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Ludology vs. Narratology or those were the days

Ludology vs. Narratology or those were the days. Miguel Sicart Computer Game Theory Spring 2005. Today’s Menu. A brief history of computer games Obviously, games are narratives As a matter of fact, games are games Why is all this relevant? Discussion. Once upon a time.

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Ludology vs. Narratology or those were the days

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  1. Ludology vs. Narratologyor those were the days • Miguel Sicart • Computer Game Theory • Spring 2005

  2. Today’s Menu • A brief history of computer games • Obviously, games are narratives • As a matter of fact, games are games • Why is all this relevant? • Discussion

  3. Once upon a time ...

  4. Tennis for Two1958 • William Higginbotham • Brookhave Atomic Research • Analog • Multiplayer • “Forgot” to patent it ...

  5. Spacewar1962 • Created in the hacker environment of MIT • Steve Russell, Alan Kotok, Peter Samson and Dan Edwards • Open Sourced • Benchmark for new technologies: mouse, screens, arcade machines, ...

  6. Hunt the Wumpus1972 • Gregory Yob’s game hit the mainframes in 1972 • Written in Basic, predicts the explosion of Dungeon games, like ...

  7. Adventure (a.k.a. Colossal Cave) • 1972 - 1976 • Will Crowther designed a cave exploration simulator, • redesigned by David Woods into a D&D inspired game that started one, or maybe more genres

  8. Space Invaders • 1978 • Taito created this extraordinary concept that generated many subgenres with very basic gameplay options

  9. Asteroids • 1979 • Vector based shooter (advanced concept and design by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg) • Huge economic success!

  10. Those were the days ... • Thanks to Pong (1972) and other popular arcade machines, Atari controled the arcade market until its crack in 1984 ... • game industry almost died back then!

  11. ... but there is more to this (hi)story ...

  12. Microsoft Flight Simulator • 1980 • Bruce Artwick, SubLogic • Started the technical simulators ... • but is it a game? • (oh, no, not that question again!)

  13. Pac-Man • 1980 • Toru Iwanatu • Time declared Pac-Man “man of the year” in 1982 (!) • First computer game personality!

  14. Donkey-Kong • 1981 • Shigeru Miyamoto • Root of Nintendo’s success • Super Mario Bros (a spin-off the original game) used as a start title for the NES system in 1986

  15. Classic MUD1978-1980Richard Bartle & Roy TrubshawMultiplayer Online Role Playing Game

  16. Myst • 1993 • Rand & Robin Miller • It’s like Adventure, but with nice graphics ... • It saved the industry, but Robin miller left the company right after the sequel, and its online iteration was a commercial failure

  17. Turn Based Strategy: Civilization1991Sid Meier

  18. Doomneed I say more?

  19. Some other relevant names ... • Richard Garriot: Akalabeth (1979), Ultima Series • Star Raiders (1979) - 3D/2D, First Person Space game • Maze War (c. 1975), perhaps the first death match FPS (developed at MIT)

  20. Time is on our side: a chronology • 50s - 60s: the beginning is the end is the beginning: Space War, Tennis for Two • 70s: Pong, home consoles, industrialization, arcades, adventure games, RPGs, start of the 3D • 80s: Better graphics, adventures die, new genres emerge (simulation), economic crack (1984) • 90s: Technologically driven innovation, massive industrialization, the Internet, Hollywoodization • Now: Portable, pervasive, open sourced, independent (?), ...

  21. And now, for something completely different ... or not

  22. Narratology vs. LudologyI Assault

  23. What is a narration?What is narrative?

  24. Arguments for the narrativeness of games • Everything is a narrative • Games have back-stories, and narrative introductions • Games share techniques with narratives

  25. Everything is a narrativewell, maybe, but that doesn’t mean that everything is narrative!

  26. Games have back-storieswhich are actually relevant for the gameplay

  27. Games use narrative techniqueseven flashbacks!!

  28. ... so ... • Games and stories actually share some traits, • but that doesn’t legitimize their study as only stories • The problem is how do we define narrative, and how do we apply narrative tools for analysis.

  29. Narratology as the enemy • Games can only be understood as narratives • Long tradition, due to the influence of literary studies and hypertext studies • Understimates notions of play, gameplay, and even game design

  30. Ludology

  31. the good guys? • Games use narrative techniques, but gameplay and the game structure are more relevant. • Games might simulational traits that narratives cannot have. • Game shave a structure of their own that cannot be understood as narratives.

  32. But games actually use stories ... • Group work: • Find now examples of how games tell stories (besides the back-stories, and what is written in the package)

  33. Is there a convergence?

  34. Quest games!

  35. What are quest games? • Quests are an overarching structure that applies also to narratives • They can be solo or plural • Narrative is after the fact (constative), while quests are performative (we make them, we experience them) • Quests tend to have a reward/punish structure

  36. or, in words more clever than mine ... • A conflict between act and meaning is present in the activity of quest solving too. To do a quest is to search for the meaning of it. Having reached this meaning, the quest is solved. The paradox of questing is that as soon as meaning is reached, the quest stops functioning as quest. When meaning is found, the quest is history. It cannot be done again, as it is simply not the same experience to solve a puzzle quest for the second time. (Tronstad 2001, pt. 4.1)

  37. Exercise

  38. Take the narrative for the game of your dreams (existing or that you want to make), • and then describe briefly how would you implement that narrative: what is back-story, what is cut-scene based, what are quests • What kind of game would that be? Quest game, non narrative game (Tetris), Myst?

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