Mohammad Farraj

DMS 448

Blog Post 2

            Over the years, the gaming world has released an abundant amount of games that has been very accepted in the community. To prove this, sales have shown to grow the companies profits and even on  streaming scale, Youtubers have taken the liberty in producing “lets play’s” or even “walkthroughs” to show the over all content of the game. More importantly, these factors such as profits, walk throughs, let’s play, shows how strong the narrative within these games are. Without these narratives, the concept of being a successful video game would vanish. However some members of the gaming community would disagree and dismantle this perspective. Therefore, the narrative within a video game ultimately helps define it.

            With the support of different mediums such as films, it helps inspire and cultivate the foundation of video games narratives. Over the course of the years, the gaming community has witnessed different mediums such as films essentially transforming into video games with compelling and interactive choices within the narrative. This includes examples such as an interactive film on Netflix called, “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”. In the article, “Black Mirror interactive film: Inside the 2 Year Journey of “Bandersnatch” by Jackie Strause, challenges the idea of what is a video game and how the players choices can define the story. In the gaming community, “people have never seen this before, so they could come to it with preconceived notions, especially if they think this is a video game or a heavy definition of what interactive is” (The Hollywood Reporter). What this shows is that, it raises the standards for both film and video games by having both components from each medium (i.e video games and films). To analyze this even further, the narrative within these mediums help provide a structure within these simulations. By having this design structure where players can pick their fate and essentially see the “Butterfly effect” this helps cultivate the narrative in their own way. Thus, having their own unique input on the experience itself. Ultimately, supporting the stance on how narratives build a videogame. However, there are members in the community that believe in how a narrative doesn’t define a video game.

            Members such as Ian Bogost, don’t believe that narratives make a videogame. In the article, “Video Games Are Better Without Stories”, by Ian Bogost, states how as the narrative contines within video games, it becomes hard to contain or even control it. He states how, “the problem becomes increasingly intractable over time. But those worlds feel even more incongruous when the people that inhabit them behave like animatronics and the environments work like Potemkin villages” (The Atlantic). What this shows is that, Bogost believes that as the narratives progresses, the player faces the challenge in trying to maintain the understanding and grasp of the narrative. That the environment within the story makes the player loose themselves and their objective as they are transformed into robots with an empty goal. Thus proving why he takes the stance in why the narrative doesn’t define or support a video game.

                                                            WORK CITED PAGE

Strause, Jackie. “’Black Mirror’ Interactive Film: Inside the 2-Year Journey of ‘Bandersnatch’.” The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Dec. 2019, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/black-mirror-bandersnatch-netflixs-interactive-film-explained-1171486.

Bogost, Ian. “Video Games Are Better Without Stories.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 25 Apr. 2017, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/video-games-stories/524148/.