Narrative and Narrative Wars

“A major factor in the evolution of computer games – after obvious technological advances – is the increasing importance of storytelling” (Thomson et al, 2007:28).

Although this quote would make Markku Eskelinen (we’ll get to him later) uncomfortable, it’s hard to deny that it’s difficult to go into a digital games shop and pick up a game that doesn’t have a narrative. For instance, according to John Sachem who writes for Associated Content (2009), these are the top 10 selling games for the Xbox 360 at the first half of the year...

1) Resident Evil 5
2) UFC 2009 Undisputed
3) Call of Duty: World at War
4) Halo Wars
5) Street Fighter IV

(Sachem [online] 2009)

Three out of five of those have a strong narrative and even Street Fighter has a narrative albeit a tenuous one. Though in fairness if the term ‘narrative’ isn’t accurately defined then pretty much anything can be a narrative. For our purposes I will define narrative as the story of the game and how that story is told.

In many modern games the narrative, both the backstory and the story that unfolds is extremely detailed. Some games, though at face value would seem quite void of backstory and narrative, actually have it in abundance. Take Tekken for instance, just a fighting game right? No real narrative or backstory right? Wrong. The game itself is centred around the fictional ‘King of Iron Fist Tournament’ held by the head of a powerful multinational organisation. The winner of the tournament gains control and owner ship of the organisation. Each of the now 40+ individual players have their own reasons and agenda for entering the competition. The character Jin Kazama was the illegitimate son of two of the contestants and he enters the completion for revenge against the head of the corporation who may have been his father. Home and Away couldn’t beat storylines like that.

There’s an absolute wealth of detailed narrative in digital games, a lot more than people think. Perhaps that’s why the movie industry is increasingly looking to digital games for inspiration. At present there are over 50 movies based on games and with another 10 in development (Wikipedia [online] 2008).

This well of narrative is what is inspiring the creation of 64 game-based novels, 50 comic books and 124 TV shows.

Narrative in games became something of a very sore point a while ago, under the overall umbrella of digital game studies, two camps emerged; the Ludologists and the Narratologists.

Narratologists such as Janet Murray believed that narrative in digital games should be looked at in the same way as novels and forms of linear media such as films, in that they tell stories. This standpoint was looked into in greater detail by books by Brenda Laurel and Janet Murray who wrote the highly influential ‘Hamlet on the Holodeck’.

In the other camp Ludologists such as Jesper Juul and Markku Eskelinen believed that games were not the place to tell stories at all and that the use of narrative in games was detracting to the gaming experience.
Here’s a transcript from Markku Eskelinen on the debate…

“It's quite relaxing to write about computer games as nothing too much has been said yet, and almost anything goes¹. The situation is pretty much the same in hat comes to writing about games and gaming in general. The sad fact with alarming cumulative consequences is that they are under-theorized, there are Huizinga, Caillois and Ehrmann of course, and libraries full of board game tudies, in addition to game theory and bits and pieces of philosophy, most notably those of Wittgenstein's, but they won't get us very far with computer games. So if there already is or soon will be a legitimate field for compute game studies, this field is also very open to intrusions and colonisations from the already organized scholarly tribes. Resisting and beating them is the goal of our first survival game in this paper as what these emerging studies need is independence, or at least relative independence.

It should be self-evident that we can't apply print narratology, theory, film or theatre and drama studies directly to computer games, but it isn't². Therefore the majority of the random notes and power-ups that follow will be spent modifying the presuppositions firmly based on the academic denial of helplessness. Obviously I need a strategy, and fortunately I have one: to use the theories of those would-be-colonisers against themselves. For example, as we shall soon see, if you actually know your narrative theory (instead of resorting to outdated notions of Aristotle, Propp or Victorian novels) you won't argue that games are (interactive or procedural) narratives or anything even remotely similar³. Luckily, outside theory, people are usually excellent at distinguishing between narrative situations and gaming situations: if I'll throw a ball I don't expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories.

