Ludology vs. Narratology in Digital Game Studies

Introduction: The State of Digital Game Research

Writing about digital games is quite open territory, as no adequate research has been carried out yet and nearly anything goes. Writing about gaming and games more generally shares this quality. Sadly, and with startling cumulative consequences, games remain under-theorized. Although there is work by authors such as Ehrmann, Huizinga, and Caillois — alongside game theory, philosophical contributions such as those of Wittgenstein, and libraries teeming with research on board games — one cannot get far into the field of computer games using only these resources. Furthermore, if a proper computer game research field exists or will exist, it risks colonization and intrusion from existing scholarly tribes (Eskelinen 2001). Computer games must be secured against the colonizing effect of textual and narrative analysis.

In the case of semiotics, the idea of "text" generalizes to everything in material existence; however, semiotic analysis cannot fully capture the essence of computer games. Within orthodox scholarly circles, games are viewed as a phenomenon of a "lower" level of culture. A few academics do attempt to "rescue" games by connecting them with narratives and other high-culture phenomena. This low/high polarity — a form of academic snobbery — produces no interesting methodology or theory, and risks missing what is truly novel about games (Michael 2011).

The association of stories with games is a controversial issue among gamers, game designers, and academics alike. At a recently conducted Games Studies conference, a feud nearly erupted between self-styled ludologists, who intended to shift focus to game-playing mechanics, and narratologists, who aimed to study games alongside other storytelling modes. The creativity model often linked to digital media is not one of distinctiveness and novelty, but of diversity and recombination. This model is bound to the almost supernatural ability of computers to duplicate and merge texts, sounds, images, and other items from a limitless range of sources. Digital media and post-structuralist theory, in diverse though interrelated ways, demonstrate that creating and studying something new without drawing on processes and forms already found around us is effectively impossible. From this viewpoint, no discipline, genre, or work is fully independent: they are all specific yet fluid combinations of other elements, which are themselves non-unique and varied (Jenkins 2004).

Games possess conventions and representational aspects; a large portion of the narrative versus game conflict revolves around whether one must regard conventions or representations as fundamental (Michael 2011). This paper addresses ludology and how it differs from narratology.

Key Terms: Narratology and Ludology Defined

Narratology

The term "narratology" was coined to unify the works of scholars from diverse disciplines with respect to narrative. Research on play and games faces a similar condition: topics are studied broadly across disciplines such as anthropology, economics, sociology, and psychology. These studies, however, are normally independent and revolve around narrow characteristics, without seeking larger patterns of comprehension (Frasca 1999).

Ludology

Espen Aarseth, an advocate for the emergence of a modern field of research focused specifically on studying games and gameplay, coined the term "ludology" rather than framing game ideas through the lens of established disciplines and other media (Jenkins 2004). Ludology — derived from the Latin ludus, meaning "game" but also "school" — was proposed to denote a new field of research on activities pertaining to games and play. Like narratology, ludology was conceived as an independent discipline, free of the media that support the activity (Frasca 1999). The term ludi also appears in the Nobel Prize-winning novel The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, whose lead character is the Magister Ludi — a figure in a philosophical narrative that continually refers to a special "game" encompassing all knowledge, played by an intellectual elite.

Ludology refers to a specific analysis of games in which emphasis is placed on formal elements such as attributes, entities, and rule systems. "Games studies" is the generic term used to denote the humanistic approach to studying games. By contrast, ludology is typically reserved for formalists and most frequently functions as an anti-narratology position — giving rise to the narratology versus ludology debate (Michael 2011).

Differences Between Ludology and Narratology

Most naive comparisons between games and game narratives arise from definitions of narrative that are too limited, too weak, or too broad. These comparisons usually reduce to the discovery of "characters" and "plots" in both modes. We must recognize, however, that this is insufficient, as those properties and events can also be found in drama, which is clearly a mode of its own. The minimal definition that Gérard Genette and Gerald Prince gave for "narrative" essentially requires two components: (1) a time-based succession of events, or plot; and (2) a narrative setting, such as narrators and characters or "narratees" (Eskelinen 2001).

