludologists maintain
that games are just that, games; to insert narrative is to take away the
principle function of a game, which is, according to Jesper Juul in Half Real: Video Games between Real Rules
and Fictional Worlds (Juul, 2005, p5) ‘to improve your repertoire of
skills’, and in direct conflict with the presence of narrative, which ‘consists
of reconstructing a story on the basis of the discourse provided’ (Chatman,
1978, p159). Conversely, narratologists
such as Janet Murray see video games as the basis for interactive storytelling,
with the player functioning as both reader and actor within an immersive
text. Nearly ten years later, the
divisions between the two disciplines has not changed; issue 231 of EDGE magazine, for September 2011
illustrates this, with columnist Tadhg Kelly unequivocally stating that ‘Games
are not a storytelling medium, no matter what people say (Kelly, 2011, p144)’,
while Supergiant Games, an independent game company has a ‘unique approach to
storytelling’ (EDGE, 2011, p104) as the basis of their debut title according to
the magazine. Clearly, the debate over
whether games can, or indeed should, contain narrative is one that has not been
resolved in the years it has been discussed by literature academics and game
theorists alike.
Recent years have seen a change in the
games being created for the market; games are being released which are
stretching the limits of narrative and experimenting with methods of narrative
delivery. Remedy Games, a Finnish company
creates games which have at their core a complex and sophisticated
narrative. Their latest release, Alan Wake (2010), is a narrative driven
game, building on the success of Max
Payne (2002) game whose story base was praised at the time of release. Another game design company, Quantic Dreams,
has also been exploring the potential for narrative within their games; their
2010 release, Heavy Rain is also a
story driven game, with the narrative taking precedent over action sequences
and skill dominant game-play (Stobbart, 2011).
Given that game designers are producing these titles which, by their own
admission are attempts at incorporating narrative into games, the argument
concerning whether narrative exists is moot; if it is deliberately being placed
in the game, then clearly, its existence cannot be denied.
One of the ways in which the
relationship between video games and narrative is problematic to the gaming
community is in the structure of video games; Juul’s ‘4-point program for the
creation of a meaningful computer game that is also fun to play’ (Juul, 2000)
maintains, as its second point, that a game ‘must not contain narration;
everything must happen in the now of the game’; this is a valid issue, the now
of the game, (the time passing within the virtual world) is concerned with game
playing aspects such as movement and (more often than not) fighting and
involves the player ‘exert[ing] effort in order to influence the outcome’
(Juul, 2005, p36) as well as following rules which make playing possible. This is in conflict with the presence of
narration in a game according to Juul; narration is ‘about something that
happened at some other time’, (Juul, 2000) and being relayed to the
narratee. Technological advancements
however, have made huge leaps in the past few years in regard to home computing
and console gaming. A decade ago, game
designers were restricted in what they were able to include within their games,
due to processing and memory capacities within the equipment; this meant that
they concentrated on the playing aspects of games. However, video consoles and home computing
evolution has allowed video games to become more complex, incorporating
narrative alongside playing, without detracting from either.
Gaming has been culturally seen as the
province of the teenage boy, but the gaming community has changed over the
years. The teenage boys and girls of the
1970’s and 80’s have grown up with their games consoles and their tastes in
games, as with a lot of other things has changed; games have become
increasingly difficult to master as these first gamers have matured. Alongside this, graphic capabilities and
processing power have meant games have become increasingly photorealistic, and
actors can be represented in amazingly accurate detail, as with the character
of Scott Shelby in Quantic Dream’s Heavy
Rain, (Figure 1) thus allowing the player to interact with people, rather
than just cartoon characters.
Figure 1 photorealistic graphics. (Thompson, 2010)
Furthermore,
the increased processing power allows the game designers to create more complex
game; games which will keep the experienced gamer glued to their console screen,
as well as recoup some of the huge costs involved in video game production. All these things have allowed game designers
to make the products of their labour more than a game; the games in 2011
involve an array of components which comprise something which appeals to a wide
cross section of the gaming community – and literature academics.
For
a video game to be financially successful it must be able to recoup its
substantial financial outlay and so needs to appeal to a variety of
consumers. This is an important factor
in the creation of video games, especially those who are attempting to push the
boundaries of the medium. Alongside the
obvious financial restrictions placed on game designers, there is pressure to
create something that the game buying public want to play, resulting in similar
games being created by different studios.
