So for my final article review, I thought I'd look at two articles that I've come across among the gaming industry. The first article, "Systems vs. Stories" takes a hard line approach of stating that Video Games which try to be cinematic and focus on a strong story narrative fail because games are not supposed to be stories. The second article "The Problem with Emergent Stories in Video Games" acts as a rebuttal to "Systems vs. Stories" in that it pinpoints all the problems with the previous authors viewpoint and frames it in the context of what is known in the video game industry as "emergent narratives".
Before I get started, a quick definition of emergent narratives can be found in "The Problem with Emergent Stories in Video Games": "Emergent narratives are stories that are not authored by a single person or by any person really. They are stories that emerge from the interaction between players and the systems that govern gameplay. They are random, transient, ephemeral things that only ever exist for one person at one moment in time." (Dinicola, 2013)
In "Systems vs. Stories", the author takes as I said a pretty hard line approach. There are a few things I do agree with in this piece, although I am overwhelmingly on the side of the second article. The author writes:
"Every new art form endures by carving out a creative niche that only it can satisfy. Film captured the imagination because, while it evolved from photography and theatre, it had something that those existing and well-established forms of art did not. It had movement and editing, the ability to take static images and make them appear alive... ...as these tools evolved, so too did that art of film. Games as a medium have been sadly subservient to film ever since the death of cartridges. Once games started using CDs and later DVDs as the storage medium of choice, it's as though a switch was flipped. Games could now make proper use of recorded music and video footage, and... ...the weary old canard of the "interactive movie" was suddenly tantalizingly possible. Games could tell stories just like movies!" (Whitehead, 2013)
Can you taste the cynicism in that last sentence? The author argues that games and movies are nothing alike and therefore should not be sharing in each mediums unique language. A viewpoint that is utterly destroyed in the rebutting article where the author writes:
"Games are already an amalgamation of several other mediums. They contain elements of theatre (each performance/play session is slightly different), elements of cinema (a reliance on cinematography), elements of painting (wildly different visual styles mimicking surrealism, impressionism, pointillism, hyper-realism, baroque, etc), and elements of literature (using narrative asides for character/plot/theme/world development). With such a wonderful melting pot of artistic inspiration as its foundation, why on earth would anyone want to limit the definition of "video game" and what a video game is capable of doing?" (Dinicola, 2013)
"Systems" continues by stating that "Games are, by and large, not the best medium to tell a story... ... No, what games are good at is suggesting stories. The thing that games have above all other media is interaction, which is to say that games have systems. Systems that dictate the rules of a fictional world. Systems that allow the audience to prod the world and feel it push back. Systems are what make games into games, rather than movies with joy pads." (Whitehead, 2013)
Here, I feel as if the author is getting a little bit confused over what a story is. A story is not necessarily a narrative that smacks you over the back of the head and drags you through the game world. Nobody is advocating for that. That's just bad writing, and in fact, it seems as if the author is unknowingly rallying against just that - bad writing. When I consider some of the best, most story-driven games I've played, I think of Dark Souls or Bloodborne, games that take a decidedly minimalist approach to the telling of their stories. These games may feel like "systems" as the author suggests, but there is a vast, rich, expansive story-world lying beneath them which reward the player for seeking out the mysteries of the world. As opposed to something like No Man's Sky where the story is essentially nothing more than "go explore the universe" and there's nothing constructed in the ways of narrative after that. No secrets to uncover, no hidden lore about alien species or planets. Just by the way, the game had a historic flop, and the creators were threatened to be sued for misleading the public as to what the game was.
This leads us really into what the Systems author is advocating - emergent narrative. Using two contrasting examples, the author writes:
"Rather handily illustrating the point, in the same week that Sony's dazzling The Last Of Us dominated both reviews and charts, Undead Labs released its own zombie apocalypse game, State of Decay, on Xbox Live. The Last Of Us is a beautiful piece of work, full of astonishing visuals, richly drawn characters and a story overflowing with genuine emotion , honestly earned. It's a polished gem of a game, the state of the blockbuster art... ...The Last Of Us is clearly superior, so why do I feel that State of Decay is the better game?
