I would say something insightful and intelligent, but you have actually given me quite a bit to think about. I think game-narrative is evolving, perhaps faster now than at any other point in video-gaming's history, but you do a good job of giving a snap-shot of the issues we face here and now.



Personally, I think that people play games and watch films for different reasons, but that is all the more reason to look at how games tell stories in ways that film cannot.

I find this a very fascinating subject and I really liked your examples with continuity and the ambushed conversation. This really show that using tricks found in ordinary linear media (like books and movies) fail in an interactive environment.



My own thoughts about this whole gameplay vs narration (where narration is a scripted plot) thing, is that both of these should be skipped in order to explore new directions in the medium. Gameplay is not good at telling stories except for very specific subjects (usually having to do with killing stuff) and if one only focus on narrative (plot) then everything that makes games so special is lost. It is worth noting that I do not define gameplay as a all interaction in a game, but rather the short-term-goal based stuff like shooting enemies or jumping over chasms.



Of course, there is nothing wrong with games as they are now, but they are so extremely narrow in the subjects they contain and an exploration of new directions is really needed.



In case any one is interested, I have gotten into all this in more detail here:

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-gameplay-and-narrative-kill-mean
ing.html

(please note that my usage of "narrative" is a bit bad, and "plot" is probably a better fit to the definition.)

Excellent article! It is quite ture that all mediums have different strengths and weaknesses, and it would be good to always have them in mind. I believe however, that when it comes to videogames, we have to shift our way of thinking about storytelling. Generally, in films and literature, we present the plot following the classic protagonist-antagonist formula. However in games, as you briliantly exemplified, we can not do this, as we do not control the protagonist at all times. Games are therefore uniquely suited to present situational narrative. This is where we do not present a precise plot, but a small universe, where the characters interrelate. It is not the characters who should be the focus, but the situation they are in; leaving the player open to respond to that situation.



This is not new, and has been done in some films and some books. An example that comes to mind is "The World set Free" by H.G. Wells. This book describes a situation (a world war) from so many independant points of view that characterization is minimal. It is up to the reader to form the conclusions of the ultimate cost of the war. Exaclty what the characters do or where they are is not all that important, as there efect on the big picture is minimal. Videogames could present stories in a similar fashion.

Fascinating and challenging article. I'm quite impressed by the constraints Valve have imposed upon themselves in the Half-Life 2 series. Their character has no face or physical form except in concept art, and also does not speak. By applying these constraints any focus on how their protagonist might react to a particular situation is denied: The player inhabits the suit, not Freeman, and the player's utterances of surprise or horror become his voice. Bioshock also takes this approach.



This is not simply an interesting approach to storytelling, it's a useful tool. Removing the need for a well defined protagonist automatically puts the player first and rules out a whole raft of common narrative devices that break the connection between the player and the experience, such as autoscopic cutscenes and internal monologues. Allowing the player to control their in-game persona at all times also opens up the possibility of revoking that control for genuinely meaningful narrative impact.



These methods of delivering narrative could not function in cinema, but the visual language of cinema (set dressing, location, lighting and so on) still applies.

Very awesome article! You were dead-on with the comparisons between the ways that narration methods in movies absolutely fail in games. I know just as little as you do in how to combine movie-like narrative with gameplay. I'd say though that since gameplay is inherently non-linear, it's by definition impossible to unite linear narrative with gameplay without compromising either.

I hope you don't mind, but I'm totally going to steal your game idea "John Punches Daniel in the Face 80 Times". Instant classic.

I would consider narrated cinematic playback.

Great article, and good job of not swaying in one clear direction.



Personally, I can't stand cinematics over 30seconds or QTE in any game. Long cinematics are just the laziest way possible of driving a narrative inside a game, and QTE are just a sad excuse for what your charachter CAN'T do as part of the general gameplay. Both scream lazy design. I understand this attitude is VERY controversal, but it is what I feel in my bones as a life long gamer.