Whilst this is the case, there are a number of design studios
experimenting with game techniques; Quantic Dreams created Heavy Rain (2010), described by designer David Cage as ‘ an
emotional experience, an emotional journey based on immersion’ rather than a
game (Kendal, 2010). LA Noire (2011) includes a variety of
popular game tropes within the narrative including car chases, gun battles and
fist fighting, as well as the use of new ‘Motionscan’ (Snider, 2011) technology
to read gestures and tics in character’s faces during interrogations. In Bioshock (2007), 2K games have attempted
to create a narrative which runs parallel to the game play; exploring the
narrative as an optional part throughout the game, with only a small amount of
pertinent story points being compulsory for the game’s completion. This has the effect of increasing the
playability of the game, as well as expanding the target audience of the
game.
Whilst technology has progressed and
allowed game designers to create more complex video games which allow multiple
layers of content, the presence of narrative in video games is still
challenging for the academic community; game theorists who problematize or
refute its involvement cite stories as being ‘uninteresting ornaments or
gift-wrappings to games’ (Eskelinen, 2001) and that the narrative aspects
detract from the game playing capacity of the game and this is indeed true of
some games. The often referenced duo
Tetris and Pac-man (Juul, 2005; King & Krzywinska, 2002; Vorderer &
Bryant, 2006; Murray, 1997 amongst others) are games; they do not contain a
narrative, or need one for the game to function and as such should be studied
as games. However, whilst ludologists
are correct in their assertion that games should be considered as a separate
entity to literature, with their structure being unlike any other form of media
and needing to be explored and considered as a medium in their own right, not
‘just interactive bits and pieces tacked on to narratology or dramaturgy’
(Juul, 2000), there is a fundamental difficulty with this approach when
considering video games which include narrative as part of their
structure. To insist wholly on video
games being treated as games, is to ignore some fundamental aspects of their
intended content, including how they present narrative; this can consist of
such practises as using visual techniques found in film, including cinematic
sequences, mise-en-scene and atmospheric music.
These aspects of games are established within the gaming community
itself, with game designers such as David Cage, the lead creator for Heavy Rain maintaining he is ‘an author
and there is no compromise. It's really the story [he] wants to tell’ and that
he is ‘inspired by film-makers such as Ridley Scott, David Fincher [and] Orson Welles’.
(Bland, 2010) Similarly, Ken Levine,
game designer for Bioshock, can be
considered an auteur in
his role as lead designer, believing that one of the functions of the auteur in
video games is to be ‘responsible for saying yes or no, creatively. That's his
job. You can generate content, and he has to look at the content and art, and
he has to look at that and say, "This isn't working. This isn't
right." And he has to be able to overrule people’ (Kumar & Nutt,
2008), particularly as the creation of a video game is a team effort.
The game Bioshock, although marketed as an FPS, with the primary goal being
to shoot, is almost stratified in its construction; as well as the shooting,
there is a narrative goal, which is distinct from the competitive (shooting)
aspect and can be completed alongside. The
narrative goal involves amassing information as the player traverses the
Underwater City of Rapture, an almost derelict dystopia. Collecting audio files, viewing posters, listening
to Public Announcements and the observing actions of the splicers (the remnants
of society in the game) allows the player to understand how Rapture was
conceived, came to be built as a utopia and the reason it became the dystopian
environment that the player is exploring.
Whilst searching and collating information to build a narrative is not
unique to Bioshock, the way the game
is structured is interesting, in that the narrative goal and the primary goal
exist independently of each other. The
narrative of Rapture, as it shall be called from now on, is only related to the
actions and events of the gameplay through the recognition of the character and
the events in the gameplay as the culmination of the narrative of Rapture. According to Juul, games should not
contain narration because ‘narrative is about something that happened at some
other time’ (Juul, 2000); Bioshock’s
attempt to create narrative as a separate entity in the game allows the player
to remain in the present tense of the game, whilst being presented, through
multiple narrators, with the bigger narrative.
This has the benefit of allowing the core gamers to play the game
without the distractions that cut-scenes and narrative insertions usually
provide, whilst allowing those gamers interested in the narrative to interact
with that aspect of the game, should they choose to.
In 2000 Juul envisaged an ideal for a
computer game, with four points that are vital in the creation of a game which
‘is also fun to play’, which was briefly alluded to earlier. These points are:
1 It must be thematically close to the
novel or the movie, be about human relations, feelings, ambitions.
2 It must not contain narration;
everything must happen in the now
of playing.
3 It
must be possible to interact with everything represented onscreen.
4 The game must develop not just on
principles postulated; all rules of development must be implemented. (Juul,
2000)
He
goes on to explain that these rules are based on problems in video games and
interactive fiction, with point three being based on the game Myst (2003), which allows the player to
interact with some features and not others, for no apparent reason and point
four would allow the game to flow and develop freely. This ideal was not possible at the time Juul
first presented this paper at the Digital Arts and Culture Conference, but the
past decade has seen game developers being able, as already stated, to create
more complex games and to include more content within the game structure as a
result of technological advances, thereby fulfilling the third and fourth
points of Juul’s four point plan. The
first two points, however, are more difficult to overcome, and are fundamental
to the presentation of narrative in a game.
