Narrative
• A story
• Action that unfolds over time
• Causality: “This happened, then this happened, then
this happened.” Or, A > B > C
• Hayden White: “Far from being one code among many
that a culture may utilize for endowing experience with
meaning, narrative is a meta-code, a human universal
on the basis of which transcultural messages about the
nature of a shared reality can be transmitted”
The Narrative Arc (Freytag’s Triangle)
Tension
Climax
Complication
Resolution
Exposition
Story Progression
Simulation vs. Narrative
• Narrative = Representation, or, “I’M telling you like it is.”
• Simulation: “…to simulate is to model a (source) system through a
different system which maintains (for somebody) some of the behaviors
of the original system.” (Gonzalo Frasca)
• the sequence of events in a simulation is not fixed
• Reader-response criticism: The reader creates the meaning of the
work
• Readerly (the text is static—you’re just there to read and receive
the author’s original meaning) vs. Writerly (the reader helps to
construct meaning) texts
• “simauthors” vs. “narrauthors” (Frasca):
• Simauthors: they give away part of the control of their work to the
user
• Narrauthors: have “executive power” over the narrative
Simulation vs. Narrative
From Fable
Ergodic Literature
You are in a twisty maze of
passageways, all alike…
• “In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow
the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to
make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic
literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with
no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader
except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or
arbitrary turning of pages.” (Espen Aarseth)
• cybertext: texts that involve calculation in their production
of scriptons.” (Aarseth)
• ELIZA and Adventure are examples of a cybertext
Game Design as Narrative Architecture
From Henry Jenkins’ article of the same name, here:
http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html
• Games as “spatial stories”
• “Games…may more fully realize the spatiality of…stories, giving a much
more immersive and compelling representation of their narrative worlds.”
• “Environmental storytelling creates the preconditions for an immersive
narrative experience in at least one of four ways: spatial stories can evoke
pre-existing narrative associations; they can provide a staging ground
where narrative events are enacted; they may embed narrative information
within their mise-en-scene; or they provide resources for emergent
narratives.”
• Games as “evocative spaces”
• Embedded and emergent narratives
Game Design as Narrative Architecture
From Civilization 4
Aristotle, Brecht, and Video Games
• In classical Aristotelian drama, we have catharsis, or “emotional
cleansing”
• Brech countered with the “epic theater,” or “theater of alienation”:
• Epic theater assumes that the purpose of a play, more than
entertainment or the imitation of reality, is to present ideas and
invite the audience to make judgments on them. Characters are not
intended to mimic real people, but to represent opposing sides of
an argument, archetypes, or stereotypes. The audience should
always be aware that it is watching a play, and should remain at an
emotional distance from the action. It is the opposite of the
suspension of disbelief. (from Wikipedia)
• “Simulations are laboratories for experimentation where user action is
not only allowed but also required.” (Frasca, again)
• A connection to cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger) and Piagetian
equilibriation?
Narrative & Educational Video Games
• Goal-based Scenarios: Schank & Cleary
• Learners play a role in the pursuit of objectives; learners acquire
skills (just-in-time learning) as they pursue their goals
• Anchored Instruction (CTGV)
• Project-based learning/inquiry-oriented learning
• Motivation theorists: Malone
• games provide learners with challenge, control, fantasy, and
curiosity
• Dickey—
• Narrative provides learners with the opportunity for reflection
and evaluation
• narrative space provides a compelling infrastructure
Narrative & Educational Video Games
From The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis
Education-related Questions
1. Do we need narrative in order to provide learners with scaffolding
for higher-order thinking skills (think Bloom’s taxonomy here)?
2. If we loosely define education as “learning with objectives,” is it
then possible to learn without the imposition of narrative and are
there implications for constructivist-oriented learning?
3. If games are simulations, should we be concerned about learners
“taking things at interface value”? (borrowing from Sherry Turkle)
4. Is there a “hidden curriculum” (Philip Jackson’s, among others,
assertion that schooling is about socialization) in educational video
games?
5. What are the implications for education if we reach a point where
games in the classroom (assuming they ever get there) give
students authorial control? Can games even accomplish such a
feat?
Resources (in no particular order):
•
The Video Game Theory Reader, Mark J.P. Wolf & Bernard Perron
•
First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, Noah Wardrip-Fruin
and Pat Harrigan
•
Video Games of the Oppressed, Gonzalo Frasca
•
Engines for Education, Roger Schank and Chip Cleary
•
Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray
•
Computers as Theater, Brenda Laurel
•
ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces, Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska
•
Engaging by Design: How engagement strategies in popular computer and video
games can inform instructional design, Michelle Dickey(article in Educational
Technology Research and Development)
•
Zoombinis and the Art of Mathematical Play, Chris Hancock and Scott Osterweil
(http://www2.terc.edu/handson/s96/zoom.html)
•
Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences, Donald Polkinghorne
•
Cybertext—Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Espen Aarseth