Games and movies, along with books, verbal stories; etc are all completely different ways of expressing a narrative. Games are unique in that the game itself is not a narrative, but the details regarding how the game is played can be. In Monopoly, passing Go to collect $200 is not a narrative. If my friend lands on Bordwalk, of which I own with a Hotel, and goes bankrupt, the sequence of those events creates a narrative I can base a boring book, movie, or verbal story around. The game and narrative are different. If I love football I can spend all afternoon tossing the ball around with my friends. We can then go home and watch a game on tv together. Playing the game of football and watching the game of football are two different activities. If I'm at the park playing football, none of my friends are going to want to stop inbetween plays to watch a movie or footage of others playing - because it obviously and blatantly interrupts the game. If I'm playing a game by myself, lets just say a single player videogame, my attitude about stopping to watch a movie is still the same as if the game were football with my friends.

Though games like Facade and systems like Chris Crawford's Erasmatron try to forge new ground in narrative gameplay, I do have to wonder if Neal Stephenson nailed it in his novel Diamond Age: truly interactive (and convincing) media avatars were always played by real actors who are/will be a dime a dozen. This is related to the old "video-game role playing games are not really role playing games" theory.

"Any action in the game that is occurs by way of interaction between the player and the game, we call gameplay."



What are the others?

This is a really good analysis of the state of play as it is now. Also by clearly separating out the filmic or cinematic dimension (as the technology stands now) we can examine areas where cinematic narrative and game play overlap such as cut scene and npc dialog. Each working to a greater or lesser extent. But we can also look at those areas where both mediums might take elements from the other and then head off in a totally new direction. Imagine a film you can take a role in just as you do in a multiplayer on line game. Imagine multiplayer online games being screened in cinemas that fans / spectators can attend. Arena sports writ large. Imagine if the nature of story telling evolves into story sharing? 'Its narrative Jim, but not as we know it!'

Interesting. Thanks for this intriguing article. I often think of the narrative function of videogames myself but I never thought the goal of narration would be to make someone cry. Think, maybe-but cry, no.



They have only recently begun to make games that make you laugh. Anger is often a product of the game itself rather than the narrative altogether, usually.



Metal Gear Solid 3 was sad, but it didn't bring me to tears (though it has moved some).

I cried when Aeris died in FFVII. (sorry if I spoiled that for anyone)

Nice article!

One of the aspects in my thesis is that a game has to configure the players presence in a game in a twofold way, as an actant (a story person that acts in the game world and therefor must be able to join the reciprocity cycle in the game) and as a spectator (someone who watches what happens to the story person in the fictional world). The former is a matter of how to maintain control and virtual sensation whereas the latter is a matter of visual pleasure.

My conclusion was that games often stay away from tertiary motion during gameplay since narration that relies on techniques like cuts disrupts gameplay continuity, whereas secondary and primary motion works well in the visualization of gameplay.

In other words, interaction requires the screen event to be constructed differently from the ways it is commonplace in film in TV.

You might like to check out the article in which I wrote down some initial thoughts about the topic: http://altugi.wordpress.com/articles/how-to-build-tertiary-motion-into-gameplay/

Meh. Personally, I found the article myopic, and the first two pages re-stated the obvious. Not that there's anything wrong per se with writing down what we all know, but, spatial relationships are only important in action and tactical videogames. You could do all sorts of weird camera things in most of the Final Fantasy games up to #10 or so, as well as most everything in its genre, without disrupting gameplay one iota. (And didn't Wild Arms actually do so?) To say nothing of graphical adventures, many casual games, or interactive fiction.



I know I'm picking on just the camera example (on purpose), but I believe the writer needs to play more than just FPSes.

Pretty good article. It seems to explain ludonarrative dissonance well. One thing you're dead on about is that what defines film is using moving images captured by a camera, cut into arranged segments, and projected on a screen.



But for some reason, I found myself disagreeing with it more as I read on.



First of all, gameplay is not a subset of HCI. Gameplay consists of actions the player takes to interact with a system's rules in the context of an artificial conflict. None of what I just said needs a computer.



