Recently, the notion of ‘narratives’ has infested gaming like a virus. The origin of ‘narratives’ is a term that has jumped out of academia. I don’t take anything seriously on the issue of art that comes out of academia because academics rarely produce art themselves. It is like listening to a monk preach on how to make love.
The issue of narratives and video games isn’t that complex. Look at board games. Does Monopoly have a narrative? A story can certainly develop. But there is no narrative. What about a match between RTS players? Or FPS players? There is no narrative there. But there is certainly a story of the players’ actions.
What is the narrative of Super Mario Brothers? Or Duck Hunt? Or Tetris? “But they don’t have stories, Malstrom! Duhhh!” What about Final Fantasy I?
People are confusing story and narrative to think the two are the same. They are not. They are different and have different origins. Narrative implies narrator. Narrative also demands that the only relationship between the artist and art is the relationship between the potter and the clay. The artist creates the art. The artist shapes the art.
But is this true? If it is true, where does that leave the customer? Does not the customer have any say? Are customers nothing more than passive beings with passive brains whose role is to only receive? Are customers nothing more than an empty dish where the artist squirts out his ‘art’ into? That is what narrative implies.
In the more interesting look, the customer is not a passive agent. Rather, the customer becomes an active one. And the customer’s active part shapes the experience more than the artist.
If you ask how this is possible, just watch a child at play. You can give a child a toy car, but the child could use the toy car as a missile or as a boat. Is the child wrong? Of course not. Now let us say some adult came in and seized the toy car and demanded, “You must play with the toy car only in this manner.” The child would hate you for you are doing a cruel act. You are treading on the child’s imagination. So long as the child isn’t harming anything, what does it matter if a child uses a toy differently than for its developed purpose? If a child gets entertainment blowing up toy soldiers rather than making mock wars with them, what does it matter to the toy makers? They got their money. And the child is having fun with their product. Who are they to say how the customer can enjoy the product?
Narratives tread on imagination. In other mediums, what we know as ‘narratives’ are acts of amateurs and are the first thing condemned in 101 class. In the written medium, narratives clearly are the ‘telling’ of the story. And the elder writer will scoff and say you do not ‘tell’ a story, you ‘SHOW’ a story. The ‘show, not tell’ has become so often repeated to point of being cliche.
The reason why ‘show, not tell’ works is more complex than the three words. Thoughts of imagination cannot be transmitted to another brain through visual or musical arrows. To the contrary, what happens is that the artist takes his imagination and breaks it down into pieces and chunks that compose the medium (the script, the scenes, and all that). The audience then receives these pieces and chunks and apply their imagination to them. The consumer experience is inside the audience’s head. The consumer experience is certainly not the pieces and chunks. If the pieces and chunks were upgraded to be more pretty, more eloquent, would this create a better consumer experience? Not exactly.
The success of movies depends on the non-narrative. The best movies, just as the best movies, best books, and all, always have the customer think he is the main character. (e.g. people thought they were Mario in Super Mario Brothers or Link in The Legend of Zelda. People thought they were Ender in Ender’s Game.) Young girls thought they were the Kate Winslet character in Titanic and went to watch the movie over and over again. The Matrix is a great example because everyone sees themselves as Neo… until the sequels. Why aren’t the sequels to the Matrix as entertaining as the first one? There are more ‘action scenes’, more special effects, bigger budget for everything, so what gives? The directors began believing they were ‘geniuses’ and tried to ‘tell’ the movie rather than ‘show’ it to you. People stopped seeing themselves as ‘Neo’.
Mediocrity results in the artist believing art is a one way signal. It isn’t. The genius of the artist is found in the imagination of the audience, not the artist himself/herself. Somehow, someway, the artist was able to activate that imagination, to turn the key for an imaginary door.
Narratives never respect the audience’s imagination and tend to trample over it. What are you left with? Well, you have the literal replay of the artist’s imagination. But it isn’t that good because imagination cannot be transmitted as people think. All that is left is the awe of computer animation.
Is computer animation entertaining? No. It is only entertaining to young people. You will see the same trend be replayed over and over in your life. Young people love something that has computer animation while everyone older thinks it is uninteresting. Young people say, “Old fuddy duddies!” This is why mediums like the movies and video games get trapped in a young age group as their customers due to the over-reliance on computer animation.
And this is why Next Generation is always ‘necessary’. People who believe the progress of video games or movies depends on the progress of computer animation do not understand video games or movies. This is why there are so many bad movies and video games out there despite looking ‘fabulous’.
Shakespeare’s plays still make up half of all theater productions in America. Why? New plays are more ‘hip’ and have better props and costumes. Shakespeare’s plays are very stark in how they use sets. The answer is because Shakespeare’s plays tap into people’s imagination. Despite all our technology, we cannot produce something as imaginative as a “Midsummer’s Night Dream”.
There are some people saying, “How dare Malstrom say this! He just wants to turn back the clock to a more retro time. He wants all games to not have stories.” This is not true. I am not anti-story for video games. I am anti-narrative. The reason why is because narratives do not seek to activate the imagination of the player. It is the artist staring at himself in the mirror. Narrative games are always vanity games.
Most of the reason why I oppose story in video games is because the game makers have no skill in the craft of story telling (and it shows). In the creation of games, they do not let someone, who has never drawn art, be responsible for the art. They never let someone who makes the music be someone who has no experience with music. They never let someone to program who has never programmed before. So why do they put in stories when no one on the team has successful experience in it? This amateur story ends up bringing down the other parts. Better to leave it out. Bad food corrupts the entire dish and ruins the meal.
But the source of magic from a game comes not from the developer’s mind but the customer’s mind. It is the customer’s imagination that is making it magical. It is very common for an entertainment product to be successful and the makers of it do not know why and are unable to replicate the success in sequels.
There are several examples of science fiction writers who literally cannot play the game Civilization. With the imaginary mind of the science fiction writer, games like Civilization are very lethal. They become addicted to the game more grossly than the average man and some of them literally shatter the disc just to make it stop. There is no ‘narrative’ in Civilization. Yet, the game keeps telling the most amazing stories. And the science fiction writer’s mind is more potent than the usual mind so the experience is far more intense for them.
There are many games in which I like the stories. Star Control 2 is a favorite. There are conversations and mission logs, and there is a beginning and end, but there is no real narrative. I can play the game again and again and come up with some different experiences (though not conversations and I have to do the same things to trigger the end of the game).
Ultima games are very rich in story. But they lack a narrative. There is no narrator dictating the story. No forcing the camera of the game to act like a movie camera. People take away very different but very intense experiences from the Ultima games because of that. The Ultima games became much weaker at the tail end because they were trying to drive a ‘narrative’.
In order for a game to become magical, it must activate the imagination of the player, not dominate it. As the “Game Industry” became obsessed with narratives, the “Game Industry” enters decline. The common refrain from the public is, “Games are no longer magical.” It is because the industry considers the imagination of the player to no longer be considered magical.
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