Play’s Republic

I can’t say that I thought much about games and narratives while on break, but now, faced simultaneously with Avatars of Story and fond memories of that time before Avatars of Story, I find myself inadvertently putting the two together.

At one point in the book, Ryan argues for “an intermediary position between…narrativism and the ludologists” — in other words, a position in which some games have stories and others do not. While the Sims may have a clear story-line, games like Tetris are somewhat more baffling when structured through narrative tools. And though this seems a reasonable compromise, I wonder if it misses the mark. Certainly some games resist narrative readings and others wholeheartedly embrace them — yet thinking back to Gee, I wonder if the content is less important than the context.

Every activity can become a story if we try hard enough. Coming back from break, it seems that stories — particularly embellished ones — are the only way to share (or boast) about experiences with others. Revealing the facts alone is quite dull, but transforming the banal into the theatric creates a sense of awe, a new landscape through which others can experience for themselves.

In this sense, it seems silly to argue whether or not this game or that game is more narrative than another. Instead, we could ask What stories are these players telling in this situation? How does one story differ from another?  What stories can I tell?

Just a thought.