The contrast and similarities between Narratological and Ludological Videogames

1501ART New Communication Technologies
Essay- The Contrast and Similarities between Narratological game and Ludological games.
Chris Burns (s2676732)


Video games are divided under two different types, Narratological and Ludological. The focus of a Narratological Videogame is to tell a story and that means that they become more of an interactive movie or a visual book (J. Murray, 1997). These games focus on a story, with game play being adjusted or shaped around it. Ludological Videogames, on the other hand, concerns themselves with actual game play and those types of elements. Storyline is not so important. The game is created, and then some form of story might come into being (G. Frasca, 1999). This essay looks at the history of the Videogames and then observes the differences between the Narratological Videogame and the Ludological Videogame, such as the characters and goals.

For a while, from the 70s until the early 90s, Videogames were very simple in graphics and also in story. The memory that each game had was a lot more limited compared to today’s standards and so game designers could not allow memory to be wasted on why things were happening (the story) but what was happening (Wolf, M, 2001). Therefore, up till the 90s, games that concentrated on game play dominated the market. Characters in games such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario and Donkey Kong had goals (Like making it to the end to save Princess Peach from Bowser) but they never deeply explained why they were chasing the bad guy.

All Videogames, just like in movies and novels, have characters. Strong characters are very valuable in videogames; they sell games and even game consoles. Mario sold Nintendo; Master Chief, from Halo, sold Xbox ( Stephen Poole, 2000). A good Ludological game would be Pacman. The character in Pacman is a small yellow ball, who is obviously called Pacman. The aim of this game is to eat all the dots in each level, which happens to be some form of a maze, getting as many points as you can. Of course, making things hard for you are four blobs with eyes trying to eat you, so you must avoid them as they chase you through the maze. Of course, we know very little about Pacman except the vague descriptions that we see. Little in this game is evident, because in a Ludological game the focus is the game, not the story behind it. And the essential item in a story is a character. In most books, the little quirks and personality of a character is important in order to continue the story. So a Ludological game shouldn’t be too bothered with the little details of a character, because it doesn’t need them. We don’t need to know what Pacman thinks, or whether yellow is a natural colour for the species that he is, because it’s not relevant to the rules of the game.

Videogames, just like the characters in a novel or movie, have a goal in mind. The goals vary, and the goal itself wouldn’t indicate whether a game is Ludological or Narratological. The goal might be as simple as destroying every single one of your enemies, which is common in games such as Halo (A Narratological game) or in Doom (Ludological). However, there is greater depth in a Narratological game because it isn’t content to allow you to do something, but wants to explain why it happened. Aliens might be shooting at you with laser guns in Halo, but you discover that this is because you’ve crash landed on their sacred site. Monsters might be attacking you in Doom, but this is because they are monsters and obstacles from allowing you to reach the end of the game. The reasoning behind why something is happening is more obvious in Narratological games.

Choices happen in both types of games. If there were no decisions in Videogames, they wouldn’t be interactive. Should you attack the monster on the right first? Or the one on the left? The one you attack might affect the outcome of the battle. But in Narratological games, the choices are more likely to reveal what happens to the character you are playing. That is why all Role Playing Games are Narratological, because the choices you make in them determine the outcome of what happens to the character in a more advanced way than a simple explanation that your character survived or died. In Fable, for example, you have the choice of being evil and good and there are consequences for the actions you choose. By slaughtering innocent people or stealing, your character becomes mutilated, evil looking and feared by the minor characters around you. By the end of the game, you might choose to keep the evil powers of the villain for yourself, and you will be remembered by the inhabitants of the world as a legendary figure that is pure evil. Or, you might choose to spare the villains that plead for mercy or get rid of evil powers from the world, and you will become a legendary hero of all time.

Overall, Narratological games have the time to reveal the minor details of a character, explain the reasons behind the circumstances and reveal the consequences of the choices you make in a much greater way. If a game can do this, it leaves the threshold of being a Ludological game and becomes Narratological, because it is now concentrates on the story and the reasons behind the action, rather than the simple actions themselves.



Bibliography

Books/Journals

Murray, Janet (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck, The free press: New York.

Wolf, Mark J.P (2001) The Medium of the Video game, The University of Texas Press: Austin, Texas.

Poole, Steven (2000) Trigger Happy, Arcade Publishing: New York

Carr, Diana. Buckingham, David. Burns, Andrew. Schott, Gareth (2006) Computer Games: Text. Narrative and Play, Polity Press: Cambridge.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007) Second Person, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press: Cambridge, London.


