So still trying to figure out what is the best way to put up reviews here, since my articles tend to be a bit longer. To that end, I'll summarize and then put a link to the full article at he bottom of the post. So, without further ado...
Post-Structuralist Programming: Narrative Action in Videogames Pt. 1
I want to look at how narrative in videogames differs from narrative in written fiction. It would be easy to simply say that playing games involves a ?doing?, being an active participant in the narrative, however it is not that simple. Reading is still an action. When reading about Ishmael, we are not actually taking part in a hunt for Moby Dick, but neither are we actually taking part in the hunt for Skeith in .hack//Infection. Why is the act of reading and turning pages as a mediator for experiencing the narrative of Never Let Me Go any different than pushing buttons as a mediator for experiencing Indigo Prophecy?
I can't go through every iteration of narratology, so I am going to focus specifically on a post-structuralist conception of narratology. Post-structuralism with respect to narratology can be said to focus on decentralization of the author and the replacement of them with the reader. What this means is that authorial intent is not the primary goal of a textual or narrative analysis of a work. Decentralizing the author allows the work to be open to new interpretations. The way a text is read by one person is not invalidated by another reading of it, but rather just another interpretation given a different situated perspective. So what does this mean for an individual reader and, more importantly, a videogame player?
If both I and my best friend read Fight Club, we will have read the exact same words. Given a game like Resident Evil 4 however, and the results are gong to be wildly different. I might search for hidden treasure to upgrade weapons, while he barrels through wit minimal upgrades. Taking a post-structural approach however we find this argument doesn't hold. Both Fight Club and Resident Evil 4 fully lay out characters, a storyline, and a world for the events of the text to take place in. In fact, when he does not experience the weapon upgrades I use, that different experience arises out of his socio-cultural position in the same way that I might not experience the Freudian themes in Fight Club. The parts are all there, I don't make new pieces of the game and he doesn't write new words, but our experience differs because of the way we engage the text
A videogame has 2 ?narratives?, the unchanging story, and the narrative of player action. Here is where the confusion comes in,because the story of a videogame does conform to the kind of narrative found in literature, unchanging in form but malleable in interpretation. Playing the game is, however, a separate narrative all it's own authored by the player. To go back to Fight Club for a moment,my experience with it would be closer to that of Resident Evil 4 if I could change the words while keeping the overall narrative(here used in the older sense) intact i.e. putting more detail into the descriptions of mundane actions such as rendering fat. Doing so would change the narrative entirely, but videogames have dual narratives which rely on each other but are distinct entities. Doing so would change the narrative entirely, but videogames have dual narratives which rely on each other but are distinct entities. I could ignore all plot elements of Final Fantasy in the same way that could watch a series of cutscenes without playing. In both cases, a narrative remains intact, but the videogame requires that both narratives have a symbiotic relationship of sorts to be a complete work.
The full article is at http://www.theanalyticalcouchpotato.com/2011/07/post-structuralist-programming.html
Post-Structuralist Programming: Narrative Action in Videogames Pt. 1
I want to look at how narrative in videogames differs from narrative in written fiction. It would be easy to simply say that playing games involves a ?doing?, being an active participant in the narrative, however it is not that simple. Reading is still an action. When reading about Ishmael, we are not actually taking part in a hunt for Moby Dick, but neither are we actually taking part in the hunt for Skeith in .hack//Infection. Why is the act of reading and turning pages as a mediator for experiencing the narrative of Never Let Me Go any different than pushing buttons as a mediator for experiencing Indigo Prophecy?
I can't go through every iteration of narratology, so I am going to focus specifically on a post-structuralist conception of narratology. Post-structuralism with respect to narratology can be said to focus on decentralization of the author and the replacement of them with the reader. What this means is that authorial intent is not the primary goal of a textual or narrative analysis of a work. Decentralizing the author allows the work to be open to new interpretations. The way a text is read by one person is not invalidated by another reading of it, but rather just another interpretation given a different situated perspective. So what does this mean for an individual reader and, more importantly, a videogame player?
If both I and my best friend read Fight Club, we will have read the exact same words. Given a game like Resident Evil 4 however, and the results are gong to be wildly different. I might search for hidden treasure to upgrade weapons, while he barrels through wit minimal upgrades. Taking a post-structural approach however we find this argument doesn't hold. Both Fight Club and Resident Evil 4 fully lay out characters, a storyline, and a world for the events of the text to take place in. In fact, when he does not experience the weapon upgrades I use, that different experience arises out of his socio-cultural position in the same way that I might not experience the Freudian themes in Fight Club. The parts are all there, I don't make new pieces of the game and he doesn't write new words, but our experience differs because of the way we engage the text
A videogame has 2 ?narratives?, the unchanging story, and the narrative of player action. Here is where the confusion comes in,because the story of a videogame does conform to the kind of narrative found in literature, unchanging in form but malleable in interpretation. Playing the game is, however, a separate narrative all it's own authored by the player. To go back to Fight Club for a moment,my experience with it would be closer to that of Resident Evil 4 if I could change the words while keeping the overall narrative(here used in the older sense) intact i.e. putting more detail into the descriptions of mundane actions such as rendering fat. Doing so would change the narrative entirely, but videogames have dual narratives which rely on each other but are distinct entities. Doing so would change the narrative entirely, but videogames have dual narratives which rely on each other but are distinct entities. I could ignore all plot elements of Final Fantasy in the same way that could watch a series of cutscenes without playing. In both cases, a narrative remains intact, but the videogame requires that both narratives have a symbiotic relationship of sorts to be a complete work.
The full article is at http://www.theanalyticalcouchpotato.com/2011/07/post-structuralist-programming.html