Bioshock, through providing a
separate narrative in the game alongside the game story allows the game-time to
remain in the present and contain narration.
The game Alan Wake also
attempts to address the issue of temporal narration, through presenting all the
action as occurring in the past; that is, the game is presented as a memory,
with Wake narrating to the player the events occurring throughout. This forces the game to be strictly linear,
with no possibility of deviation, or exploration of the setting; for the gamer,
used to the open landscapes of the FPS and RPG, this is very restrictive.
Juul’s first point is particularly important
in the construction of narrative within the video game industry and is a
measure of how games have evolved since 2000; many games rely on the themes
Juul cites as being the ideal. Heavy Rain is a game (or emotional
experience) which explores the relationship between father and son as well as
the emotions of the player as she plays the game. Bioshock
also explores these themes, with ambition and ideology being one of the
fundamental aspects of the narrative; these games also allow the player to make
choices as part of this, with Bioshock
allowing the player to choose between killing and saving characters known as
Little Sisters (which will be explored further later in the essay). Heavy
Rain allows the player to make a number of choices which can significantly
alter the narrative of the game and forcing the player to question the way they
play games in general through the way killing is portrayed (Stobbart,
2011). Here the game explores the
feelings and attitudes of the player, rather than the character; a significant
development in game design both from an interactive point of view, but also in
providing branching narrative strands within the confines of a single
game.
A
major development in video game construction in the past few years has been the
reintroduction of the branching narrative structure; that is, the ability to
make choices within a game which changes the narrative development. In the early days of text based adventure games
branching narratives were common, but with the advent of visual point and click
games their presence became less important as other features were given
priority due to the limited technology.
The ability of modern video game consoles and computers has allowed game
designers to once again look at this method of construction in games and has,
in fact, become a popular part of many games.
Games such as Black and White
(2001) and InFamous (2009) and use
branching narratives as the basis of the game play, with the player choosing
between being good or evil and events being changed as a result of these
choices. Heavy Rain involves controlling five different characters as they
independently search for the identity of a serial killer; the narrative branches
throughout the game and range from having the player choose to shoot a
character to characters dying in the game.
As a result of this, there are twenty-two different ways the game can
end, allowing the player to feel as though they have influenced the game,
rather than just follow a narrative structure laid out by the game
company.
The
presence of the branching narrative structure in video games gives rise to the
consideration of the player as an author within a game; as detailed, Heavy Rain has twenty-two different
endings, which are dependent on the choices the player makes as they are
involved in the game. Janet Murray, in Hamlet on the Holodeck (Murray, 1997,
p153), believes that the ability of the player to make decisions which affect the
outcome of a game is agency (the ‘power to take meaningful action and see the
results of [these] decisions and choices (Murray, 1997, p126)’) rather than
authorship. All the components of the
narrative, she believes, are authored by the game designer and the player
‘makes use of this repertoire of possible steps and rhythms to improvise a
particular dance among the many, many possible dances that the author has
enabled (Murray, 1997, p153)’. Clearly,
there is some truth in this; players are not given the ability to directly
create content within games; whilst being developed, all the combinations of Heavy Rain had to be created, scripted
and animated so that the player can make use of them. However, creating games which allows the
player to take ownership of events on the screen can be thought of as
authorship; especially in games where the narrative branches can be
combined. Heavy Rain can be thought of as a player authored text; there are
six ‘main’ endings, in which characters, or combinations of characters, remain
alive. However, there are also sixteen
‘sub-endings’ which can be used in conjunction with the main endings. The ending of the game is a large cut-scene
comprised of a montage of smaller cut-scenes, triggered by the actions of the
player throughout the game.
Theoretically then, it is possible for there to be multiple game endings
that can be constructed as the game is played, although this is limited by the
capabilities of consoles and computers as well as the abilities of game studios
to create the cinematic sequences which are needed to do this.
‘The boundary between cinema and
videogames often appears to be a permeable one’ according to the introduction
to Screenplay: Cinema/videogames/interfaces
(King & Krzywinska, 2002, p1), a study into this relationship. There is a definite interplay between these
two types of media; films and TV series often have video games based upon them
and video games have been adapted (some terribly) into film. More fundamentally than this though, video
games are primarily a visual and aural medium and so ‘draw on many cinematic
devices, tropes and associations (King & Krzywinska, 2002, p1)’ in their
construction. One of the most recognisable
points where video games and film coalesce is through the inclusion of the cut-scene
in video games. Cut-scenes are small
pieces of cinematic style animation which function in the same way as film; at
certain points in a video game, the player becomes a passive observer of any
action on the screen as action is played out.
