Mark Bernstein
writes about my “The only place where play and narrative can coexist is on the PLAY button of your VCR” post from last Friday (morning). He is definitively right that I was trying to be provocative (I can’t prevent myself from a good pun, that’s one of the defects of being the son of a comedian ;) and he is also right about not taking its meaning literally: games can certainly be turned into stories by commentators and make-believe play is also closely connected to narrative.
My point referred mainly to “the issue of narrative in computer games” which has acquired an almost mystical aura in recent debates. What follows is not in answer to Mark's remarks but was rather triggered by things like, for example, some of the last posts at the Digiplay online forum where it is common to see things like “well, I don’t want to get into the narrative debate”. For some reason, the issue of narrative and games has become controversial. There are mainly two schools: the narrative one and those who claim that narrative theory is not a good frame for understanding games. There is a lot of passion on this issue, which sometimes is a good thing for research, but I don’t think this is the case. Personally, I think that the distinction between narrative and simulation is essential in order to unleash the potential of simulation as a representational and rhetorical tool. That’s about it, at least for me, and I think that this can be easily shown through narratology. Sure, we could call everything “narrative” and we could call all the dogs “Lassie”, but that doesn’t seem too useful. I have nothing against narrative. Actually, some of my best friends are stories.
One of the finest examples of this debate was when somebody in a conference called me a member of the “intellectual Gestapo” for trying to force my definition of narrative into people. The problem was that this person, as many in this debate, do not say: "ok, my definition of narrative is xxx". That's perfectly fine with me: people can have folk definitions, fuzzy definitions, strict definitions or no definition at all. But, at least in my understanding, academic debates need clear definitions in order to be useful. People can think whatever they like about narrative but I will only debate with those who are willing to put their cards over the table and clearly enunciate that definition.
The fact that there is not a single definition of narrative has been a major issue in narratological studies, but people can start a serious debate by comparing notes and definition. To name just one narratologist, Gerald Prince claims that narrative mainly requires a series of events and a narrative situation. Ok, that’s a definition we could work with. People think that since Quake produces events after being played, it is building a narrative. And they are right, since any series of events could be described as a narrative as long as the reader recognizes a narrator. But that is like comparing the view of a match of tennis with the action of playing tennis: they are two completely different things. Narrative supporters seem to be interested in the show, while I am interested in understanding the mechanics of the play. Phenomenologically, when I play tennis I don’t believe that I am watching a story –I could, but if my goal was to better understand tennis I think I would focus on the rules and experience instead. Games do produce sequence of events, but they are not just that. It’s all about how to frame the study of games: either as a black box that generates actions or as a system that follows certain rules and structures. Sincerely, I don’t think it is that complicated but a lot of people that I respect and consider to be brilliant fail to understand my point. That’s why I keep looking for better ways to explain myself.
Anyway, I am still puzzled about this everlasting debate. Sure, it is quite essential for me, since all my research work is based on the distinction between games and narrative. Looking at games as narratives is possible. It is also trivial and won’t help us to unleash the potential of the medium.
