Article updates!

Nothing too grand here, just some article updates for Videau (from ages ago).

Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger

Walking Dead: 400 Days

PS1 Suggested remakes 

Not the greatest writing around, but some nice ideas. The first two articles were drafts from last year, I seem to remember the final copy being a lot better, but I've since lost that. The PS1 games was pretty fun to write up, although looking too strongly in the past obscures our present releases (also stagnates the market, eep!). Also floating around is a "Most Anticipated of 2014," with some sections by me, although to be honest I haven't had an exhausted look through what's coming out this year - I'm still a little hectic with phd paper work, and regular old work.

Heads up for the next post - I'll be looking at the similarities of 'Her' and 'Digital a Love Story," in plot, pace and setting. Look both of them up they're quite enjoyable, if a bit strange.

I'll see you all when I get a few more hours free,

Dan

2014

There's an in-between sense of things in January, as though the year isn't quite sure of itself yet. Stuck with one foot in remembering the past, and one searching for the footing of the future. So as it is with the year, so it is with me, and videogames.

There's a glut from best of lists of 2013, that stretches on to 2014 - The Last Of Us, Rome II, Bioshock Infinite, Kentucky Route Zero, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Saints Row IV - the list goes on and on and on. And they all leak out onto this year like unfinished business. The DLC alone has made half of these games unfinishable - Bioshock has it's Burial at Sea, Rome II it's next campaign expansion, Assassin's Creed has the potentioal but hasn't released anything concrete, and Saints Row has already had two DLC packs since it's release back in August. All of these continuing games obscure the future of what will be in 2014.

Or at least they do for me.

The future may hold Watch Dogs, Star Citizen, Broken Age (quite soon), and Nidhogg, not to mention dozens of others, which may be speculated about to no end.

So there will be no speculation on my account, nothing but the deep reading of various games that I somehow finish in-between the chaos of the oncoming year. 

I've had the pleasure of finishing Saints Row IV, A Wolf Amongst Us, and Payday 2, they're all pretty fun in their own unique way. I'll probably put something up about A Wolf Amongst Us, soon.

Hope you enjoyed the break.

Thesis complete and open to the public

Well really it was completed about two months ago.

So here it is: Interactivity and Narrative: the role of a videogame writer.

 My examiners' reports were fair in their criticism - I could have easily been more specific with references, cleaned up paragraphs for better flow, and there were/are typos evenly spread through the thesis.

Overall though pretty good, they recommended further study, with particular attention to the above flaws. So I'm happy about that, how the mark reflected those comments, and how everything worked itself out.

Other than that though this post will be another stop-gap for a little while. I do have a review of XCOM: Enemy Within though if you're yearning for something game related. Everything is finally ending work-uni-life wise for the year, so hopefully I'll have time to recuperate, recharge and write.

Till that time, I'll catch you later.

Intermission

Alright. I know I've been radio silent for the last month, but I do have an important reason for that – finishing up the last bits and pieces of my thesis (which I’ll post after I've received corrections for it), but also presenting, spruiking, and charming people into listening to my PhD proposal.

That is “Narrative Structures in Videogames.”

Here’s the brief:

Research Proposal: Narrative Construction In Videogames

This thesis is concerned with providing a methodology to analyse narrative based games, furthering the already established research of Janet Murray and Chris Bateman to incorporate new forms of narrative. Through providing a methodology for different narrative structures - the linear, multi-linear, and emergent – the narrative direction of various games can be analysed more comprehensively allowing for more critical links between narrative and gameplay. To incorporate this methodology The Last Of Us, The Walking Dead and Gone Home will be analysed in respect to each of these narrative structures.

So far so good in terms of applying (I did so back at the end of October), and in getting supervisors – still all I have to do now is wait. Quick bit of trivia before we let this proposal go, apparently actor guided agency/Barthian viewpoints on narrative is the "in" thing currently (I discovered this through the response of a potential supervisor).

Other than that I've been writing up reviews for AuReview, in their VideAU section. So far I've published two articles on Bioshock: Burial At Sea, and Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag. So that’s pretty exciting.

I should have another coming out this week for XCOM Enemy Within.

Currently, due to the wait of both results, graduation and the PhD for next year things seem to be in a state of purgatory – I’m tempted to write more about the independent games scene in Melbourne. But for that I want to do it properly and have it as a project that continues onward regardless of how busy I get (unlike a certain blog). Regardless I should have some more posts coming up in the next couple of weeks.

For now I'm holidaying in Canberra, before Christmas, and work grab hold of me.

The Ludonarrative divide - or the ludicrous separation of elements in a game

Say you have a book. A nice ordinary book, with white pages a Times New Roman font and maybe even a cover with a picture on it.

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.

Gone Home, Emergent Narrative

Gone Home is an elitist narrative, with its open world complexity merely a costume, to hide the shallow plot. There's no way for you to proceed through the game than a simple A to point B, acceptance of the plot, follow the bread trail and you'll find out what happened.

Gone Home is an open narrative, where its freedom of choice becomes the ultimate agency - you choose what you want to explore, you construct the narrative how you want to. The entire procedure is chaotic, with the simple task of going through a house bringing up all sorts of questions - what does this mean, what's this? Who was that? Why is that here? A strong vignette of mini stories unfolds in front of the audience's mind. There is no straight path to follow, just whatever shape we can make out from the clues.

Hmmmm.... What else has been said?

Cameron Kunzelman from This Cage Is Worms  provides a list of 28 perspectives on the game, ranging from ludo-narrative harmony (which is as buzz wordy as dissonance), to a discourse on abuse. They're all right in their own way about the interpretation of the game. It can be seen as a success, as easily as it can be seen as a disaster.