According to Sacha A Howells, the insertion of cut-scenes within the
action of the game allows the player to resolve the overarching narrative over
the course of the game (Howells, 2002, p112).
Cut scenes are frequently found at common points in a variety of
different video games, being used as an introduction, as narrative sequences
and as rewards for completion of difficult tasks, with the ending of games
being particularly relevant for this and can be likened to established film
techniques.
When beginning a video game it is usual
to have, as the introduction to the game, a cut-scene which will give the player
the information needed to begin the game; this can include establishing the
setting, the characters and the timeframe of a particular game. For the 2011 game LA Noire, this involves establishing the setting of the game in
particular, showing the player Los Angeles in the immediate post-war period,
whilst establishing the game as being ‘noir’ through the use of the voice over,
reminding the player of such Film Noir as The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 2006 ed) and The Big Sleep (Hawks, 2006 ed).
The character of Phelps is also introduced here, although the player may
not recognise the avatar at this point.
Using this technique within video games is similar to that found in
film; the first act of the classical narrative structure is concerned with ‘the
story, their goals, and the obstacles they are likely to face to achieve their
objectives (Pacific Cinémathèque, nd)’, giving the viewer all the information
they need to understand and appreciate the narrative.
The second act of the classic narrative
structure is also reflected in some video games; the majority of a game is
spent in this part of the structure, sometimes repeating complicating actions
several times before coming to the end of the act. (It is also here that the potential to gain a
lot of the narrative in the game exists, with the virtual landscape of a video
game being used to carry a large proportion of the narrative, a point to which
I will return). It is in this part of
the game too, that the player has a chance to become emotionally invested in
the characters, as happens in film, with gaming times of more than 60 hours for
a single game and involving a number of cut-scenes (Stobbart, 2011). Finally, the third act is the dramatic
resolution; in a video game, this usually features the ‘big baddie’ who can
only be defeated if the player can use all the skills learned through the game.
The narrative of the game is usually resolved at this point; Mario saves
Princess Toadstool, or Alan Wake in the game of the same name manages to save
his wife and Bright Falls from The Darkness, just as Indiana Jones saves the
heroine or Miss Marple reveals the identity of the murderer. Usually, the cut-scene which the player is
rewarded with at the end of the game is extended in comparison to internal cut
scenes, containing spectacular graphics and animation as well as providing
closure for the player.
Clearly then, there is at the very
least, a basic relationship between video games and film; the cut-scenes found
in a video game function in the same way as the classical narrative structure
does and allows the same functions to be fulfilled. However, game designers are experimenting
with cut-scenes; Bioshock is a game
which has reduced the presence of cut-scenes, having the opening and closing cinematic
scenes, just as there are in the classic structure and functioning in the same
way. However, the cut-scenes in the body
of the game have been greatly reduced, meaning the gameplay is not interrupted
by the narrative. As games have become
longer and more sophisticated, the middle ‘act’ of the classical structure has
been able to expand; as well as allowing more playing, the amount of narrative
that can be inserted into a game is increased and the narrative is able to
become more sophisticated through this.
The presence of narrative in video games
is a complex subject, which needs to be subjected to further and more vigorous
scrutiny than has been attempted here.
However, this preliminary study clearly shows that not only is narrative
a reality in video games, but that it is a relatively sophisticated medium,
deliberately considered by video game auteurs to be an important addition to
games. Although the storytelling
components of games are still refuted in some quarters, the narrative
structures found in games is clear; the classical narrative structure is
evident in games and the relationship between games and visual narratives such
as film is evident. However, game
designers are also experimenting with specific forms of narrative delivery,
which may see the narrative structure of games deviating from film
dramatically, through the ability to portray branching narrative structures
within games; this allows the player to claim authorship of the narrative and
to allow the interactive aspects of video games to be brought to the foreground
of narrative delivery in a way that many other fictional mediums are not able
to. What is clear then, is that although
the infancy of the video game has used methods of narration that have been in
evidence in other, seemingly similar mediums, the increased technology is
beginning to allow the exploration of other forms of narration, whether that is
by having the narrative built into the landscape, or by changing the temporal
structure of a game. Regardless of the
way in which narrative is being created in video games, it is becoming evident,
through playing and observing games that they are deserving of study,
containing complex themes and commentary that in film or literature would be
considered important.
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