Games are not narrative

There is a simplistic idea that games are stories, or, as the hoi polloi, the cognoscenti, of the intellectual edge of media studies and the arts would have it narrative. This is wrong on two grounds.

Firstly, it attempts to steal the ownership of games from gamers and game developers, capturing the whole idea of games and games talk and storing it away in musty ivory towers. If they are allowed to do this then games become a late night arts show chat circuit guest, to be wheeled out, mumbled over with touching fingertips by some dude in a strange jacket talking to some other dude in a strange hat.

On their scales - those who are - touch-nose-touch-nose - better educated and smarter than the ordinary run of us - can then claim games as their domain and reduce us to less than their chattering classes. On their scale the greatest book ever written is Ulysses by James Joyce (an unreadable pile of tat that nobody ever enjoys wading through) and the greatest living author is Salman Rushdie (I made it to the end of Satanic Verses; a turgid poser of a tome that was insulting to Muslims, Christians and humanity in general.)

Everyone knows that the greatest living author is Jo Rowling. Why? Because she is the most popular read of our times, has made children read for the first time in decades, has attracted adults back into reading, and tells a good tale well. But, forget the arts rubbish about her striving in a garret, writing her books over a long cup of coffee in a cold Edinburgh coffee house with no means of living. Its a nice movie 'narrative', but she was paid by the government in a grant to write her first book.

I digress. Back to the point. To the arty-farties who would steal games from the gamers, the greatest movie is Citizen Kane. Sheesh - have you ever watched that. What was that about? Eh? Was there a plot, who were the characters, what was the bit at the end about? It was as watchable as '2001 A Space Odyssey'. Poser-tat, all of it.

The greatest movie of all time? Probably Star Wars. With the plot of a John Wayne movie, the special effects of early Star Trek, and the backing of no arty brown-nosers, this movie hit the world like a bombshell and remains, to all ages, a thirty-year-old wonder (I am almost said 'wunderkind'; this pontifical stuff is catching!)

So, No.1, games are not narrative because those who would impose this label upon games wish to steal them from us and store them in their little boxes in their little arty rooms, and, NO, you can't look in the box unless you can say the magic words: narrative, juxtaposition, vis-a-vis, etc. These people are theives of the people's property and should, IMHO, be first up against the wall come the revolution!

So, having stripped the narrative-bods naked, whipped them soundly, and sent them home to bed, what was the second reason, John?

The second reason that games aren't narrative is that GAMES ARE NOT NARRATIVE. There may be, on occasion some storyline in a game, there may even be a long storyline in a big game, but the storyline is not the game. I don't play a game to enjoy the story. I play the game to enjoy playing the game. Its about the gameplay, not the story.

Take Starfox on the SNES. Wow! In my view - YMMV, I concede - the greatest game of all time. There is the 'a long time ago in a galaxy far away' part of the storyline, but that isn't what makes the game GREAT. Its the characters working together in realistic AI ways, the squeekes and bleeps they make, the angry ones when you fire at your buddies, the flying round skyscrapers, the feeling of achievement at each level, the stirring music (better than any of the sh*t* you can hear on BBC Radio 3 of an afternoon or Radio 1 anytime since around 1978).

Its a great game because I enjoy the sounds, images, progress, challenges and activies. To not see the game as a great game is to deliberately, by pre-imposed conclusions, miss the point. You can't think of Starfox as a story about you and your friends conquering the planets through adversity. At the end you enjoy the whizzes, explosions, the feeling of being there. What our virtual friends call, 'presence'. You get this when you are on a phone; you are not here you are 'elsewhere'. Yes, you get this when you read a good book, or listen to good music. But the music isn't narrative, it's notes.

Ah - I hear the arty ones say - you didn't say 'books' there did you. Got you, John. Books are narrative aren't they? Ha! Yes, but only if you reduce your mindset and library to novels. I have lots of great books that I read and use that aren't narrative. I have a great atlas of Glasgow that is used every week. Its a book. It doesn't tell any story. I impose my story upon it (to put that arty spin on it. See, I can do this too.) And I have dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc.

Even history books aren't real narrative. They are a taking of historic events and imposing a sensible storyline upon the past. History isn't narrative, we impose our narrative upon it. Academically, this is what is called 'sensemaking'. History isn't a novel. We make it into one for our own meanings.

Back to games. Games aren't narrative because those who would make the field so as posers wishing to put their own narrow intellectualism upon our field, hence robbing us of the real 'fun' of games. The good news is that they can pose on about movies and novels, but, take heart, outside late night BBC4 nobody's listening. And games aren't narrative because they are about that wonderful human emotion: fun. So is great music - from Beethoven's 5th Symphony to What's That Coming Over The Hill Is It A Monster, Is It A Monstaaaaah - and great movies - from Blazing Saddles to Ben Hur.

Its all about fun. But, what is fun? That's for a later blog.