18 responses so far ↓

• 1 Tenyu // May 8, 2008 at 2:20 am

  “Gameplay is king”is not always the case, though most time it is. For most Pure AVG(Yeah, I mean those like MYTH) or even TAVG there isn’t a good gameplay, where narrative take most of the point. But well, that isn’t going to be a game though… Second, this only happens when a game does not need a good scenario or scenario at all. What if Half-Life was to without any story? It wouldn’t have won through the market then. But as to Portal, what good narrative has done to it was to add up its inner culture and connection to the Half-life unniverse. I’m to say, while gameplay makes a game game, narrative makes a game an art.

• 2 Nihohit // May 8, 2008 at 3:58 am

  I think that using the chess example actually countered your point. You said that chess is boring, and therefore, you’ve shown that chess is not aimed at people of your game-preferences. I think that if you’ll look for chess-players, you’ll find that many of them are mathematicians – and yes, they actually enjoy messing around with theoretical shapes and numbers.
  Chess is not narrative based in any way – naming the pieces is useful, because then they are easier to remember, and it makes the game more pleasing to the eye. But if chess was narrative reliant in any way, you couldn’t make Simpson-chess, or any other variant of the game, without changing the playing expirience profoundly. go play with a chess set made out to look like japanese kabuki characters, and I’m sure you’ll find the expirience just the same.

  Generally, I agree with your stance, but some games are just games, without a story. Tetris, or scrabble, etc.

• 3 Roc // May 8, 2008 at 8:01 am

  Leveling up a character is not fun.

  It’s a mathematical treadmill leveraged to impart a feeling of progress, choice and personalization in games that are linear, static and indifferent to the player. If not for levels, no-one would tolerate random overland encounters and most RPGs would be about 6 hours long if they were lucky.

  The ‘good’ feelings that come from leveling up only exist because there are no other mechanisms in those games to impart any feeling of accomplishment. If not for levels, there’d be nearly nothing to show that you’d actually -been- in most RPG gameworlds. So you get a basket of treats for your time investment in place of a satisfying emotional reward for accomplishments.

  And arguing that leveling’s history and apparent popularity somehow justifies it as a design principle is absurd. “Bash-the-crate to find health and ammo” had a long and proud tradition with many stalwart fans – and still clings desperately to relevance in the half-life series today.

  But it’s still a crap design that was rejected by far more players than it ensnared. When the better system came along – one that didn’t waste player time or punish them for getting bored smacking around crates – it was reviled by the pre-existing shooter audience but expanded the total significantly.

• 4 Ed Borden // May 8, 2008 at 10:59 am

  This is hugely irrelevant to the conversation, but I think the fact that the Queen is more powerful than the King in chess isn’t necessarily an inconsistency to history (depends on the specific time-frame and people, obviously), and it could even be construed as a statement to the role of queens in general.

• 5 Youlikeyams // May 8, 2008 at 1:49 pm

  GTA IV definitely pulled off the process of combining narrative and gameplay into one package that really immerses you in the main character’s world – I just wrote up a little blog on it over here if anyone’s interested; http://www.sarcasticgamer.com/forums/blog.php?b=210

• 6 Erluti // May 14, 2008 at 12:14 pm

  I think the strength of the game is that gameplay generates interaction and discussion. Using your example of chess, what makes it great is matching wits with your opponent. And mathematician-types do exciting talking about permutations and then other people can imagine what a knight killing a pawn must be like.
  The same is true for many other board games. When playing settlers of catan we like to point and laugh at things like building a road out of sheep.
  Then when you look at games like Final Fantasy, you see that people loved it for the story more than anything. And motion pictures do a better job of telling grand stories through visuals and sound better then pressing “x” to see what happens next.
  Then looking at Grand Theft Auto, while there is a story there, that’s not what the discussion revolves around. That’s not why it made it mainstream. It’s because of the interaction was so open and satisfying and it generated discussion like “Once I jumped over three cars while shooting this guy!”
  And I think it’s that niche that video games need to truly capitalize on. The building of interactive worlds. Video games allows a designer to create a massive world with background and flavor, but gives the player the chance to be the story teller. That’s why MMOs are a growing market. That’s why sandbox games like The Sims and GTA are big sellers. Video games make the player the character and accomplish an art that movies and music and painting just can’t do.

• 7 Adam // May 14, 2008 at 12:31 pm

  Regarding the Chess thing — why do so many people play Go? That game just uses round black and white pieces?

  More to the point, it seems that hardcore players of event he most fantastic games (e.g. WoW) persist long after they have shrugged off the game’s narrative, and are essentially tinkering with stats and honing quick reflexes.

  I think the proper argument is not that narrative must always be present, but that it should not be universally overlooked.

• 8 Jack9 // May 14, 2008 at 1:28 pm

  The ludology argument with chess would be: Chess would be just as much fun if the pieces weren’t medieval characters, and I have to call them out on that. First off, if the game were nothing more than shapes, or letters, or numbers, nobody would play it, because the game is hella boring enough as it is.

