Players get to explore game spaces and interact with the environment at their own pace to figure out more secrets and the underlying story in the game’s world. These are experiences where most of the narrative storytelling workload is done not by exposition via cutscenes and dialogue, but by the very carefully curated environments the game has to offer. Examples include games like Minecraft or The Sims.įinally, there are embedded narratives. Jenkins also describes these narratives as having ‘attractions’ that serve as the narrative hooks that provide the emotional impact the game requires.Įmergent narratives probably have the highest amount of interactivity in that, while the spaces obviously have some sort of limit or control exerted by the developers, players have a lot more say in how narratives play out and the experience is not as pre structured or controlled as it may be in one of the other three types mentioned by Jenkins. In games like the Uncharted series where the narrative is also given almost as much weight as the environments and set pieces around which it is designed, the issue of balancing a compelling narrative and freedom of the player within each level can become more pronounced and can also potentially lead to complaints of ludonarrative dissonance, where the interactivity and narrative do not gel as well as they might otherwise. Examples could include Call of Duty Zombies, where maps were originally designed with no narrative in mind, and they continue to be made to maximise gameplay options and enjoyment within unique environments, and only later was a story constructed around these formerly independent maps/levels. This can lead to a more episodic feel, where levels may have broadly defined goals, but the focus and highlight of the levels are their unique environments, and the narratives may serve as an excuse to visit them in some cases. The second sort are enacting stories, whereby the narrative and plot are usually secondary to the exploration of various environments, and whereby the stories are usually designed around the various spaces players visit. ![]() Some examples of such games could be those associated with pre established IPs, such as Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order set in the Star Wars universe, and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor being set in the Lord of the Rings universe. The first are evocative spaces, which can evoke pre existing narrative and genre associations, can be used to enrich or expand pre existing experiences, and add to said original experiences by using and manipulating similar environments and tropes, rather than retelling the stories as they were. ![]() He categorizes them into four major types, which we will explore using The Fullbright Company’s game, Gone Home. In presenting some middle ground between the two camps, Jenkins presents the notion of environmental or spatial storytelling, whereby he describes game designers as not simply telling stories, but as designing worlds and sculpting spaces. However, as Henry Jenkins brings up in ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’, statements that pit interactivity against narrative by labeling them as opposites may be ignoring some nuances in favor of more rigid definitions of storytelling being very heavily controlled by an author rather than have any level of input by the player/audience. The tug of war between narratives and interactive gameplay elements and how to balance the two is a heavily contested issue when it comes to the conversation about video games and their narratives, with many narratologists arguing that video games can inherently not be narrative experiences due to their interactive nature.
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