Internal Narratives in Games
I was thinking recently about the internal narrative that we are constantly writing as we play through a game: What is it about that narrative that makes it so difficult to retell? Have you ever tried to relate your in-game actions to another person, even another gamer? What was their reaction?
For my part any attempt to narrate an in-game event is met with politely placating attentiveness and an obvious disinterest.
And yet this internal narrative is arguably the most important aspect of any gaming experience: we game to play out a story, to write a story in real time. It is this collaborative storytelling between gamer and game that differentiates this pastime from all other forms of entertainment.
Tell me about any attempt to relate your in-game actions in real life: were you able to hold your audience's interest?
What is it that makes your personal experience in-game so foreign to an out of game listener?
What is possible with this new space, where the dialog between the game's story and the gamer's internal narrative is played out?
For one thing people tend to be pretty apathetic when it comes to hearing about someone elses's internal narrative, unless it is for very brief stretches. That goes for narratives pulled from a video game just as much as it does for narratives pulled from real life.
I think the biggest reason for this is that most people are very bad at communicating the narrative, especially verbally and on the fly. A few people seem to have the knack or to have figured out how to relate their first-person experiences with words, and a few more know how to put their thoughts to paper and whittle away until the story is as compelling to others as it was to them.
Moving the narrative's context from real life to the gaming shouldn't be that big of a deal, but may add another layer of glaze to the listener's eyeballs since the environment that the tale takes place in can be so unrelatable to someone that's never seen it. That's not an insurmountable obstacle, if you have an eye for exactly which details of an experience are universally compelling.
Danjo Olivaw Lives
That's why I like The Sims. It's made for this kind of experience, and even if someone has never played the game it is easy to explain it in a way that people can understand because most people live in houses and have giant green diamonds flying over their heads and it takes everyone 30 minutes to pee.
XBL Gamertag: Effin Bear | PSN Name: Effin Bear | Steam ID: MechaSlinky | Wii Console Code: 5185 2886 9649 1657
I think the cardinal sin of gamers recounting their playing is that the storyteller assumes that what was exciting while playing will be exciting to the listener. This is especially a problem when the story is about how awesome your fake self is.
Go watch what happens after a LARP session, or at the beginning of a LARP convention. It's especially obvious (to an outside observer) there.
"Oh man, this guy was all like, 'I'm gonna kill you!' but I was all 'Oh yeah? Nuh uh!'"
It's not interesting that your fake self beat up another fake person. The only people interested in that story will be people immediately effected by it -- mostly just you and the player of the other fake person. Think of it like Apples to Apples: The adjective is "interesting" or "cool" or whatever you want to impart. Your memory comprises your hand of nouns. What can you play that will fit the listener's understanding of the adjective?
The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid. - Elysium
Wordsmythe is my hero. - rabbit
XBL: E Munnie
Some people are very good in writing AARs (after-action reports) for games like Europa Universalis or Hearts of Iron. But my feeling is that you still have to know a bit about the game or be interested in that particular period of history to follow the AARs. Otherwise the retelling of the emergent story is quite brief. I have a friend with whom we share our Civ IV experience and the talks tend to be quite in-depth and long. We both know how the game works, so there are no confusing details to iron out.
But as soon as I start to talk to him about my recent play of Europa Universalis III (which he doesn't play), the story stays brief. I can feel he would be confused, rather than amused, by the intricacies of falling stability during war, whether or not I have Cassus Belli on a given country, how to cope with inflation etc.
You can't take the sky from me.