An old question under a new light

Stephen King of Fighters is the name of my master’s thesis written during my studies at the University of Art and Design in Geneva (HEAD). My question was “What forms of narration are specific to videogames ?”.

I stated that narration in a game is not always where you expect it to be, and that it has a different shape than the one we are used to in linear and non-interactive media (like cinema). I first introduced the subject by making a short history of narratology and then went on to criticise the main ludologist assertion that consists in dividing narration and gameplay in a video game.

Procedurality as the main affordance of video games

Taking a more holistic approach, I tried to analyse what I think makes narration in video games different. First, the fact that the player of a video game takes a huge part in interpreting what a video game is, and so, that the video game author’s agency is different from a traditional vision of authorship. I make a parallel here with Barthe’s Death of an Author. I then continued by stating that procedurality is one of the main affordances of video games, and that the new author works with systems that build representation, and no more with the final representation itself. I then looked into the concept of emergent narratives, and how it resembles, and differs from this new narration that I tried to conceptualise. Then I tried to find bridges between the practice of contemporary independent video game designers and the international situationist movement.

There is not only one narration in games

In the final part I analysed two games that looks very different to each other, but which both hold - in my opinion - a narration that you can only find in games: Spelunky and it’s narration of action and phenomena, and Proteus and it’s “off-camera” narration.

You can download the full pdf (in French) by clicking on the link in the right column.