That seemingly minor detail is actually pivotal to my next point, which is that the game part of videogames isn't really unique to videogames at all. Some game genres are more unique than others, but think about how you can prototype so many videogames on paper first. That's pretty telling I think. Technically, there's nothing unique to videogames. The fact that they borrow from other media is part of the problem. And because of that, you could argue that in order to create the most unique experience for a virtual, fictional interactive system, you'd want to use less of a game-like structure, as Thomas Grip points out.



This mindset is exactly the one great directors have when trying to create a unique experience on film through editing techniques. They want to use precisely the unique properties of their medium, and to do that in a way that conveys a meaningful message.



Also, I have never played a game that has attempted to break continuity with the level of sophistication of cinema, and then failed. In fact, I've never played a game that has attempted to break continuity with the level of sophistication of cinema at all. The closest I've seen is Japanese games that have stationary cameras from different angles with typical 3rd person controls, and that is not sophisticated. Therefore, I don't see any reason to conclude that it won't work for games.



In conclusion:

"make love, notgames." ^_^

I actually had a few problems with the argument raised by the author in this article. Though the relationship between narrative and gameplay is a very complex and intertwined one, the actual understanding of what narrative and gameplay are in the examples given are a bit troubling to me. Let me explain.



The first description of the forms of media bothered me:



"Strictly speaking, two forms of media that video games are best (and uniquely) suited to express are visual narratives (like film), and gameplay (which specifically is a subset of human-computer interaction). Now most people agree that film is better-suited to expressing straight narrative than a game is. But gameplay is a unique quality of video games, and video games are also quite well-suited to expressing narrative, technically speaking -- they have most all the capabilities that film does."



Firstly, this is stating (or assuming) that zero narrative is expressed through gameplay. Conflict is what drives changes in character, momentum of plot, and the transition of events in a story. These are all elements of narrative. The very description given for the media form of gameplay is a two-way exchange of information, which is where conflict is often generated. With the fact that gameplay can (and does) generate conflict, dismissing the existence of narrative through gameplay at the very start of the article is a flawed statement. Take this a step further, the structure of presenting increasingly more difficult challenges to a player through gameplay is of a similar (if not the same) structure of narrative structures such as the Three-Act Structure, a lens used to construct narratives. This relationship is key to blending narrative and gameplay. Perhaps this point might be already assumed by the author, but given the above quoted statement, it seems that this point is not assumed.



The description about video games being the only gameplay-oriented medium in town and doing what Film does very well also makes me wonder if the author feels that Film and Video Games are at odds with each other. This relationship should be further defined to clarify the context of where narrative weighs in with its "film-like" qualities.



On page two, the following statement is used to help define narrative for the context of this article:



"When we normally talk about narrative in the context of games, we mean things like cutscenes, plots, relationships between characters, and stories that are expressed continuously through the course of a game. "



When looking at narrative from the point of view, of course narrative is going to be equated to film. The very description used is describing the Hollywood-style conventional narrative used in Film. This being the case, who is "we"? Do you mean the industry? Writers? Critics? I'm not sure if Johnathan Flow would agree with that. Much of Braid narrative was through the combination of elements, including sound, imagery, cut-scene, and gameplay (which you had described the combination of technologies being a strength of games). Many writers, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, use imagery as some of the strongest points of narrative in their stories. And critics? Look at Roger Ebert's review(s) of Blade Runner. Much of what makes Blade runner such a fascinating and complex tale is the imagery used in tandem with the dialogue (which is an aspect of Film that you mentioned earlier). To address the imagery question, you being up the example of Gradius as being a case where visual narrative has been visited very often by games. While true, you also devalue the visual aspect of Gradius, interpreting it as simply:



"I'm controlling a ship, I'm in space, I'm shooting the bad guys. I'm going to shoot all the bad guys I see until I get to the baddest one, and then I'm going to shoot that one too."



