Game Design as Narrative Architecture

It is interesting for me that Eskelinen strongly denies Jenkin’s opinion about the relation between computer games and storytelling. I’m curious if he will define the ‘Create-your-adventure’ books as a story or not.

Although I agree that there are no stories in Pack-man or Tetris, I think there is a story in certain games such as RPGs or interactive fictions.


In a ‘normal’ story, the movements of the character, the storyline, and all the other story elements are pre-determined by the author. But in games, the users create the story while they are playing with it. I think this is the reason why games are difficult to be determined as a story. Because the narrative in the games are fleeting and changing constantly, many people will not recognize it as a story.
However, although probably Eskelinen will not agree, the process of playing the game means creating the story.
The player can use their own interpretation and make up their own narrative. But at the same time, in order to prevent the players from making the game into a too much non-linear (off the line) one, the game designer restricts the player by using the term ‘I don’t recognize the word’, make the player go through certain challenges, or something similar to that. By limiting some parts, some player may feel the constraints, but can still find his/her own way out to make a new narrative. Imagine if we took out all the game like elements from the games. I think there would be a story left there.

One of my friend once wrote a review in his blog about a game he played. I have never done the game before, but according to his explanation, it seems to be a game where the player explores in Chopin’s dream.
He said that the story of the game was way too bad, and because of the story, the quality of the game went down despite the beautiful images.
In his blog, he wrote that

I think that the other parts of the game were in high quality except the scenario. This fact is really mottainai! (wasteful)
…I didn’t even feel like watching the ending. I was too shocked and didn’t feel anything about the story.

From his review, we can actually see that players expect to seek a story inside the game – especially in RPGs. And in his opinion, it can even affect the quality of the game.

Although Eskelinen dismisses the fact that games are not like stories, I think there is actually a story in anything. I remember my senior student in Japan writing in his blog (sorry, again!) about his experience in Alaska. There, he stayed in a local house with a young married couple. In Alaska, because of the lack of resources, furniture, food, and many other things used in daily life are made by themselves. And he realized that because almost everything is handmade, he felt that there is a story in each product. The story is about the process making each goods.
It’s not like furniture, but playing games are also like the process of making furniture or food, in a sense. They don’t use any tools, only the users mind and hands, but still, we are making a story.


But can computer games really tell a story in a way that parents tell stories to their children?

When I was small, my parents used to read me books and sometimes tell their original stories. It was fun for me to imagine all the things and make the characters in my mind when they told me their own story. Although I think that computer games have a narrative, I wonder if they can tell stories in this way. If parents started to play a computer game before bed, that would give a complete different meaning to storytelling!