Narrative, Games, and Theory by Jan Simons - Review

This was a very in-depth article regarding narrative, games and theory. A lot of it was just too distant for what I was looking for - it was leading into psychology etc. At this stage it is important for me to home in on the areas I need to look at. Later today I will be re-doing my Visual Dissertation Doc, and looking to start preparing for my dissertation.

Link:

http://gamestudies.org/0701/articles/simons

According to ludologists, the major difference between games and narratives is that the former address “external observers” who apprehend “what has happened,” whereas the latter require “involved players” who care about “what is going to happen” (Frasca, 2003b).

- These definitions of narrative I keep findign always seem to be interesting

When we compose a narrative, especially a narrative based on memory, we usually try to represent “how things came to be what they are,” and the end is prefigured in the beginning. But when we read a narrative, even one in which the end is presented before the beginning, we adopt the outlook of the characters who are living the plot as their own destiny. Life is lived prospectively and told retrospectively, but its narrative replay is once again lived prospectively (Ryan, 2001).

- This reference makes a good example of my project and what it could be attempting

Lisbeth Klastrup argues, performances by players in interaction with each other and virtual gameworlds give rise to “tellable events,” “which would retrospectively make good stories” (Klastrup, 2003). Klastrup suggests to speak of “the experience of interaction-in-time, a series of effective interaction events that are naturally connected” (Klastrup, 2003) - an appropriate rephrasing of Aarseth’s concept ergodic - as“story-living” (Aarseth, 1997).

- This is how my game is hopefully going to work - 'story-living'

For one thing, many narratologists would object to a characterization of narrative as a “description” of traits and events. Gérard Genette distinguishes the “the representations of actions and events,” - “the properly narrative parts of a story” - from “representations of objects and characters, which belong to what one nowadays calls description” (Genette, 1969). According to Genette,narration is concerned with the “temporal and dramatic” parts of a story, whereas description “suspends time” and “displays the story spatially” (Genette, 1969).

- Genette's remark is something that helps me see the 'narrative' and 'descriptive' parts of my story

As Edward Branigan (2006) argues:
One of the purposes of seeing and perceiving narratively is to weigh how certain effects that are desired may be achieved, how desire is linked to possibilities for being, how events may proceed. In this way, perceiving narratively operates to draw the future into desires expressed in the present as well as demonstrates how the present was caused by the past and how the present may have effects in the future (p.32).

- I might be understanding this wrong but again, I think this can relate to my project

As Seymour Chatman writes: “Kernels are narrative moments that give rise to cruxes in the direction taken by events. They are nodes or hinges in the structure, branching points which force a movement into one of two (or more) possible paths” (Chatman, 1978). In order to identify these kernel events, a narratologist must identify a story’s ending and then reason backwards in order to establish which events must have occurred in order to make the occurrence of later events possible. The narratologist’s take on a story is hence retrospective (as is the narrator’s and historian’s perspective, because in order to be able to tell a story or to identify the beginning of a historical development, one has to know how it ended (Danto, 1985; Martin, 1986)).

- This is similar to how I have developed my story and events

Personal Notes

I found this article very difficult to understand at times. It seems very professional and maybe at a level a bit higher than what I am used to. It had a lot of interesting points but at the same time, I struggled with understanding parts.