A Game In The Hands Of A Player

This weeks session focused on a video lecture by Jesper Juul given on 28/11/06 at MIT, a presentation of his research post Half Real.

What happens when a player picks up video game, learns to play it, masters it, and leaves it? Using concepts from my book on video games, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, I will argue that video game players are neither rational solvers of abstract problems, nor daydreamers in fictional worlds, but both of these things with shifting emphasis. The unique quality of video games is to be located in their intricate interplay of rules and fictions, which I will examine across genres, from casual games to massively multiplayer games.

The Narrative Design Exploratorium

Here is a link to a site I accessed through the IGDA website. It's a great little resource called The Narrative Design Exploratorium. For those on the Narrative Skills module, this is a tool you should all be taking advantage of. I also think it is going to be useful to anybody with even a passing interest in game narratives and game writing.

So check it out and if anyone finds an article of particular interest, post it here and let us know about it and I will do the same.

Cheers all.

Ludology VS. Narratology

As part of the Module requirement you will need to present an argument to support either one of the two of the schools of thought within game studies, either Ludology or Narratology. We looked at some defining quotes in our first session and tried to sketch out a sense of what these words mean. As the module progresses we will discuss some of the standpoints on these two fields of research. I think it is important to lay out the battlefield for this argument and see where we all stand in what has been described as a “polemic” argument or “binary” positions (an argument with two defined apposing sides).

There has been a lot of work looking at these two schools of thought and more recently work done to try and find a middle ground through approaches such as looking at games through spatiality (games as a space) such as Henry Jenkins Game Design as Narrative Architecture in The Game Design Reader (which has been photocopied for you as part of the Narratives Module with Vee Uye) and Peter Bergers There and Back again: Reuse, Signifiers and Consistency in Created Game Spaces in Computer Games as a Sociocultural Phenomenon.

BUT…

We need to focus on the Ludology vs. Narratology debate.

Here are some links that you might find useful; as you scour the internet for useful resources it would be good to share your links with the group. If you post comments with URL’s we can start to share our resources and research. It would be good if you could drop in something along with the URL so we know what to expect from the link (and maybe an opinion on the content)

Blog Posts:

Game Studies: Narratology v. Ludology

Ludology v. Narratology: it lives!

"No Justice, No Peace": No Truce in the Narratology/Ludology War

N&L: I Can’t Take it Anymore!

Articles and Papers:

Juul Jesper “Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives”

Frasca, Gonzalo “Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place”

Cavazza, Marc; Pizzi, David "Narratology for Interactive Storytelling: A Critical Introduction"

Gomes, Renata "The Design of Narrative as an Immersive Simulation"

Kücklich, Julian "The Playability of Texts vs. the Readability of Games: Towards a Holistic Theory fo Fictionality"

Lindley, Craig A. "The Gameplay Gestalt, Narrative, and Interactive Storytelling"

Mateas, Michael; Stern, Andrew "Build It to Understand It: Ludology Meets Narratology in Game Design Space"

Pearce, Celia "Theory Wars: An Argument Against Arguments in the so-called Ludology/Narratology Debate"

Tronstad, Ragnhild "Defining a Tubmud Ludology"

Murry, Janet “The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies” – A damning of the binary.