Video Games & American Culture » February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis

February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis

Don’t forget your What is American Culture? Essays are due on Canvas tomorrow (2/18) by 5:00pm.

Deeper Understanding of Media

As an introduction, let’s discuss media, the plural of medium. What’s a medium? The textbook points out that some theorists (literary scholars…English professors) import critical lenses* from traditional literary interpretation to use for video games. They don’t claim that’s terrible, but they point out that it isn’t enough. Agreed. However, we have different conclusions. Consider the following media:

  • Scrolls
  • Paper
  • Film
  • TV
  • Monitor
  • Screen

*They don’t use the phrase critical lens, and that’s a problem because doing so would help them understand the bigger picture of theory from our cultural studies and critical theory lenses.

Narrative, ludology, f(r)iction

Yes, the way I’m writing “f(r)iction” is an academic trope that is kind of pretentious; at least, it calls specifically to a tradition of academic writing, which excludes popular discourse. Then again, so do semicolons (but I’d rather be pretentious than transphobic like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s advice against using semicolons). I decided to write “f(r)iction” because of our discussion about hipsters last week. That reminds me: Why did the hipster cross the road?

In the future, let’s keep the word catharsis in the back of our minds. The textbook mentions it in Ch. 3, but they quickly dismiss it: “the general idea of “catharsis” (Greek for cleansing) through games is not backed up by much empirical data” (p. 40). Well, if empiricism (observation) is the only valid methodology, I could see their point. But we have other ways to analyze texts, so catharsis is important for thinking about video games. We’ll bring catharsis back up when we discuss Ch. 9 “Video Games and Risks.”

Tonight’s Reading

I know we’ll have to cover ludology vs narrative, but I want you to think broader. Can we bracket that conversation and move onto the authors’ call to consider “[t]he fictional worlds approach…to studying video games as part of wider ecologies of fiction” (p. 235)? Maybe we should start off by asking if anyone disagrees with the central question of the chapter: “Are video games stories” (p. 201)? They authors answered that on p. 236–last paragraph.

  • p. 203: “You cannot play Blade Runner without paying attention to the story, as at any turn you wouldn’t know what to do next.
    • In which types of games is this argument entirely true? somewhat true? not true at all?
    • For what other video games (ones you’ve played) is this true? What about games in general?
  • p. 204: “Themes and plots–however vague–enable players to figure out game interfaces and the rules of the game.”
  • “‘Narrative’ can be defined as a succession of events.”
    • Not in the book, diegesis from Aristotle”1. The (fictional) world in which the situations and events narrated occur”
      “2. TELLING, recounting, as opposed to SHOWING, enacting”
      Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. Rev. Ed. U of Nebreska P, 2003: 1964.
  • p. 205: “No matter how many times a book is read, by no matter how many different people, the text is always the same; but in a video game, no two game sessions will be exactly the same.”
  • p. 206: “Many designers abhor the scripting of programmed sequences of events in games, which would actually form a narrative in the literary sense.”
  • Why would they “abhor” this?
  • p. 208: “Gamespaces are not realistic, but reductive: they reproduce some features of the real world, but create their own rules in order to facilitate gameplay.”
  • p. 214: Figure 7.5 model of interactive fiction that’s “typical of adventure and action-adventure games.”
    • “[U]ltimately the player is solving a story instead of actively creating it.”
    • Is there a genre of fiction where readers “solve” the story? A story they didn’t create…
  • p. 217: Review Figure 7.6

Reception Theory

  • p. 218: “‘[R]eception theory’…focuses on the experience of readers as they interact with texts, and tries to articulate the nature of the reading activity.”
  • Are walkthroughs narratives?
  • p. 222: “[A] remarkable feature of narrative in video games: it is perpetually unfolding, constantly folding back on itself, full of false starts and restarts, as the player contributes to the story’s creation with each action.”

Ludology vs Narratology

  • p. 224: “[F]irst steps in new disciplines are usually inspired by older ones.”
    • Slight aside: This is true, but, as one starts to think through the new medium, we often discover that the previous medium or text or idea needs to be redefined. In fact, “new media” pioneer Lev Manovich (2001) noticed that film is actually the first “new media.” To compensate for this, scholars are more careful to point to “digital media” when discussing digital technologies. Guess what? Film is now digital.
  • p. 224: “[S]ome early approaches to the study of games centered on their representational quality, and thus authors have been able to apply literary and dramatic models to the description and cultural understanding of video games.”
  • p. 225: Gonzalo Frasca claims “‘games cannot be understood through theories derived from narrative.'”
    • “Juul argues…it is impossible to translate video games into stories and vice versa.”
    • Is it impossible? What about watching video game paly on YouTube or live?
  • p. 225: The authors suggest that the reason so much effort has gone into separating narrative lenses from video game analysis is that ludologists believe “that the formal properties of video games are more important, more intrinsic, than the stories in the games.”
  • p. 229: “Henry Jenkins argues…game narratives are not equivalent to a simplistic, linear idea of a story of the type found in films or novels.”
  • Ever read a novel or watched a film and then on a much later reading or viewing, you experienced it differently? All that is solid melts into air (Marx, 1848).
  • What can we say about the interactive qualities of video games?

Fiction

  • p. 232: “[I]t seems clear that fiction in video games does not work according to the same parameters as in representational media.”
  • p. 232: Marie-Laure Ryan–“most if not all games create a ‘game-world’…I would like to draw a distinction between ‘world’ as a set of rules and tokens, and ‘world’ as imaginary space, furnished with individuated objects.”
  • p. 233: Video game conventions of reward system and extra lives…what else?
  • p. 233: Back to Juul–video game worlds are ontologically unstable, rules are very ontologically stable.

Video Fun

Time permitting, we will look at a couple videos of relevant media:

Next Class

Don’t forget your What is American Culture? Essays are due on Canvas tomorrow (2/18) by 5:00pm.

Keep up with the reading. We’ll cover Ch. 8 in Understanding Video Games next week. Remember, the reading will be on the Midterm Exam (3/17), so, if you aren’t reading, you will not do well. We will also start discussing the Video Game Essay (Due 3/31) next week to generate ideas. The workshop for that is in 1 month–3/17.