Websites

Frasca, Gonzalo (1999) Ludology meets Narratology, <www.Ludology.com>

Felluga, Dino (2003) Introductory guide to Narratology. Purdue. U,
<http://www.purgue.edu/guidetotheory/narratology/modules/introduction.html>

Perry, C. Douglass. Brudvig, Erik. Miller, John. 2007.
< http://au.xbox.ign.com/articles/772/772315pl.html>

Adams, Ernest. 2002. The role of archetecture in Video games.
<http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/047_The_Role_of_Architecture/047_the_role_of_architecture.htm>


Science Daily. 2007. How does Online gaming affect social interactions?
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070915110957.htm>

Topic Twelve

Lecture- Adam spoke about Electronic Civil Liberties, about how the Government apparently wiretapped the Internet in San Francisco. Is this Spying? Should this be illegal? Personally, I think that the only people that would be upset with this wiretapping are those that are committing activities that are illegal. It may be a loss of privacy, but at least it narrows down those committing illegal activities on the net.
Creative Commons is an alternative way of exchanging information, copyright etc over the Internet and the World Wide Web.
He also talked about free and open software. He explained about how Software works. Source codes are instructions written in computer code (HTML) that allow a computer to do different things. From there, the source codes are translated to files, which eventually reach the computer.
Software used to be free; a way to improve and exchange ideas and enhancements on the computer, but the business world has now the first priority of profit. Therefore, Software now costs money.
Free software, that doesn’t cost money, is now called Open Source. The deal is that everybody can make contributions and has a shared ownership.
Readings- One of the readings was titled “Why Software should not have Owners” by Richard Stallman. He says that technology on the net allows info to be copied much easier. Copyright owners of software don’t like this because copies are made without their approval, therefore losing their profit.
The copyright system was formed with Printing, and so when it involves printing it’s a fair system. It changes though, when everything is apparently copyrighted with digital technology. He says the copyright system needs to change. I agree. Personally I think it should be the Companies, Telstra or Optus for example, that make the profit for downloaded material that should give a percentage to the companies that that own software or information that is being downloaded.

Topic Eleven

Lecture- This topic was called Peer-to-peer Filesharing. We discussed whether downloading music is right or wrong, The general opinion of the room was that downloading music was okay, with a few disagreeing. A few points came out into the open:
That when you download something, you’re ripping somebody else.
· That the CD corporations aren’t adapting to today’s market.
· People want to support the artists that make the music, but it’s so expensive.
· That exchanging music online is good for the artists, because they are publicised. It’s simply not good for the corporations that publicise, distribute and market the music.
Tutorial- Instead of learning how to make movies, we discussed the lecture and talked about these points. Other points that came up were:
· Why should we pay for CDs, when we don’t really like most of the songs on it?
· Movies are different than Music. We should have to pay full price for movies, because movies cost more to make.
· When we download music, we’re still paying for it with our Internet fees.
· Telstra and Internet servers are making the money, but they wouldn’t agree to give licensing fees to artists and to the big corporations. They also wouldn’t want to shut down every large music download sites on the Internet because they make the money from it.
· They sell us IPODS that costs thousands of dollars to fill up completely the legal way.
Reading- The reading is from a blog on the Web. The address is http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html
The points in this were the same as those touched in the tutorial. The CD companies should have handled the Internet and the downloading of music in a much better way. Instead of fighting it and making it illegal, they should have adjusted their business to accommodate pirating.
Also, CDs are so expensive. They are expensive because of how much it costs to run these companies. These companies have more employees than they need, and spend so much money on business lunches and on non essential items.
These companies aren’t in control of the distributing of music anymore, and that scares them. That’s what they are paid to do now and so their future is bleak.
Also, whose fault is it? They say it’s the fault of those that burn the CDs, but it should be the fault of those that put the music on the Internet. It seems that those that put the music on the Internet are under the employ of these CD companies.

Topic Ten

Lecture- In the Lecture, we watched a movie called Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford.
These are the reasons why I think we watched it for New Communication Technologies.
First, because Technology and computers have the potential to go so far that we could create androids, beings with such emotions that are equal to ours. Therefore, it branches off into issues of biased, the futuristic version of black against white, except that its Digital versus Human.
Second, because technology will, because its starting to happen already, be taken for granted and will involve all of our life in some way. It will be used for entertainment, for associating with each other, for fighting each other and for the every day needs of life such as housing, food and even sexual desires.
Third, it will either challenge our traditional ways of viewing each other and the world around us.

Tutorial- For this Tutorial, I am actually writing the summary of the Blade runner movie.
The movie is about how in the near future, Androids (Known as Replicant’s in the movie) were created with human intelligence and strong bodies. Of course, the newest types were so aware of themselves that they mutinied off on a far off planet. They were banned from being on earth and there are special police forces (known as Blade Runners) that will hunt and kill all those that arrive on Earth.
A group of four arrive on earth and Harrison Ford’s character is employed to kill them all.
The leader has arrived to find out one of the most desperate goals of all; how to lengthen a short life span which is coming to a close.
There is also a woman character who is also a new type of replicant, designed with memories so that she feels and thinks that she is a human. It shocks her deeply to find out that she is actually a replicant and that all her memories were from somebody else.

