When Roger Ebert's proclamation that games were inherently inferior to other art forms rang out, the gaming community derided him almost in unison. I know, for I was one of the many gamers berating his general ignorance of the art form from the safety of my keyboard. "What was he thinking? How can he say things like that? Has he played Planescape: Torment?" While the gaming community generally considered his remarks uneducated and thoughtless, his proposition still sparks some discussion in my spongy little brain. Do games not need to control the player's actions in order to tell a meaningful story? Do games fundamentally lack the ability for authorial control that is found in traditional narrative? Do games have any form of authorial control whatsoever?

My emphatic reply would definitely be "YES". It's so emphatic, it may involve swearing.

One of the games celebrated for it's range of player choices is Deus Ex. This cyberpunk/conspiracy theory masterpiece involves gameplay that revolves around a series of missions where the player is asked to complete certain objectives. The player choice comes in with how you complete those objectives. There are stealthy non-violent paths through the level that allow the player to listen in on enemy conversations, read email and generally observe what's going on in the story of the game world from a hidden perspective. You can blast your way through, obliterating plot points as well as potential sources of information. Any combination in between is available to the player, and it's entirely their choice how to proceed.

Does this mean Deus Ex has no story? Anyone who has played the game can tell you it does, and each person you ask would probably have a different story to tell. How can this be? If the player has control, how can an author tell any sort of story? Can't the player interrupt and possibly rewrite the story?

Tracer Tong: JC, we need to take out the security forces assaulting the base. Open the bay doors so our robots can take out the enemy's security forces.
JC: Whoa, wait a minute. How can they do that?
Tracer Tong: They're all equipped with a standard array of military assault weaponry...
JC: Nope
Tracer Tong: What?
JC: I took those out. Put in some rims.
Tracer Tong: Yeah?
JC: They spin.
Tracer Tong: Whoa.

Obviously the player still has to interact with the world that is largely out of their control. The player isn't any more omniscient than they are omnipotent and while the player may have a choice as to how they complete their objectives, or even which objectives they choose to follow, they still have to complete them to move forward.

Yet the player is sometimes given free reign over the game world itself. Take strategy games for instance, particularly Rise of Legends. In Rise of Legends, a player can build their army and attack their foes in largely unscripted missions. In short, the game doesn't place any limits on what you can do with your forces, and you can even choose which missions you want to complete and which you do not.

But there is a story being told while you play. While you choose to attack the territory next to you, your computer adversary is choosing another territory to attack and eventually conquer. In a given mission, your enemies plot against you and take advantage of every weakness you expose. While you could choose to take all your units and make them stand in such a way as to create the outline of a gigantic phallus, you're probably not going to last very long doing that. While you're busy chuckling and taking screenshots, your enemies are using their units to attack, conquer and ultimately defeat you. In order to win, you have to fight. You cannot choose stand-up comedy, peaceful negotiation, arbitration or economic sanctions. You can't try to solve problems these ways because they don't involve explosions. And if it doesn't involve explosions then it isn't dramatic or generally any fun at all.

Another good example is in the amazing RPG Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Early in the game you walk into a room and see a woman dying from blood loss. She's barely conscious and the game makes it clear she's about to die soon. She looks at you and asks for help, then the standard dialog comes up asking you to choose. Let her die or give her some of your vampiric blood to sustain her. Your blood causes her to become your ghoul, addicted to your blood and so dependent on it she becomes your slave. The consequences of this become more pronounced as the game goes on, she drops out of school to give you her tuition money, she has a falling out with her parents and begins stealing to give you more cash, and she's ultimately killed by your enemies in an attempt to hurt you.

Notice how there wasn't any choice that resulted in this woman living a happy, normal life? There was no "We all live happily ever after" ending, only tragedy. Isn't the player given a choice? How can the story be told if the player is given a choice? The story gets told because it isn't the choices given the player that matter, it's the choices not given the player.

Authorial control in gaming is not exercised through traditional narrative, and it doesn't produce a traditional tale. It's exercised through the world itself, what the player cannot do is what defines the story. You have to win to keep going, you have to choose to win. In order for the story to get told, the player has to do something. The very thing Mr. Ebert stated as proof gaming isn't art is the very thing that gives the designers authorial control. The player has to choose between a limited set of choices, and outside that realm of choice exists the forces that drive the story forward. It's that part outside the lines where the story exists, in the game world itself. Mr. Ebert couldn't see authorial control in gaming because he was looking at a blank page and didn't see a story. He should've checked the margins.