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Situation: A New Word for Story in Games by @why https://robek.world/game-reviews/situation-a-new-word-for-story-in-games/
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@why @rwdigest http://puu.sh/uaQUA/d8bf37e5c6.png
now go child and rest
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@rwdigest I still have nightmares about cliffracers. "Get away, stop scraping my scalp," are words I oft yell when waking up in the wee hours of the morn.
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@rwdigest @why Hmm, situation... why not something more like, "proto-story" or "proto-narrative" elements? In GTA III you get to the pay-off, killing the person who betrayed you. Situation sounds more static, it lacks the driving point.
I think of William Goldman critiquing "The Closer," describing the lead's performance as "a bunch of behaviors," meaning something close to tics or external qualifiers (like accents, scars, uniforms, &c).
How about "plot furniture"? You're not building the haunted house complete with a guided pathway through it, as a novel or play does, but nonetheless you do have at least *part* of a house, and it needs this furniture in it in this order.-
@somercet @rwdigest your situation can, and does, change throughout the story. it's kind of how the player feels about their situation which drives them. GTA is a good example, since those games give you so much freedom between missions. many people will just papaya off and do whatever, whenever they have the chance. but a well-done situation would make the player to want to continue the story.
i think what i'm trying to ask is the questions, "why are you in the story? why should you care about the story?", outside of the obvious answers that pertain to the immediate plot. obviously, in a game with light or no story, like super mario, these questions are trivial and pointless, but more complex games like metal gear solid or morrowind have similarly complex answers.-
But "situation" is a word without movement, a snapshot. In any game or story, as soon as you "get" your situation, you try to change it, and you jump from one situation to another: destroy the descending aliens, escape the haunted mansion, chase the villain (1) and grab the MacGuffin (2). Yes, Super Mario is The Cannonball Run (Goal? To win the race? Why? 'Cause it's a race, dummy!) . Perhaps someday we'll have games that recall the motivations of My Dinner With Andre (two Broadway guys, one finds the meaning of life in the everyday, the other in religious rituals), or Waiting For Godot (living with existential dread/anomie). But ultimately, all stories end up w/ human motivations. There is a structural, a critical difference between a novel or play and the gaming Choose Your Own Adventure. This greatly effects how you receive the story: even more different than reading a play is from seeing a faithful adaption to seeing a revisionist one. I thin…
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@somercet im talking about the connection between the player and the game's story. I want to say it's inherent to games, which is what makes it hard to describe. A director of a game isnt able to force the player to experience the story like they could with a play, or a movie, along with the fact the player is inside the story, as opposed to an onlooker. Say what you will about its execution, but Spec Ops: The Line was an interpretation of Heart of Darkness, which proved stories could be implemented in games on a thematic level, while maintaining the status of "game". A handful of 90s point and click adventures had similar interpretations, IHNMAIMS is a good example.
Im open to changing it, i know situation isnt great, but it's at least catchy. -
@somercet also, a story has to fit its medium. Plays are good at showing conversations, and the two plays you listed exist entirely of conversation. Adapting them into a medium that doesnt do conversation well, wouldn't have as much an impact. For this reason, adapting deus ex to a movie would make it a grapety blade runner knock-off, despite the game posing some serious questions about the nature of conspiracy theories.
Regardless, we cant have a Waiting For Godot without first having Hamlet. Games have only been around since the 70s, and have had stories since the 90s. A reason i like games so much is im able to see people break new ground with the medium, or even do so myself if i can get off my ass-
@why Extending "situation," an inherently static word, to include "progress" breaks the word. Leaving the word intact ignores the goal-oriented, even multipath nature of games. I would recommend another label, more like "hypertext/hypermedia," first used for Xanadu and Apple HyperCard, or "sequential art," used to describe comics.
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@somercet i don't think the word is inherently static. something has situation to its surroundings, but that situation could change due to various plot elements. maybe we should use another phrase to describe how games give you choice, but i'm only focusing on the one aspect of story which is unique to games. at each instant, you have a static situation, but at each instant you also have the chance to change your situation
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