  I have to call YOU out on that. Play Sho-gi, its rules are slightly more complex, but the gameplay is very similar. Knowing NOTHING about the meaning of the Japanese characters or what they represent, it’s just as much fun as chess or any other abstract game. The pieces aren’t named after Medieval classes to tell a story, but to help a Medieval player remember the rules. Try playing Resident Evil…in Korean. Is it really narrative if you can not understand the narrative or the subtext? The greatest ludologistic proof is how players use the game manuals (for any game, board or video). How to play, what the different icons mean, these are what players read FIRST. The story or context of the game is rarely, if ever, glanced at (in the vast majority of cases).

• 9 AEmmott // May 14, 2008 at 3:29 pm

  Really, this whole argument is just form vs. content rehashed. And yes, both are important. The difference is that gaming’s content has been borrowed, but the form is new, (as a field of study, anyway).

  I would in general agree with this blog post, but I think a lot of people have a vested interest in bringing game design to the forefront right now for several reasons:

  A) Narrative has already been critically studied for a good while now – game design hasn’t. This is not to say that studying how narrative elements change inside a game isn’t worthwhile, but even in these cases the ontology is already in place. (And personally, I would argue that ludology needs to catch up with narratology as a critical field before anybody can say anything truly insightful about “ludonarrative”).

  B) The old guard of the entertainment industry is moving into the gaming industry on account of the gaming industry outsells them. This old guard understands narrative pretty well but barely even understands that game design exists – enlightening them can spare gamers from horrible games and the industry’s “blue collar” workers from horrible assignments/direction and/or scapegoating.

  C) Defending games as an art form is difficult when the people your arguing with only understand narrative and don’t understand ludology. It goes without saying that the mainstream media’s depiction of video gaming hinges almost entirely on narrative content. Ludologists fight to put the OTHER elements of gaming to the forefront because outsiders need to know that its there.

  —

  So, sure, in a perfect world, we’d all stop squabbling – but if Ludologists controlled the conversation for a few years, I don’t think it would be a bad thing either.

  Re: Chess example and Jack9′s post -

  On one hand, there are a lot of popular board games that have even thinner narratives than chess, so I think the blog’s use of chess as an example is a little dishonest. Tetris, if you want to move into viedo games, has no narrative, is very popular, and contains what I would consider a design that is so excellent and elegant that it must be considered art. And let’s not forget athletics. I think some ludologists might be loathe to admit it, but any honest look at game design needs to include athletic sports under the greater “games” classification. Good game design applies there too.

  Again, I agree with the blog post, but I think there are some details it is skimming over and it holds up chess as a straw man example.

  On the other, hand, yes, chess might not have survived centuries without its narrative elements. In fact, most games that have been around for centuries have some narrative element to them – so maybe there is something to that. Any sucessful game that lacks narrative might not survive for long stretches of time. And to move back to athletic sports, many people tend to make narrative metaphors when discussing these games – does this really mean narrative is a necessary part of gaming? Maybe, so. Maybe, so. (I’m just throwing ideas around at this point).

  As for Jack9′s specific arguments:

  Sho-gi is a great game. I’m also pretty sure that it is “only symbols” to you and me because we don’t read Japanese kanji. I’m pretty sure all those pieces are stand in for medeival warriors too, so I call foul on your example. Oh geee, and in which cultures does Sho-gi resonant more? – right, in Japan, where the narrative content is more accessible. If chess were just symbols it would still be a great game, objectively speaking. It also would probably not exist anymore.

  Same thing for Korean Resident Evil – sure, you can sitll play it, it’s still a game, but Joe Duder, if given the choice, is going to prefer playing it in English over Korean every time, and there’s a reason for that.

  As for gaming manuals providing the “greatest ludologisitc proof” – I also call foul. If anything, the manual just serves to bring unnatural game mechanics out of obscurity. One doesn’t interact with game mechanics by reading about them, they interact with them by playing the game itself.

• 10 Jon Watte // May 14, 2008 at 6:39 pm

  If you think Chess has a story, try the grand-daddy on for size. “Black captures white” is about as narrative as it gets. All the pieces are identical (black or white), playing on a 19×19 grid of identical line intersections. It’s about gameplay, nothing else. By that analogy, Go is a pure game, just like a novel without tie-ins is pure narrative. Most videogames are in between.

• 11 spitfire // May 14, 2008 at 7:20 pm

  The interesting thing about Go is the fact that it was played originally to teach military strategy (or so I’ve been told). That in itself is a narrative. :)

  Checkers is probably the simplest game I can think of that is relatively narrative free. Sure, it has the “King me” aspect to it, but for the most part it’s a fairly pure game. I guess the nail-jumping game is another ludist’s dream, but to be honest, I find those two games pretty boring.

• 12 Terry Biel // May 14, 2008 at 9:23 pm

  I’m new to your blog, so forgive me if I’m saying something you’ve either vehemently disagreed with in the past or previously advocated with great vigor.