Probably because it has more interesting systems churning away under its rather ramshackle exterior, and they push back harder against the player. Ever supply run, every mercy dash to find some lost survivor, could mean the death of one or more characters... ...I care about the characters, not because the script tells me to or because they're convincingly played, but because they're in the game world with me. They're part of my story, rather than me being an observer in theirs." (Whitehead, 2013)
A rather idealistic piece of rhetoric, we have to stop and dissect what the author is actually saying from his emotional subjective experience of the game. He's basically saying "I like State of Decay because the gameplay let me experience my own personal stories."
And recalling the definition of emergent narrative: "Stories that emerge from the interaction between players and the systems that govern gameplay. They are random, transient, ephemeral things that only ever exist for one person at one moment in time."
He likes the game because it is emergent in its storytelling. But, as "The Problem with Emergent Stories in Video Games" points out: Emergent Stories aren't really stories at all.
"There's something empowering about being witness to a singularly unique series of events, watching systems interact with systems in a certain way at a certain location that might never happen again for any other player. Even if such an experience is not really that unique, it still feels that way. Yet when I look back at my emergent experiences or when I try to tell the stories to others, I realize just how shallow an experience they really are.
Emergent stories feel more engrossing than authored stories because they're personal for the player, and that personal interactivity gives it the illusion of importance. I assume that because this event was exciting for me, it must be exciting for others as well. But it's not. My adventures in Skyrim, my tense game of XCOM, my rooftop chase in Assassin's Creed... ...all of these stories seem much more exciting in the moment than they do in the retelling, and that's because they're missing the key component of any good story. They're not about anything.
Emergent stories are not complete stories, they're just outlines of a story. They're living outlines that can be rearranged on the fly, but they're still just outlines - nothing more than a sequence of vaguely related events.
A story is more than a sequence of events. It's also a commentary on those events. Through that commentary the story expresses its meaning, its themes, its morals. It becomes something greater than us... ... A good story is about some universal human experience. That's what keeps me interested even if the specific sequence of events depicted don't relate to me personally. This is where emergent stories fail. An emergent story is just a sequence of events devoid of context and commentary that is only relevant to one person. Interactivity gives it the illusion of importance, and that illusion allows games to tell cheap stories without us noticing until they're long over." (Dinicola, 2013)
So what does this all mean in the context of my Second Life work? Well, it's no secret I have struggled with Second Life. I have found it pointless and boring a lot of the time that I've spent playing it, and this is because, I believe it is an emergent narrative. It relies on me attributing importance to mundane "systems" and to converse with other players to find a story. The problem is, none of that is particularly important for me personally. I'm not saying that Second Life doesn't work as a teaching tool, nor am I saying it is a bad Social Media platform, but I am saying, it's not a game, and it doesn't really resemble a story in any traditional or complex way.
To quote from the end of "The Problem with Emergent Stories in Video Games"
"Currently system-driven stories are too focused on their "systems." Games with emergent stories tend to just loop the same general scenario over and over again... ...without asking us to think about what any of it means. If that programming loop could change, then the loop can be made to comment on itself and thus give its emergent, systems-driven story meaning. Or, a developer could just tailor their story into something that naturally comments on the endless loop of a program's code. Either way, systems-driven stories need to evolve if they're ever going to be taken seriously. Thankfully that evolution is happening. We're still discovering what it means to interact with a story, but I'm not ready to abandon the authored narrative just yet." (Dinicola, 2013)
REFERENCES:
Dinicola, N. (2013, July 30). The problem with emergent stories in video games | Popmatters. Retrieved from http://www.popmatters.com/column/173580-the-problem-with-emergent-stories-in-video-games/
Whitehead, D. (2013, June 22). Systems vs. stories. Eurogamer.net. Retrieved from http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-06-22-systems-vs-stories
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