Post 8 : Games first, Narratives later

“Examining games less as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility” - Jenkins

One of the key points that stood out in Jenkin’s paper was his appeal that we examine games less as stories and more as spaces ripe with narrative possibility. Considering that throughout the course we have been racking our brains on how to input interactivity (a superset of the action referred to as play) into a narrative, I must admit that Jenkin seems to make a lot of sense to me. There is no need to force a story into a game and as shown, many popular games (such as tetris, snake & pac-man) exist without a story. The narrative portion comes in to enhance the game and in doing so becomes an inseparable part of it. Take for example games with sequels that are based on sci-fi settings. Without an accompanying narrative, it becomes impossible to publish a sequel. In the 1^st editions of Halo, all the talk was about its game play and interactivity by extension. Now when I looked up the Wikipedia entries for Halo 3, the article was mostly about its plot. Why do I point out all this?

I wish to get across the idea that narrative and play have intertwined fates. Just because at this moment it seems to be that narrative has more attention than the game play. It does not mean that we must try to fit game play into narratives. The basis of the game is the platform/engine/world on which it operates. What is possible and what is impossible is very much dependent on what the platform enables one to do. We are at a stage where we feel encumbered by the limitations of the platform. We are unable to express all forms of narrative adequately. Right now, and also in the near future, I believe the platform/engine/world will be the limitation to what sort of narratives can be expressed adequately in games and thus it makes loads more sense to examine games less as narratives and more as spaces that have the narrative potential instead.