You read it and you enjoy the overall story, although you're not very ecstatic about it. So you ask a professional what he/she thinks, a reviewer of fine literature.
They tell you that there is a format-narrative divide in that the reading of the narrative the font distracts from the overall story - they say they need this font to adequately reflect the story, strong cursive for romance, or red dripping text for horror.
You agree with these wise reviewers because they know what they're talking about, so you try another book, this time one where the font adequately reflects the subject manner, going smaller with whispers and louder with shouts. It's a great read, but you still wonder how you can improve upon it.
Back to the reviewers you go questioning what could possibly be the matter with the book. They reply with knowing exclamations of shock and patronizing, along the lines of "well it's obviously a book, just look at it." You are a little confused at this divine truth that has just been bequeathed upon you and you look up at these figures trying to work out what to look for next.
It's simple - well at least according to those wise reviewers.
"Find a book that does not look like a book."
So you search, you look for texts printed out on hundreds of playing cards, books written from wall to wall inside of buildings around the world, you attempt to interact with the new electronic ink tablets that change on input. They're fun and interesting, but the story... it still doesn't grab you.
So you go back to the reviewers, head low, pride beaten into the ground, your eyes slits from the tears and reading that you've attempted to keep up.
But...
It's too much, there's nothing you can do, you have failed to improve upon the act of reading, the art of books, your perception of reality.
With a heavy sigh you return to the reviewers.
They are happy though, happy beyond all reason. Positively ecstatic.
What could it be?
They parade around a simple normal book that each of them snatches and claws at, trying to read the content. But why? The book is the most stereotypical thing that they could be reading, it has the same font as the first book you read, the same presentation, it even lacks a cover to compliment it's form. You ask your question louder.
"Why?"
The reviewers pay little to no heed to the shout, all nodding their heads acknowledging that the issue was a delicate one.
"The book works, because it is what it says it is. A book, about a book, that's in full awareness of it's book like nature. In this there is no format-narrative divide, because the divide is precisely the subject matter."
You stand there blinking for a while, your anger slowly rising.
"So books about books are the way to go? The search for new media, new representations of books is not at all important.... What's important is the self acknowledgement of the medium, a hyper-aware novel that knows its limitations?"
"Yes."
The anger bubbles through to the surface quickly.
"So why bother with anything else? Why try for interesting stories that push their creativity to the forefront, that aren't concerned about whether the typeface matches the story? All you're doing here is congratulating books on being hyper-aware of their existence, or who are bluntly about themselves. There's no nuance in that."
The reviewers look on for a few moments, blinking at your outburst. Then they return to their book.
###
So, a parable, metaphor, whatever you want to call it is presented to you. How are we going to analyse it, there are a bunch of different ways:
- The ludonarrative divide is a cosmetic one?
- The ludonarrative divide can add meaning and should be pursued?
- Reviewers can be dicks and close minded (in particular on ludonarrrativity)?
- A game or story that is self aware enough (or blunt enough) to point out its existence is good (but shouldn't be)?
- Ludonarrativity is just a buzz word?
- Story overall is what you're after, therefore in order for there to be no ludonarrative divide there needs to be a strong story.
- Gameplay overall is what you're after, therefore in order for there to be no ludonarrative divide there needs to be a strong gameplay.
Let's start at the beginning though, books here are meant to be a metaphor for games. Format-narrative divide is something I made up, and has links to ludonarrative divide, but also, and far more interestingly multimodality (which is a great term used to explore the relationship between pictures and words in comics).
Originally games are happy to be games, this is where the book angle comes in and a normal piece of literature is seen to be on equal footing to videogames - in particular narrative based games (this sort of makes the analogy better to understand, gameplay is hard to represent elsewhere).
Here is where anyone who likes the idea of the ludonarrative divide can come and strike me down, because, foolishly and simplistically, I've represented the idea of gameplay/story as the one thing (so side stepping the issue completely), or made the divide between the two ideas of story and gameplay wider, with me using the presentation and aesthetic qualities of a book to represent gameplay. This admittedly is where you can shoot down all my ideas, but I think that's a bit too close minded.
For the purposes of taking one medium, videogames, and providing a comparison to another older medium, books, I've managed to put a point across about how we accept the conventions linked with media. People don't expect to be able to access books in any other way than reading, with videogames (even though we can change our interaction through haptic controls) also has this accepted method in which we access them through play.
To complain about the method of interaction not matching up with the gameplay/story direction is a bit like complaining that there's too much alcohol at a bar, it's an accepted part of what makes games intrinsically games, and books, books.
However this is not exactly what the ludonarrative divide distinctly talks about, and already I'm getting way too deep in my analysis of interacting with different mediums.
Back to explaining the parable/metaphoric connections with books/videogames.
With the idea of changing font, in order to enhance the readers immersion, I gave a nod to the idea of messing around with para-textual elements (this is a weird niche element of creative writing/publishing). Basically para-textual elements refer to the extra bits in books, so the font, the blurb, the publishing information, the titles, the footnotes, etc. Basically anything within the book that isn't considered to be part of the text, or critical to the enjoyment of the story.
In videogames these para-textual elements exist as well in terms of menus, title screens, setup screens, readmes, manuals, online communities, etc. They all have something to do with the game, but on their own they aren't that important - together though they can make some really cool narrative story arcs or explain gameplay. (Think Left 4 Dead's opening, that can be argued to be a tutorial, as it sets up the game.)
In this changing around the para-textual elements is a cool way to enhance either gameplay, or narrative, but most people don't consider that to be part of the ludonarrative divide. Which sends me up the wall, because it is a good way to enhance the story/gameplay, even if at times it can seem a bit gimmicky.
Where you get into the ludonarrative side of things - which admittedly is not what all ludonarrative people promote - is when any one particular element, say how the character moves, or reacts is deemed to have a huge standing within the scope of the game - this is supposed to be reflected in the change of font. Certain narrative or gameplay allowances have to be made for the medium of the videogame. That doesn't mean we have to be inconsistent, just a little forgiving with certain elements. FPS narrative heroes become monsters because of their gameplay actions - the same thing can be said about the Indiana Jones movies, or Star Wars films, the characters by their actions aren't heroes, but the narrative makes them out to be.
Though that's not to say that videogames shouldn't try to address these problems of incongruous narrative and gameplay. I just don't think the issue lies in ludonarrative dissonance, rather it's a product of stereotypical narrative or gameplay.
Anyway here is where I think I'll leave my metaphor explanation/critic/rant of ludonarrative dissonance. The other two issues that I wanted to get into (but haven't because of length) is the explorations of new depictions of videogames (a cool and good thing), and also the trouble with appeasing game critics (or how videogames should be wary of being too self aware of themselves).
Anyhoo till next time. Till then I'll be mulling over those aforementioned points. And to boot I'll actually write up a proper academic paper on multi-modality and videogames (with references and everything).
P.S: I handed in my thesis, so I hope that it all goes well.
