Blog Exercise 9
No, I think Eskelinen made too quick a dismissal of Jenkins’ approach.
In the first place, Jenkins made it rather clear that “not all games tell stories”, although “many games do have narrative aspirations”. He then supplicates that “the experience of playing games can never be simply reduced to the experience of a story”. So basically within the set of all games, there exists a subset of those which tell a story. Jenkins’ point is valid- in fact in my humble opinion, it’s really up to the players’ mind to to ‘find stories everywhere”. Even my sister can derive a story (albeit a simple one) from a game such as Pac Man Trail (a cruel story of a dog-eat-dog world, aka survival of the most hungry) or Hearts, the game which comes with your Microsoft Installation on your newly- bought computer (a story of how 4 kiasu card dealers eagerly shake off as many cards bearing the highest scores as possible). It’s then a question of whether the narrative is a good one- or not.
Further, Jenkins’ approach toward game design as a narrative architecture is not an unwise one. The human mind often finds stories almost everywhere, and that applies to games. After much discussion, an aspect of cognitive psychology suggests that most (English-educated, that is) finds the “ABCD..” song a preliminary must to tell what follows after e.g. the letter “q”. Similarly, in a world where we are told stories from young (think folktales, nursery rhymes, bedtime stories etc), the mind is pre-conditioned to find narratives or think along narrative lines. Moreover, every picture tells a story- even a screenshot from a game like Space Invaders tells one of a battle between alien crafts & a sole survivor. Hence, in the study of games, Jenkins’ approach is a valid one. At least, tell a good story if you want to in a game. This is what he cautioned. Thus, I don’t share Eskelinen’s put-down of Jenkins’ ideas as purely pannarrativism.
In conclusion, I side more with Jenkins on the basis that the study of games does not negate the study of narratives. In fact, they complement each other.
In the first place, Jenkins made it rather clear that “not all games tell stories”, although “many games do have narrative aspirations”. He then supplicates that “the experience of playing games can never be simply reduced to the experience of a story”. So basically within the set of all games, there exists a subset of those which tell a story. Jenkins’ point is valid- in fact in my humble opinion, it’s really up to the players’ mind to to ‘find stories everywhere”. Even my sister can derive a story (albeit a simple one) from a game such as Pac Man Trail (a cruel story of a dog-eat-dog world, aka survival of the most hungry) or Hearts, the game which comes with your Microsoft Installation on your newly- bought computer (a story of how 4 kiasu card dealers eagerly shake off as many cards bearing the highest scores as possible). It’s then a question of whether the narrative is a good one- or not.
Further, Jenkins’ approach toward game design as a narrative architecture is not an unwise one. The human mind often finds stories almost everywhere, and that applies to games. After much discussion, an aspect of cognitive psychology suggests that most (English-educated, that is) finds the “ABCD..” song a preliminary must to tell what follows after e.g. the letter “q”. Similarly, in a world where we are told stories from young (think folktales, nursery rhymes, bedtime stories etc), the mind is pre-conditioned to find narratives or think along narrative lines. Moreover, every picture tells a story- even a screenshot from a game like Space Invaders tells one of a battle between alien crafts & a sole survivor. Hence, in the study of games, Jenkins’ approach is a valid one. At least, tell a good story if you want to in a game. This is what he cautioned. Thus, I don’t share Eskelinen’s put-down of Jenkins’ ideas as purely pannarrativism.
In conclusion, I side more with Jenkins on the basis that the study of games does not negate the study of narratives. In fact, they complement each other.
posted by cpf at 6:43 AM
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