Not every game tells a story. Games can take expressive, experiential, and abstract forms, making them more akin to modern dance or music than to cinema. While some ballets, such as The Nutcracker, tell stories, storytelling is not a defining or intrinsic characteristic of dance. In the same way, several games — for example, Blix, Snood, and Tetris — are purely graphic games that not only do not lend themselves to narrative illustration but have no need for any narrative intervention. Understanding such games requires concepts and terms beyond narrative, including expressive motion and interface design. The last thing game culture needs is to constrain inventive experimentation, which must occur freely in the early years of a medium's development (Jenkins 2004).

A plot, story, or backstory does not itself constitute narration. Enacting a succession of events gives rise to performance or drama; recounting a succession of events gives rise to narrative; producing or playing out a succession of events under specific circumstances while adhering to formal rules gives rise to a game. While this distinction is simple, it is also vital: in games like Tetris, event sequences do not form stories. A straightforward reason explains this — in games, the central temporal relationship is one between event time and user time, not a narrative one between discourse time and story time (Eskelinen 2001).

In what appears to be a misconception arising from identifying similar situations or characters across games, narratives, and drama, the situation becomes more nuanced on closer inspection. In computer games, a character can be operated, moved, and caused to act; interactions can take place with other voices or characters; and characters themselves can evolve dynamically through power-ups and level upgrades. These entities do not behave like traditional characters, actors, narrators, or directors — their supposed literary, cinematic, and theatrical counterparts (Eskelinen 2001). Interactivity can almost be regarded as the opposite of narrative: while the former relies on player input for its motive power, the latter flows under an author's direction (Adams 1999).

Several games do possess narrative objectives. At minimum, they aim to tap the emotional residue of prior narrative experiences, and often depend on players' familiarity with the goals and roles of entertainment to orient them to game action. In many instances, game designers aspire to develop a sequence of narrative events for players. Given these narrative objectives, it may be reasonable to argue that some understanding of the relationship between narrative and games is essential before fully grasping game design aesthetics or the nature of modern game culture (Jenkins 2004).

Narrative analysis need not be rigid, despite some narratologists — with Janet Murray being the most commonly cited example — seemingly promoting specific narrative forms for games. Jenkins rightly argues that game designers should endeavor to develop the processes and forms available to draw from, rather than reducing them. He also rightly notes that some ludologists themselves can be shown to be too hasty in reducing narrative to exaggeratedly simplistic models, such as strictly linear systems. Most significantly, his study of spatially oriented narrative forms offers challenging approaches to modern game design. At the same time, Jenkins's stated aim of offering a middle-ground compromise between narratologists and ludologists leans more toward the former camp (Jenkins 2004).

Conclusion

As shown throughout this paper, ludology does not deal with discourse and story at all. Ludology, rather, concerns events and actions, the correlations of which are not entirely fixed (Eskelinen 2001).

The new and old elements of games, their dynamic blending and distribution, the essential manipulation of causal, operational, spatial, and temporal properties and relations, and the registers and targets, as well as the rules and absence of passive viewers, should be enough to distinguish games and gaming from drama and narrative — and to permanently settle the debate about games as narratives, cinema, or stories. In this context, stories merely take the shape of superficial wrappings or ornaments; focusing on such marketing tools represents a waste of energy, resources, and time. It is therefore no surprise that gaming mechanisms suffer from sluggish stages of development, having been so consistently and deliberately confused with dramatic, cinematic, or narrative mechanisms (Eskelinen 2001).

Finally, one may raise the argument that digital games, theatre/drama, and literature are all equally dissimilar from non-computer or conventional games, where something is always genuinely at stake — death, the loss of a loved one, or other irrevocable outcomes. This refers to classic games such as Russian roulette, Mesoamerican ball courts, certain events and actions in ancient Roman arenas, and the extreme outcomes arising from serious gambling. If computer games share these roots, one is led to contemplate potential hybrids of computer and non-computer games that may emerge through future advances in technology, including smartphones, Bluetooth, and related platforms. Thinking in these terms means genuine contemplation of such possibilities, without the moral alarm that has previously attended discussions of the societal impact of comic books, movies, videos, rock, jazz, rap, and other popular culture forms (Eskelinen 2001).