This over-generalization of Gradius' imagery overlooks the emotion evoked from the claustrophobic, organic, and mechanical relations occurring in the games imagery. This imagery creates a relationship among many things in the game. So when you then conclude that:



"For our purposes, when we talk about narrative henceforth, we mean the kind of narrative that's more substantial than sprite or background graphics, the kind that's slower to digest -- conversational narrative, narrative that involves characters, their relationships and dispositions towards each other, and the like,"



you overlook aspects of imagery in games like Silent Hill and DEFCON that tell a much more complex and concise narrative through the expression of theme through imagery. This flawed assumption on the complexity of visual storytelling then trickles down to your later points, for example:



"With this extreme abstraction of player inputs, the developer affords the freedom to display the action as cinematically as possible with impunity, because the action has become so abstract that the player doesn't need to know what exactly their avatar is doing, or what the enemy is doing, or how a change in the rules in this sequence might impact action in another part of the game. In fact, we get to throw out all of the difficult design considerations that we would have to tackle with conventional gameplay. "



One element not considered in the analysis of Quick Time Events is the emotion evoked from such techniques. Take Capcom's use of them in Resident Evil 4 and The Umbrella Chronicles for example. While their use in both games tended to interrupt gameplay more than it should have, it also provided players with a emotion response, the twitch/instinctual response. Due to the quickness of the appearance of the button presses and the severity of the punishments for not hitting the button in time (sometimes death), wouldn't the player be paying more attention to what could be happening on screen. The Wii version of Resident Evil 4 had the player shake the Wiimote and Nunchuck up and down to simulate running from a boulder in one section of the game; an action that roughly corresponded to action of the avatar on screen. Were these events implemented in a way that broke immersion? I would say so, but consider this: What if the same running sequence from RE4 provided the player with multiple choices/Quick Time Events to choose from, thus altering how he starts the area after avoiding (or not) avoiding the boulder? This way, gameplay design choices can be made outside of the basic button press and still cause the play to twitch instinctually with consequences. By using the strengths of the tool/technique, strong design choices can be made, even with single button presses and desired emotional contexts can be built for narrative progression.



Page 4 of the article presented some interesting points as well:



"However, we find an important tradeoff even in this exchange. You cannot express the same things in the same ways in pure audio as you can if you also had control of the visual dimension. You only have volume, duration and tone to express the quality of an explosion.



You can't depict a character climbing onto the Hydra's head except by literal narrative account ("I'm climbing onto the Hydra's head!") There are all kinds of details that cannot be adequately expressed when your narrative is limited to audio. "



While it can be agreed that audio does have its own ways of delivering information, to say that it can't adequately express narrative on its own is simply not true. The example you give does indeed show where audio cannot express the journey of one climbing a Hydra's head, you're also not using audio to its strengths. How do you think many radio shows back in the day told complex stories? Some detail were given through literal statement (like the Hydra example), but also through scene description and (more importantly) through interpretive sound. Talk to any sound designer and I'm sure he can tell you how he can express emotion through abstract sounds or create a whole scene through audio with questionable actions (was that stabbing sound a murder? Or was it an accident?). A great deal of information and narrative can be told through pure audio as long as the audio engages the audience's imagination (something your example does not address). You could have sounds of heavy breathing, the roaring of the Hydra getting louder, and even the echos in the cave of the Hydra to paint the picture of a hero climbing the head of the Hydra. It can be done and has been done before. When your point says audio can't describe details except when literally said because audio can't describe details except when literally said, that doesn't lend itself to a strong argument.



You do, however, bring up a good point about Half-Life's use of the player-controlled camera and its risk of having the player not pay attention. That might be saying something about the strength of the story as well...



Page 5 had the point that I had the most trouble with:



"Two gameplay emotions, "Kvell" and "Fiero," can only exist as a possible consequence of the exertion of effort on the part of the player -- exertion that can never be accomplished within a pure narrative.



Kvell is a verb, but also a feeling. It's a feeling of pride, especially over the accomplishments of one's children. You don't have to make your kids play video games to feel kvell, but when you are proud that you taught your close friend a secret Street Fighter combo that he uses to win a tournament with, that's kvell.



Fiero, on the other hand, is the specific feeling of success after one has undertaken significant effort to accomplish something. When you beat a difficult boss after several failures or finally figure out a challenging puzzle, that feeling of victory you experience is Fiero. Fiero junkies love to play insanely difficult and unfair games, because it's all about the payoff for them. The intense satisfaction gained by surmounting challenges in such games far outweigh any amount of torture the game designer unwittingly springs upon them."



