Narrative (n.) - An account of a series of
events, facts, etc., given in order and with the establishing of connections
between them; a narration, a story, an account.
- Oxford English Dictionary
I
am a man who loves stories. More specifically, I love the process of
storytelling; the near seamless flow of countless tiny decisions, inflections,
focal points, and vectors all culminating in a single world; a single unique
scenario in the minds of others. Though I’m not often one to tell stories of my
own, as an envious audience member, I maintain a vigilant eye on how wordsmiths
and cinematographers choreograph dances of thought and emotion.
I
suppose it’s unsurprising then that one of the main reasons I fell in love with
video games was due to the uniquely ambiguous narrative role they can entrust
to a player. Think about it, when playing a video game, is one an actor,
deliberating how closely to play her part, in a play with no audience? Or maybe
they themselves are the audience, invited to witness the dazzling feats of
daring heroes? Or perhaps even the director, guiding the performers in a play
they know not the end to? Naturally, some titles (chiefly those with linear
stories and limited player agency) ask players to wear a very particular hat
or toggle between two specific ones. But, more often than not, a player must,
to varying degrees, engage in all of the aforementioned roles simultaneously;
observing, evaluating, acting, and reacting to the phenomena they witness and
evoke within the game space.
As
in other storytelling mediums, each of the aforementioned roles both constrain
and expand the others. For example, the director of a play must consciously
choose how to portray each scene, constraining the possibilities of how the scene
can be interpreted to one. Yet at the same time, by choosing a specific scene,
she opens up possibilities for how that interpretation might be visualized,
which are themselves limited by the actors and production crews' capabilities,
and influenced by the director's target audience. Ostensibly, every aspect of
this invisible Rube Goldberg machine shapes every other component. Well,
almost.
You
might also have noticed that I’ve repeatedly (deliberately) left out one
crucial cog in this narrative contraption: the writer. If we think of “writers”
as those who write the stories; that is those who make the initial set of
constraints that a narrative exists in, then with respect to games, it’s best
to think of this as a collaborative effort. Because video games are
experiential and have an audio-visual element to them, it’s not just the physical
writers who “write” the game’s narrative, but all of the individuals involved
in creating the game. Like writers within other mediums, the stories they craft
are limited by the worlds they design, but expansive in that they leave “gaps”
for the audience to fill in. Unlike in other mediums, however, in video games
these gaps tend to take the forms of “how” and “when” an event occurs, as
opposed to solely what a character might be thinking at any given moment or how
the setting appears. In a sense, it is a sort of inversion of the human
component in the creator-consumer relationship; numerous creators lay a
framework for an individual to make something of as opposed to the other way
around.
Of
course, none of that changes the fact that this collective interplay almost
invariably requires a large number of individuals performing wholly unique
tasks to function. So, for the video game medium to bequeath all of these tasks
to one (usually unaware) person seems not only extraordinary from an academic
standpoint, but powerfully abstruse from a communicative one. Seriously, how
does one communicate the experience of controlling someone, with their own
ethics, motivations, and aspirations, in a virtual space, using a very specific
set of mechanics imprecisely emulating (or outright eschewing) the laws of
physics? It’s like trying to explain Gauss’s flux theorem to a Pembroke Welsh
Corgi; he will probably appreciate the attention and effort, but lacks both the
language and analogous experience to grasp an understanding.
And
yet, despite being painfully aware of the challenges and reservations of
verbally explaining the perception of playing a video game, without relying on
the medium’s jargon or an understanding audience, I have chosen to undertake the challenge.
At
the time of writing, this medium means more to me than any other aspect of my
life; it is home to a nearly endless breadth of engaging and insightful stories
that have colored my character in more ways than I will ever be able to
enumerate or perceive. However, for still more reasons than those I have described, it has
yet be understood or even examined closely by the majority of academics and
laymen alike. And so, due to the medium’s less than stellar artistic and
literary reputation, I feel that at the very least, I must do my part to
communicate these stories to others, so that they might understand why so many
are willing to give themselves to this creative form.
Though
it would undoubtedly be best for a person to simply play a game and make their
own experiences, I understand that not everyone possesses the time,
willingness, or mechanical dexterity to learn to use a wholly new set of tools
or think within constantly varying sets of rules. Thus, the following
collection of stories will circumvent this by containing my own interpretations of the aforementioned gaps. Each story has shaped me in one way or another and
all of them are nestled deeply within my heart. They are at once fiction and
non-fiction; unique and widespread; mine and now, most importantly, yours.
Initially Posted: October 13, 2014
Last Edited: January 14, 2014
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