Readings- The reading is from T.J Legrice, known as “An exploration of what it means to be human.”
Cassells Concise Dictionary (1997) states that human means that it relates to humankind, having the qualities of humans and relates to humankind as distinct as God, animals and machines.
Therefore, Androids can be considered as humans if they show qualities, emotions and memories of real people. Those in Blade Runner have feelings, emotions, desires, goals, hopes, and knowledge of what is right and wrong.
Should these Androids be created in the future if they are identical to humans emotions if they are to be treated less than real people?
Will issues, violence and hatred rise in the future between mankind and technology because of mans arrogance of thinking they alone have feelings, needs and emotions? This has happened before, where white men have felt that black men didn’t have the same feelings and emotions as them.

Topic Nine

Lecture- This week’s lecture was focuses on Cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk is a sub branch of the Science Fiction Genre and concentrates mainly on the possibilities of computers, genetics, body modifications, mutation, and corporate developments in the near future.
It is a little different to Science Fiction, because Sci-Fi digs mainly into the far off future, concentrates on outcomes that are very likely to be unrealistic.
Cyberpunk places somewhat realistic restrictions on the story, explaining outrageous or unpredictable events on the technology that human kind has developed, developing or will develop.
There’s more to it than that though. It reveals thoughts about how everybody can use machinery and technology for their own purposes, which in Cyberpunk is more for destructive reasons.

Tutorial- The tutorial is to distinguish between MSN and 3D worlds.
MSN mainly concentrates on speech between two or more people, who wouldn’t necessarily be titled “Players.” It is not simple to separate MSN as conversation and 3D worlds as games, because in a way, IM can be a basis of MUD games, according to J. Murray (1997). These types of games (for want of a better word?) are constructed by those speaking. For example, one person who might be called A could speak to person called B.
A says to B- I am kissing you.
B replies- I push you away and slap you.
This scenario is displayed between both involved, but only in their IMAGINATION. If you simply describe something in MSN, the other person might imagine something entirely different from what you’re imagining.
3D worlds, which might necessarily be games, might take this same scenario into account, except that it has become visual on the screen. A might kiss B, and B might slap A, but they can only do those actions if the 3D world allows it. Also, with 3D worlds, you can explore and see the same things that others could see.

Reading- The reading was called Burning Chrome, the last chapter of a book of short Cyberpunk stories of the same name.
I found the reading confusing and went from place to place easily. Its likely that I completely misinterpreted what the story was about. Chrome, a powerful woman that had connections, was said to use technology to create some weird and dangerous things, but she was burnt by two computer programmers. One of them used woman as a way to decide what was coming in the future, the other was a one armed man with a cybernetic arm who stumbles across a form of digital storage that contains some very powerful viruses which they use to rip off some very powerful people.

Topic Eight

Lecture- This lecture was titled “Is Videogames a waste of time.” Instead of debating about whether it was a waste of time, we analysed the whole prospect of the videogames.
Important Note- Narratology is the study of videogames from the perspective of being stories or literary works. The Narratology view explains that videogames are a more advanced form of story telling in which you can choose the actions or some of the details of the story.
Ludology is concerned with the game play elements, and that the story elements are secondary or not important.
The Ludology aspect may be true, but if all videogame designers were to stick to the ludology view so that all storyline in games were secondary, I believe that this would limit the potential of future technology and games.
Tutorial task- We were given several exercises for Microsoft Word and Excel. Then we had to answer these questions:

“Were there any problems? What were your solutions? Did you find it too simple, or was it confusing? Can you see how this software might be useful to you?”

Microsoft Excel. I know little about it. I struggled to do the first two exercises, but I wasn’t able to successfully complete the graphs exercise. I went to the “Help” option, but it was a little difficult to explain sometimes.
I found the tasks I couldn’t do confusing. Even in Word, in some of the tasks I successfully completed, I found the instructions for the exercise different to what I would have done.
I managed to do the exercises, including mail merge, in Word. The things I didn’t know that I learnt excited me because I use Word a lot.
Microsoft Excel was the opposite reaction because I’ve barely used it and I require basic lessons before I can move onto advanced exercises. However, Excel would be useful or even fun if I put in data that interested me, like the public reactions for well known movies.

Reading- The reading was Chapter Three from Trigger Happy.
Once I forced myself to read it, I found it interesting.
Although games can be considered “Realistic”, they usually aren’t. Sometimes, situations in real life are less exciting, so that they won’t make a good game and so they are enhanced or exaggerated. This is evidence in space war games. A laser should travel at the speed of light, and so if you can see a laser coming at you, even from a long distance away, you are basically dead. There would be no time to react. Another aspect is that a laser could simply be deflected by a mirror. Why aren’t these technologically advanced space aliens placed mirrors on their hulls to reflect laser beams?
Also, games have boundaries. You can only do things or consequences for actions can only be done if the designer of the game has programmed it into the game. You can’t use a rocket launcher to blow up an annoying wooden door to get past it, when the same rocket launcher might disintegrate countless enemies in amour. Most items in games can only be used once or in a certain area, even though they could be used in other places in real life. The author of Trigger Happy used Resident Evil and Tomb Raider as the main examples.