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Starting
with the debate between ludologists and
narratologists this essay tries to show that there
is a narrative aspect in computer games which has
nothing to do with background stories and cut
scenes. A closer analysis of two sequences, taken
from the MMORPG Everquest II and the
adventure game Black Mirror, is the basis
for a distinction between three aspects of this
kind of narrative in computer games: the sequence
of activities of the player, the sequence of events
as it is determined by the mechanics of the game
and this sequence of events understood as a plot,
that is as a sequence of chronologically ordered
and causally linked events. This kind of narrative
is quite distant to the prototypical narrative
which is the basis of most of the narratology. But
actually all media, not only computer games, need
their own narratology.
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