  It’s like this: I like where your thought is going, but I think we need to inject some segmentation into the argument. Often we try to think of games that are “perfect,” and feel compelled to advocate for one mix of narrative and gameplay–or any other elements–over another. As was alluded to by another comment, the key here may be in contextualizing the value proposition. Maybe somebody likes games with narrative, maybe somebody likes games _for_ the narrative, maybe somebody likes games where you get to hit little kids in the groin with sledgehammers (am I right?).

  In any case, it seems to me that video games as a medium/product/phenomenon/whatever are ruthlessly complex in comparison to most other consumer goods or art forms. And by that, I mean the way we experience them is ruthlessly complex. The level of interactivity is incredible, and lends itself to an astronomical number of experiences that a user can receive and help create, so that even two players of an identical game will seldom have an identical experience.

  I’m working toward a relevant point here, I promise. What I mean to say is that video games are very difficult to talk about, which makes it difficult to self-identify as a meaningfully specific type of gamer, which makes it difficult to contextualize debates about what kinds of things in which games are really “the best.” I suppose video games aren’t “difficult to talk about” per se, but there certainly isn’t as mature a lexicon for discussing them in meaningful ways as exists in other media. Music has untold genres, and musicians have all manner of words to describe timbre, intonation, style, historical context, etc. when discussing sound. So too for food, painting, dance, and many other art forms, and a large number of these words are propagated thoroughly enough throughout the population to be used in common discourse across many demographic boundaries.

  Such is not the case with video games. Despite having some basic genre categories, video games are still largely at the simile stage. We describe them as “like SmashTV, but with influences from Aliens” and hope for the best.

  So, like I said, apologies if this is old news–and sorry to spew all over your comments section. Just thought I’d broach the topic of the contextualized value of video games as rooted in the uniquely interactive and emergent nature of experiences in the medium.

  Cheers!

• 13 spitfire // May 14, 2008 at 10:04 pm

  @Terry: Perfect analysis of the industry and its infancy. It’s funny, looking at film and its 100 years, books and their 100s of years, and theater what with its possible 1000s of years worth of history, it’s easy for critics to turn up their noses at video games as a medium. 30 years? We’re babies! Prodigal babies, but still infants.

• 14 Dom // May 15, 2008 at 12:47 am

  Your chess argument is kind of whacky, to be fair. There absolutely are games with no narrative at all. What about tic tac toe? Or Squares? Or Scrabble? Or hopscotch? Or tag? Or, I dunno, darts? There are hundreds upon hundreds of games with no narrative that are played all over the world every single day.

  You could PERHAPS, at a stretch, posit that as soon as two players compete in any game they’re creating their own, individual narrative unique to their match, but then you’re starting to sound like Raph Koster :)

• 15 Terry Biel // May 15, 2008 at 5:59 am

  We might need a better definition of “narrative within a game.” Even if there exists a game without explicit “narrative,” there tends to be a very human context. Many games and sports evolved as simulations of real-world phenomena, especially war and conflict. Darts is a contest of skill in the use of a specific weapon–as is fencing, archery, javelin throwing, trap & skeet shooting, etc. And, these are just a few of the more readily-identifiable ones.

• 16 broken // May 15, 2008 at 10:13 am

  While you do have a very valid point with saying most mainstream games would benefit if they concentrated on a good balance of ludology and narrative, I have to agree with Roc that some games are just games that are fun without a narrative. If you look at the most original video game (Pong) it was a game totally without narrative but had great gameplay which is why it was so popular, and can still be found in some core gamers houses. Puzzle games and mind games are the same for the most part.
  Nowadays the bar is being raised by games such as Bioshock, and from what i understand GTAIV (which I have yet to play) which makes us feel like we are a part of something rather than some guy just killing a bunch of zombies. I personally look forward to playing more games like this.

• 17 Aaron // May 15, 2008 at 10:27 am

  “The fact of the matter is that even Chess has a fiction. Players pretend (even passively) to be two armies with politically divergent interests battling it out to see who wins in a contest of might makes right.”

  I just don’t think that this is a 100% truthful statement. I *want* it to be… but this idea that all people are creating narratives passively is unfalsifiable. There’s no way to disprove it, because it’s relying on, essentially, a magical view of what’s going on in games – that the players are creating narratives that matter to them and please them, even though they aren’t aware that they’re doing it.

  This is a good blog. I think you might want to re-think this evidence and subsequent conclusion. Maybe you’ll come to the same conclusion, I don’t know.

• 18 Nguyen // May 16, 2008 at 6:55 pm

  I’m also new to this blog. I agree that Terry’s analysis of the industry is very insightful. I am a proponent of the idea that the word “video game” covers too broad a spectrum. Just as a “comic book” is different from a “graphic novel,” video games too should be differentiated semantically based on the depth of their particular narrative. A game with an extremely enjoyable, accessible, versatile, and complex ludic system is just that – a “video game.” It is a work of art, don’t get me wrong. But a separate word should be designated for something that demands to be thought of as more than purely a game.

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