That's the problem with emergent narrative.

Narrative is always characterised by a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Emergent content, or rather your ability to create content, is limitless, you could go on making suppositions about any particular object or series of events (I'm looking to you causation), with no external pressures because people are innately curious and empathetic.

Now, Gone Home, taking out all the extra features of a 3d engine, a graphical display, voice overs, to the barest elements of plot, you find yourself with a simple tale of going from A to B "What happened in this house," turns into "what happened to my little sister," especially when the high beams of a voice over beat you over the head with the fact that Katie IS THE FOCUS OF THE GAME.

Now is that a bad thing? The game is deeper than it first appears, narrowing its focus down onto one character, don't books do this a lot? Don't they hit you over the head with the use of a Proper Noun or first person viewpoint? Yeah but that's.........

Different is what the emergent aspect is. Although you could liken it to a Roland Barthes analysis of what the audience does to literature, or any theory of character or place (that of being thin, or round characters), but in the end it's just how the reader goes about interpreting the events presented. In this we have our subjective viewpoints upon narrative, ala This Cage Is Worms. The problem with this is that people can only get out of the story, what they're willing to find - be that ludonarrative harmony (ergh! buzzword disdain for another time), or an analysis of social hegemony of white middle class.

What the writer or designer here does is simply present a framework on which the audience can work upon - what's different is that the writers are much more traditional in the way that they provide narrative.
The writers here provides clues, and even outright state (through telling not showing) that these hunches or constructed narratives are right - but not for all of them. In many cases writers (of any kind) will leave grey areas open for interpretation. What they don't do is provide any dynamics to these revelations.
In most videogames, feedback is given instantly on the main plot, through the in-game characters who give the player an almost chorus like analysis of how the narrative. In more gameplay focused games its, health bars and point meters. Gone Home, while it provides us with the tools in which to construct our interpretations, doesn't interact with our discoveries. (This is somewhat ignoring the small combination puzzles, which are of the "find blue key to blue lock" variety).

Gone Home succeeds in both the telling of the narrative of Katie, and through providing a framework for players to explore the rest of the family. The only room for criticism that it has is in the past tense nature of the plot, everything has already happened, and nothing will ever happen - your agency is limited to observing rather than interacting. Though all of that is tied up with the intrinsic nature of stories, we tell them because they're based off events that have already happened - plot is to a large part predetermined, the ending, along with the start pre-written. Though videogames could change that.

Nevertheless, Gone Home is a great narrative game, with the depth that you can delve into its shadowy rooms, there's always a skeleton to be found - (note the allusion to the horror genre *wink wink*). The discourse around it alone has made it an interesting case study for how people respond to narrative in videogames.

####

Next up! How I hate the phrase ludonarrative dissonance.

Gameplay and Guttered narrative, XCOM: The Bureau

XCOM: The Bureau isn't the game it was back when it was first shown at E3 2011. Edgy neat, reeking of the Hitchcock Hour and The Prisoner, with an air of survivor horror.

It was, supposedly, going to rock our socks off. It was going to be as great as Firaxis' remake, a real show stopper.

But it wasn't.

It was a well polished tactical 3rd person shooter, as clean shaven and square as any game before it.

It didn't do anything new.

Under the hood it seemed to be a poor man's Mass Effect with none of the scale. A better shooting and gameplay mechanic in ordering your squad with enemies around, but ... it just wasn't enough to tide me over into thinking that it was a good game.

Just a good tactical shooter, not a good game.

The slow motion effects when issuing orders and the cleverness of the AI to flank, to pull back and forth, with the rise and fall of battle, to have cover change in an instant with the movements of the enemy.

It pulled that all off with flying colours. The battles went across the fields, out from streets and into barn houses. Not in any spectacular way, just solid, actions would force enemy aliens to move across from you in a sinister dance of war.

But its story.... it just brought it down to its knees, the whole spectacle of U.S. military bases being blown up, your secret weapon to destroy the alien threat, the lack of any nuanced guerrilla activity, it all just seemed to fall away in the execution.

But there was still that something, a small element of storytelling that makes  it to the end of The Bureau and ties up your technical abilities. Through the presence of the Ethereals (the ascended/incorporeal "good" aliens), or as the game states, through your presence. This clever, player within alien, within character makes the decisions of your character and the divide that he has of different choices all explainable and relevant to the plot.

In probably one of the best immersion/out of nowhere moves, the main character collapses as you're running down a corridor, Carter runs, trying to get away from something. Then, all of a sudden you notice the camera pulling back from Carter, refocusing as a first person viewpoint with four outstretched tentacles. You are the alien creature, pulling the strings of Carter. From then on, the game progresses quickly, Carter refuses to host the alien presence any further and attempts to blow up the facility, the ethereal takes control of another member of the staff and continues to fight off the invading aliens. The conspiracy, along the lines of  Bioshock's (2006) "Would you kindly.." is nice twist in an otherwise boring game.

<I'd have a screenshot here, but the section in question is in this link)

The problem is that it's too little too late. A small reminder of what the game could have been, if the pro-America, freedom or death, linear path hadn't stopped it from becoming the game that it could've been.

Perhaps it was  comment on the very conformist suburbia of America's mid 50s? A homage to the black and white tales of pulp science fiction tales? A satire on America's homeland defence? I don't know, but with that small segment, I almost saw what it could have been.

####

Not too much of a deep analysis here, but if I slaved over it, I'd probably end up hating the game. In all fairness it's a solid game, 2K just didn't really go all out on what they wanted - it seems as though marketing or someone smothered it in it's infancy and all we're left with is an oxygen starved shell.

Anyhow, next up Gone Home (since everyone is talking about it, and it has decent characterisation of female characters).