Hello everyone and welcome to a series of blog posts covering my progress with my Final Year Project (FYP) at University.
For my FYP I am covering the question "Does Narrative Help or Hinder the Video game?".
Now the question itself cannot be answered as a straight forward yes or no, it is more of a discovery as to where to see the majority of gamers lie.
In this project I will be looking into the opinions of professionals, in-industry developers, renowned gamers and the average day gamer. After receiving the opinions from these audiences, I will be able to sum up roughly where the majority of the gaming community lie on the matter of Narrative.
Some of the bigger names I aim to get responses/information from are:
Espen J Aarseth
Espen is known as a ludologist within gaming and is a true believer in mechanics over story. It's not that he does not like story entirely, far from it, his debate on the matter of Narrative helping or Hindering games is down to how the games narrative structure is built. In one of Aarseth's recorded lectures he goes on as to how Half Life 2 has a better narrative structure than that of World of Warcraft due to it's simple linear, mechanic driven structure rather than an open world, multi-bridged structure.
In my opinion, I believe Aarseth is missing out on the bigger picture of Narrative by staying with this idea. Many games that have a strong narrative are RPG's or MMORPG's where the reoccurring problem in game narrative keeps coming from the linear stories of most FPS's. After talking to a few gamers about their opinions on what makes a better Narrative, most of them came out saying that RPG's have a stronger narrative due to the choices they give to the player. These include dialogue options, side quests, open world scenarios and the choice to do what you want. They also came out saying how recently with FPS's how some games in the genre have pasted on narrative due to their concentration being set on non-story driven multi-player.
There are more things about Aarseth I do wish to go into however this is a little look into what Espen truly believes when it comes to the world of Narrative in games.
Obsidian Games
Obsidian have a great history of creating well thought out, story driven quest lines. Most of their work spans from one of my personal favourite series of games, Fallout. The post apocalyptic world, based off of the novel 'The Road', is a great and immersive environment that has spanned many games over it's time. The most recent addition, Fallout: New Vegas, was seen as an unsuccessful sequel to the very well anticipated Fallout 3. However in my eyes, although there were problems within the game, the narrative held up and proved to be one of the strongest aspects of the game.
I would like to get a hold of Obsidian in some way so that I can ask of them what they thought of Narrative within New Vegas as well as the other games in the industry today. Obsidian stands to me as a great company when it comes to building narrative in games, so hearing from them would be both a great pleasure and a great insight.
Blizzard Entertainment
Now when it comes to building Narrative there is one company that stands out, Blizzard. The guys behind the great Warcraft RTS games and the world renowned World of Warcraft MMO that has shown much success over the years. The company knows what it takes to create both an immersive world and an in-depth narrative, even when it comes to Transmedia storytelling.
The trick that Blizzard has up it's sleeve when it comes to narrative in WoW is that it has made use of multiple forms of story telling. For those that wish to get more in depth with the lore of the world they have a choice to look into the RTS games that explain the lead up to WoW & the expansions and there is also an array of books spanning around the world to go in depth into stories or into the races themselves such as the Pandarens in the newest expansion 'Mists of Panderia'.
By getting a hold of Blizzard I would be able to receive some great insight into the world of Narrative within games and be able to see whether the company believes that Narrative in game helps or hinders the final product.
Those are a few names that I look into getting in touch with in the near future when writing up my dissertation. I plan to get a hold of as many people and companies as possible from many different forms of contact so that I can get a firm idea on where the people stand on the question I'm trying to answer.
I hope you've enjoyed reading this instalment of my FYP progress, be sure to keep an eye on the blog as I will be updating it with how the project is going in the near future.
Until then, this is That Guy With The Trilby.....Signing Off.
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