Designing Beyond the Game

The focus on interactive play, on development of emergent narrative, is building an understanding that games can tackle serious issues, but that it may do so in a somewhat different way from more traditional narrative. The main difference turns on what it means to experience another’s story, as in most traditional narrative, versus experiencing a story as one’s own, as one does in most games. Some good traditional media invites the reader to be a character of the story (Calvino, 1982), but the relationship of reader to character is always strained. During immersive play, the character is aligned with the player from the outset - what the player does in play is reflected in the character. The character becomes separate from the player only, becomes an “other”, only when something in the play draws a separation between the player’s intent and action and the character’s. Of course, artifacts in a game can serve to draw a distinction between the player and the character. A cut scene is one example. Essentially mini-movies using traditional media techniques to convey story, cut scenes allow for the infusion of authorial style and intent into the narrative. The designer, not the player, is in control of the character and the scene. The player’s lack of control may or may not be met with frustration, but regardless of how welcome it is, the experience is normally one of at least momentary alienation of player from character. The character is portrayed as having her own experience of the world separate from, though still connected to, the player, perhaps as an agent in her own right, or perhaps as an object merely responding to forces in the world.