Games and Narrative and YouTube and such
This post is a bit of a messy experiment. It’s half prototype script for a project I’ll explain later, half devlog/rant/vent about creative projects in general, and half something totally different. Please please please please read it.
ALSO, if you see this, it means I’m still in the process of writing this post. I’m just too lazy to have a dev and prod version of this site, and I’m tired of having to switch the dates around to get it to show when I’m testing how it renders and blah blah blah. What I’m saying is, if you somehow find this weird blog post while it’s still being written then you should celebrate cause that’s kind of cool, right? Maybe check back every couple days and see how my progress on it is going. Hopefully it gets better each time you come back.
If this is you coming back then welcome back! Hopefully I’ve written more since the last time you were here.
You ever play a video game?
I feel like here I should insert a joke here like, “well, you’re on my site so obviously you have.” But literally no one knows this website exists, so I have no idea who you are or what you’re into.
I’m just going to assume you have played a video game. Actually, going to make a lot of assumptions about you and your knowledge regarding games. Sorry.
I have also played a video game
About a year ago, I was playing a little adventure game for the PS2 called The Dog Island. In it, you play as a dog who travels to the titular Dog Island to find a cure for their brother’s mysterious, fatal illness. A fun adventure ensues and many lessons are learned.
I would presume, anyway. I never actually finished it.
One time I was playing the game and talking with my partner. Just sort of running around the world and goofing off.
I made our poor protagonist (Crunchy Ball was his name) run headfirst into walls and spin in circles and howl in the middle of town over and over and over.
My partner asked me what the hell I was doing, and I told them that look, it wasn’t ME doing this, it was Crunchy Ball! I mean look at the screen! He’s the one running around.
So why? Why is he doing this? What’s come over him? Does he have a worm in his brain? Is he stupid? I think he’s a little stupid.
Ok he’s not stupid
Obviously, he was only acting weird because I was making him do all that stuff. I got bored, stopped paying attention, and decided to make him run around.
And if we could step into the world of The Dog Island and ask its citizens about the course of our hero’s adventure, we would probably agree that none of the characters would talk about the 10 minutes Crunchy Ball spent losing his fucking mind running into walls. Nor would they mention the dull 30 minute conversation they had where he sat in one place and looped their dialogue over and over and over. And they certainly wouldn’t recall the time Crunchy Ball sat in the middle of town unmoving for over 12 straight hours (we left the console on by accident).
Obviously Crunchy Ball didn’t actually do all that stuff. Right?
Abstraction
When we play games, we implicitly understand that what we see on the screen is an abstraction. It’s an abstraction of some hypothetical world and narrative that exists separate from what we’re being shown. The sprites, animations, and dialogue, represent the idea of a story and world and characters. But they are not those things in and of themselves.
When an rpg zooms out to a simplified over world, we understand that the world hasn’t suddenly shrunk and we recognize that the new sprites are still representing the same characters as before.
When an NPC repeats the same line of dialogue, we understand that the character did speak those words at least once within the fiction, but they did not stand there and say the same sentence ten times in a row because because we kept accidentally triggering their dialogue.
In a sense there exists two timelines. Two texts. The “true” text where Crunchy Ball is a efficient noble hero saving his brother. And the gameplay text where Crunchy Ball runs around and wastes time and does nothing.
This idea that a games narrative and its gameplay might clash or tell different stories is nothing new. It even has a fancy name that YouTube video essayists have been talking about for ages.
Ludonarrative Dissonance.