ABSTRACT
This paper presents a narrative theory of games, building on
standard narratology, as a solution to the conundrum that has
haunted computer game studies from the start: How to approach
software that combines games and stories?
Categories and Subject Descriptors
K.8.0. [Personal Computing]: Games
General Terms
Theory, Design
Keywords
Storygames, narratology, ludonarrative model
- INTRODUCTION
Computer games generate many questions and challenges for
narrative theory. The very first humanist article on computer
games, “Interactive Fiction” by Anthony Niesz and Norman Hol-
land (1984: 125) talks about games as an “enigma […] to literary
theory.” Are games a type of narrative? If not, do they contain
narratives? Is narratology useful for the study of games? Should
the definition of narrative be modified or expanded to incorporate
games? Can the study of games yield insights useful for narratol-
ogy? Perhaps we instead need a parallel paradigm, a “ludology”
(Frasca 1999) to understand games the way narratology is used to
understand narrative?
Regardless of the answers to these questions, the fact
remains that computer games have emerged as a dominant cultur-
al form in the sense that it influences other forms such as cinema,
TV, literature, theatre, painting and music. Therefore, the study of
these other forms ignores the rapidly evolving field of games at
their own peril. But how should such theoretical explorations be
carried out? When changing focus from one empirical field to
another, it becomes crucial to examine the examination process
and the tools used as well as the object of the examination. Do
theoretical concepts such as “story”, “fiction”, “character,” “narra-
tion” or “rhetoric” remain meaningful when transposed to a new
field, or do they turn into empty, misleading catachreses, blinding
us to the empirical differences and effectively puncturing our
chances of producing theoretical innovation? Critical self-
reflection is a hallmark of scholarship, and a necessary virtue
when we examine a phenomenon with critical tools developed for
another type of phenomenon altogether. In other words, when we
study games through the lens of narrative theory, the lens itself
must be critically examined as well.
When we apply the perspectives and models from one
form onto another, our ability to assess the incongruities as well as
the similarities between the two forms becomes critical. Man is a
pattern-finding animal. It is extremely easy to find parallels, pre-
cursors, and points of overlap, and thus seduce oneself to con-
clude that A is a form of B. The responsible theorist, therefore,
should take the opposite position as their null-hypothesis: A is not
a form of B unless proven otherwise.
Consequently, in the context of games and narratives,
one must be careful not to assume the task of proving that games
are narrative forms, but to look for evidence and counter-evidence
with equal zeal. To further complicate matters, “games”, as Witt-
genstein pointed out in Philosophical Investigations (1953: §66),
is not a category that it is possible to define formally. So how can
we know that the phenomena we call computer games are even
games in the first place? Successful definitions of narratives has a
very long history and appear to be easier to come by, so at least
there is some fairly firm theoretical ground to stand on: Narrative
theory.
As the study of computer games gelled into an emerging
institutional practice around 2001, the question of whether games
are a form of stories has become a prominent issue among the
practitioners, a touchstone used to signal one’s familiarity with the
new scholarly field. The last ten years have seen a number of
comments on the so-called “ludology vs. narratology” debate, but,
ironically, very few have actually engaged the question of the
relation between games and stories through a properly narratolog-
ical analysis, using the basic concepts and models of modern
narrative theory. Instead, this “debate” has been carried out on a
meta-level, through comments on, and characterizations of, the
debate itself rather than by direct engagement with it. This meta-
debate can be seen as a symptom of the birth pangs of a new
academic field. Too often the positions taken have been un-
nuanced, untenable, and therefore unproductive: “Games are
always stories” (Murray 2004, p. 2). “[T]he computer game is
simply not a narrative medium” (Juul 1999, p 1).1
Tragically, in the field of game studies the term “narra-
tology” has changed meaning and does not refer to the academic
discipline of narrative theory, but to a more or less mythical posi-
tion taken by an imagined group of people who are seen to believe
that games are stories. It is high time, and hopefully not too late,
to reinstate the original meaning and function of narratology, and
ground the debate in narratological terminology and theory. Not to
prove that all games are narrative (they are not) but to show that
1 A position from which Juul later wisely retreated (cf Juul 2001).
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