It's good we don't have to start from scratch, as there have been attempts to locate, describe and analyse the basic components and aspects of the gaming situation, essentially different from the basic constituents of narrative and dramatic situations. I'm thinking here of Chris Crawford's early classic The Art of Computer Game Design, Gonzalo Frasca's and Jesper Juul's papers on ludology, and most of all Espen Aarseth's articles on computer games and cybertext theory⁴.

First of all, I'd like to demonstrate or test a safe and painless passage from narratives to games by trying to exhaust classic narratology (Genette, Chatman, Prince). Most naive comparisons between narratives and games usually result from too narrow, broad or feeble definitions of the former: usually it comes down to discovering "plots" and "characters" in both modes (in games and in narratives).

However, we should know that's not good enough as we can find those events and existents also in drama that is clearly its own mode. The minimal definition of narrative derived from Gerald Prince and Gerard Genette states basically that there must be two things or components to constitute a narrative: a temporal sequence of events (a plot if you want to water the concept down) and a narrative situation (with both narrators and narratees for starters). I think we can safely say we can't find narrative situations within games. (Or if and when we sometimes do, most probably in Myst or The Last Express, the narrative components are then at the service of an ergodic dominant).⁵

To be brief: a story, a back-story or a plot is not enough. A sequence of events enacted constitutes a drama or a performance, a sequence of events recounted constitutes a narrative, and perhaps a sequence of events produced or played out under certain circumstances and following formal rules constitutes a game. This is really very trivial but crucial: there are sequences of events that do not become or form stories (like in Tetris for example). The reason for this is equally simple: in games the dominant temporal relation is the one between user time and event time and not the narrative one between story time and discourse time.

In what comes to the fallacy of recognizing similar characters or existents in games, drama and narratives, the situation is pretty much the same. In computer games you can operate your character if there is any in the first place, perhaps also discuss with other characters or voices, and the characters can be dynamic and developing or changing themselves with level points and power-ups. These entities are definitely not acting or behaving like traditional narrators, characters, directors and actors, their supposed counterparts in literature and film and on stage.⁶

To sum up: different existents, different event structures, and different situations. On the other hand narratology is not completely useless, if its key concepts and distinctions are not taken for granted but traced back to their roots. In the following that's exactly what we'll try to do. The elementary categories of classic narratology are transformed into an open series of ludological components⁷, if not for any other reason than to further specify the features inherent to games.”

(Eskelinen, [online] 2005)

¹ Wheresas Eskelinen does have a certain freedom with his topic; it is far from a new field without research or study.

² Eskelinen shows typical single-mindedness and almost assumes the reader of his text to have the same Ludologist view.

³ Here, true to form, Eskelinen begins to show aggressiveness in his statements defaming those with an opposing view.

⁴ In this sentence Eskelinen only makes reference to fellow Ludologists and leaves out any mention of other great writers on the subject.

⁵ Eskelinen makes a statement then contradicts himself as he states there are no games with narrative, then goes on to mention ones that have.

⁶ Eskelinen rebukes the idea that game characters have any similarity to traditional narrative characters.

⁷ Through deft definitions Eskelinen turns narratology into his idea of Ludology.

Eskelinen was one of the ‘Narrative Wars’ most outspoken warriors, he was one of the people who began to make the normally genial academic debates more and more heated. Eskelinen starts off amiably enough with the broad statement that digital games are an under-appreciated media and deserve far more academic study although I don’t think he is correct in saying that ‘nothing much has been said yet, as there had already been excellent books and texts written on the subject such as.

However Eskilenen then quickly goes on to assail the viewpoint that narrative in digital games cannot be looked at in the same way as it is studied in film and theatre (which is the basis of narratology). In my opinion, certain games have a linear narrative that is exactly like films and theatre and can be studied as such with the same principles and approach.

I find it quite odd that he was only able to find what he calls ‘narrative situations’ in Myst and The Last Express (a game which was released in 1997 and was famous or possibly notorious for trying to emulate liear ‘real-time’. Fellow Ludologist Jesper Juul also writes about this game in his text ‘Readings: Five versions of a conflict’ (Juul, [online] no date). I think there are several other games, which although not strictly linear, can definitely be said to have a perfectly fluid narrative situation such as the obvious Final Fantasy series which I will discuss in greater detail later.