The infamous notion that video games will receive their critical and cultural due when they can bring people to tears is the perfect concept for exploring the long standing split in game studies: namely, the battle between ludology and narratology. This battle is perhaps most pointedly expressed in the work of Espen Aarseth on the one hand, and Janet Murray on the other.
Aarseth’s “ergodic literature” maps various ‘texts’ by the degree of non-trivial effort necessary for users to traverse them and his conception of user engagement in interactive forms is characterized by aporia (an impasse), which is eventually replaced by epiphany, and thus, closure. Murray, by contrast, gauges all texts by their narrative potential, arguing that the immersive power of narrative is all that is necessary for games to mature (and for gamers to achieve catharsis). She bases her position, in part, by linking Homeric epics to Aristotelian poetics to folktales to cyberdrama.
In this presentation I briefly survey the narrative | ludology divide, examining its roots and current formulations, before suggesting that the ‘crying test’ is a seminal, yet highly problematic standard which elides the media specificity of narrative and game structure, and, in so doing, blocks our ability to imagine the full potential of each. I will suggest that the immersive component that Murray assigns to a “stirring narrative in any medium [which brings] an intensity that can obliterate the world around us” (98) results from surrender and helplessness, two feelings that are in direct opposition to the type of impetus to act demanded of video games.
The motivation to act, I suggest, arises not from immersion, but from engagement and focus. Using Huizinga’s 1955 argument that play precedes culture (since animals play), I explore the role of affect in image-based media, and ways of accounting for the type of focused action that games are particularly good at stirring (cf: McGonigal). Ultimately, I maintain, mapping game theory exclusively onto preexisting media forms is a misguided endeavor. By way of example, I close with a case study during which my interdivisional team developed a game for ABC News and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition.
