Coherent Stories

Our lecture on coherent stories talks about how stories are compelling. In other words, what methods are used to get people interested, and keep them engaged for the duration and continuation of a story. 'Pulp fiction' stories are used as an example, such as weekly comics in newspapers. These have compelling characters and narratives, and always end on a cliff-hanger so the reader is waiting in anticipation for the next episode.

Also within the lecture, was the idea of story worlds transcending their original genres whilst still maintaining their coherence and continuing to be successful. This is obvious in many of the distinctive Marvel Comic characters, such as Spiderman, who first appeared in comics, then cartoons, movies, games, and even in theme park attractions.





We looked into how narrative was introduced to games as well. Early games, like Asteroids, didn't have storytelling, but still had a narrative. In Asteroids, you played as a space pilot defending him/her self from an onslaught of asteroids and aliens.

Another area of interest was Role-Playing, and how particularly from the 70s onwards, miniatures based role playing and strategy games became extremely popular. This created an idea that people could become designers and writers of their own games as they play them. This idea involved 'being' the character, rather than simply deciding what they do. This led to the creation of the immersive first person genre within video games, as players look through the eyes of their character, furthering the sense of 'being' them.

Stories within games also have the option to be non-linear, giving people choices over the story's outcome. this began in early text based games, like Zork. The player was in control of the text based commands imputed. This was entirely story based though, as the gameplay was immensely simple, and not necessarily very fun. This led to differences in opinions between those who believe story is more important within a game, and those who believe fluid gameplay is more important (narratologists and ludologists). I personally believe the balance should be exactly 50:50, as I find many games with great stories often lose their incredible potential through clunky game mechanics (such as the new Alone In The Dark), and some outstanding multiplayer games miss a trick by lacking in a compelling storyline (the Battlefield games, for example).

Game worlds can be used to 'escape' everyday life, and are usually trying to achieve this. This is why most game narratives have the setting of medieval fantasy, futuristic sci-fi and/or war, with the odd exception of modern day. These settings take the characters away from the rules and laws of normal life, allowing for them to act in a way that is interesting and believable. Many successful franchises use elements from a variety of these genres. Star Wars was used as an example in the lecture, as it is an epic sci-fi fantasy, but also "a Western, it was a Dawn Patrol movie, it was a cliffhanger, it was the Wizard of Oz & it had comic book influences". This is what gave it it's ability to become a franchise, as it had elements to entertain all audiences whilst escaping from the moral difficulties of the real world.