Two films come to mind that demonstrate Kvell and Fiero, respectively. First is the film Memento. The film itself is described as a puzzle film. For those of you who are not familiar with the film, Memento is about a guy who has lost the ability to keep his short term memory, thus he uses a combination of photos, notes on his body, and people from his photos to construct the world around him. The audience, as well as the main character, are lost in this film-controlled puzzle up to the very end. The audience would indeed feel Kvell from the fact they were able to 1) Follow the narrative and put 2 and 2 together, 2) Feel the potential satisfaction of the main character when he puts together what he wants to of who he is or what his past life is and 3) the meta-experience of watch such a film with a like minded audience and figuring out the film's narrative together. The very description of Kvell is one of a voyeuristic nature (you're watching your friend execute the Street Fighter move you taught him or observing your kids accomplishments).



Fiero can be seen in a scene from the film American History X. The scene I am referencing is where Edward Norton's character is playing basketball to win back the court from the rival black gangs (the whole scene is in black and white). Now there is the surface interpretation of the scene where the viewer relates to Norton's character, gets real tensed up as the game goes on, and feels accomplished when he wins. The emotion of the scene goes deeper than this, however. The whole scene is about pride: racial pride. Norton's little brother is retelling the story to describe how the neo-nazis were able to take back the streets of Venice Beach from the other gangs. With a combination of orchestrated music, strong imagery, and cheering crowds, the audience is connected to the events of that game. When the ultimate feeling of victory is given to the audience, we feel like we won back the streets. We feel pride in ourselves, but then something else sinks in. We see Edward Norton sporting the swastika on his chest while hanging from the rim. We then realize what the white kids were feeling, where the hatred came from, and ultimately, why they were so prideful of this racism. Fiero is thus experienced by the audience.



Finally, you're discussion on continuity is just plain flawed. While I agree with Josh Larson's statement addressing your logic to continuity, breaks in continuity have occurred in games. Your example just was not a fair comparison. Look at Zelda: Ocarina of Time. While the player does stay in control of the character Link for the majority of the game, continuity does break in a similar fashion to Rocky IV. In the fight scene you reference, you fail to realize that the fight had a thematic value that was being addressed by the narrative equal to your Street Fighter example and Zelda. While it is true that the fight was condensed to heighten excitement and emotional impact, so are Street Fighter and Zelda. You don;t see Guile board the plane from the U.S., check his luggage, and then take off for Japan. You see a plane quickly go to the country, and then you get to the fight. In Zelda, each time the player travels to a new location in the hub world, you don't see the whole journey from Hyrule Field to Lake Hylia. You go in one end, fade to black, and then fade back to the lake. Time is cut out by the game designers to keep the audience in the significant action, just like Street fighter and just like Rocky. Even Play Action Football (NES) and other early football games condensed quarters to keep the game fast paced (some still do today). Breaks in continuity have and continue to occur in games to keep the relevant narrative/interactive/emotional experiences at the forefront.



In the end, it sounds like you're trying to equate narrative with the conventional Hollywood-style film narrative and, because games are not Hollywood-style films, many narrative techniques do not and cannot apply to games and vise-versa. Furthermore, your definitions of Gameplay and Narrative are both very limited and constructed more to support your points rather than explore the true relationship between the two medias. While the subject is an interesting one to explore, your article and argument is too flawed for me to really gain too much value from it. You had some nice thoughts on the subject, but your points just don't stand up. These are not all the issues I had with the article, but that would be a whole other article of writing. I apologize for the length, but this is what is wrong with this argument.

For me, as an experienced player and designer who only recently combined these two passions, the article sheds light on a topic I did not previously study, so thank you for that. At the same time, I think the point of view is a bit narrow, not giving a valid picture of the spectrum of existing and possible combination solutions. Not that more examples are necesairy but a more thorough analysis of the underlying factors. besides that, I think narration does not have to be so strictly sepparated from gameplay. How about Phoenix Wright, in which you cross-examine witnesses to elicit contradictions. How about the many games, such as the Metroid Prime trilogy, that integrate keeping a log in gameplay by making naritive a collectible.

In the context of looking at gameplay and narrative as different triggers for emotion, I think considering (extended) identity is on its place. The examples of minions-games provided by the autor actually blur this difference. Am I proud of Ash Catchum for being proud of Squirtle? My personal experience is that when I enter battle mode in Pokemon, I extend my identity to Squirtle. That is because I actually am in control of Squirtle according to the rules of the game. (I play as Ash giving commands but both Ash and the pokemon always obay, so actually I controll the pokemon). (unfortunately) this is not the case with kids, for which you can actually kvell. Hence, I still wonder how a videogame can make me kvell. It seems I need to contribute to something without being in control. And as you mention; gameplay means controll.

Overall an interesting topic to study more deeply. And I think therefore this article has great vallue. Thanks for opening the dialogue!

Movies are powerful in terms of narrative because they start from a story and then express that story through their medium, changing the medium where needed to improve the storytelling. As long as games do not do the same thing, story expressed in games will be sub-par. But if we do decide, one day, to start with a story first and then create an interactive experience to express that story, and only that story, then we will achieve narrative impact that hasn't been seen in any medium ever.



And as John and Thomas have pointed out above, in most cases this means that we have to say goodbye to the format of games. And develop forms of interaction that are truly unique to the medium. I believe that we are very close to being able to pull this off technically and artistically. All we need now is courage.

I agree with Bushman about this article. It gets so many things wrong, right from the off.



Let me slowly tear apart your strange little world for a moment: That example "Daniel gets hit in the face 80 times"...

You say that it's impossible for a player to have control of the situation if he's bound to be hit in the face 80 times, and you imply that it is hence impossible for the player to feel immersed in their character.

This flies in the face of, well, truth. The player doesn't need complete control of the situation to feel those hits. Maybe they can just lean to the left or right whilst their face is smashed in. They don't actually need the chance to avoid being hit 80 times for an emotional link or for the narrative to continue. Just as portal bound the player to a series of events, so Daniel's cartilage destruction could bind the player to this narrative. Maybe you get more points for every second jumping around evading capture, but this can't be done forever and you will receive an unskippable 80 seconds of facial abuse in the end.



I don't know, this whole bewilderingly long article is filled with nonsensical tales such as this.



The only valid point was "Games, by their nature, are not movies." So much specious prolixity in games journalism these days.

I've posted sort of a complementary response to this article on my gamasutra blog. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AltugIsigan/20100201/4286/Tertiary_Motion_and_the
_Problem_of_Vector_Consistency_During_Gameplay.php

My only criticsm is semantic really, and that's that narrative is purely defined by medium, as such, in a video game, gameplay and interaction are technically parts of narrative form. So rather a gameplay vs narrative approach it's more a gameplay narrative vs linear narrative as evidenced in film and text. But even looking at it this way, this article highlights some very real issues with attempting to deliver a potent story through games, there are some things that just cannot be done and some things that work particulalry well.



I'd also like to counter point the concept of building trust. While disastrous results "can" occur for breaking trust there are some fairly simple game techniques for re-establishing trust. For instance, if following cutscenes are done in an obviously secure area, or if additional "guard" NPCs are present, the player is often given respite from anxiety. In addition the NPCs being talked to can also reconfirm safety, if they interrupt their stream of dialogue and interrupt the PC as he's looking about by telling him he's nothing to fear here and to focus". Their dialogue can then simply be renewed with a "where was I", it's relatively simple to do and effectively realistic.



I'd have to say one of the biggest issues with story conveyance is the forgetting of very small things. For instance a tender touch doesn't look so unless skin deforms, Forthright-fullness cannot be displayed without eye contact, and a shifty character needs to look nervous, this has more to do with sweat and red skin than overtly shifty eye movement. Often a smiling character doesn't change their eye's and it just looks creepy in a doll sort of way. Environments are the same, proper lighting is getting better, but often background noise is not, not to mention focus blur, while getting more common (mostly in ADS), is rare during conversations where the primary focus should be another person. Most of these problems are admittedly tech based, and are being ironed out as tech improves, but they're still key to conveying a lot of human interactions.