One of the things that I was thinking about was the beginning cutscene for CoD4. At the end, when the president got shot, I was like, "Awww...." Chris mentioned that other people who have played have had the same reaction. That got me thinking...
I think most people who have that reaction are being disappointed because the game essentially makes them feel like they failed. As gamers, we expect a certain amount of control within the game, and success is usually determined when you "continue to live". COD4 takes that control away from the player abruptly...even at the very end, I think most people think that some special agent team will come out and save the president. Or perhaps that the next mission will involve you attempting to save the president. Instead, the president gets killed and the bad guys win....this time.
For those who haven't experienced the cutscene, let me add one important note. The game has you control the president on the way to his execution. Granted, this control is limited to just looking around, but the gamer instantly starts to identify with the president. This kind of intro is not too uncommon (see Half-Life for the first famous instance of this), but after spending a few minutes identify with this character, it is striking to feel what happens when all that "work" of identifying is forced to be thrown away by the game.
A lot of people talk about how good stories are an important part of a game, but notice how the above trick with CoD4 was not made memorable by having an exceptional story (president gets tossed into back of car, gets dragged out, gets executed), but by having an exceptional narrative. It plays on gamers' expectations of how games play.
This seems to be one of the big reasons why BioShock has garnered so many awards. BioShock similarly plays on gamers' expectations with "would you kindly." In fact, the plot turns on this concept. If you pause to reflect upon the game at all, it begs the question -- how much control do we believe we have when we are immersed in the game? This control is usually wildly out of proportion to the amount of control the game actually gives us. The difference can come as a shock, as CoD4 and BioShock show (unless you artificially push at boundaries like trying to go off the edge of the map...)
Similarly, how much control to we believe we have in real life? I think humans have adapted to believing that they do have control over a great many things. I think if we realized how many things we have no control over, then we would be overwhelmed. So we believe and try to exert control over things to make things happen, to make things go our way (see sacrificing to the god of rain). Hence why it is so hard for us to relinquish control and instead trust.
Back to gaming. For neat tricks in story and narrative, nothing beats the underground gaming community of text games. By its very nature, text (adventure) games must rely on story and narrative to be compelling. (Of course, there are other issues that text games must deal with, like puzzle accessibility) Hence, in this area, story and narrative experimentation run rampant.
Take 9:05, by Adam Cadre. Here's how it begins:
The phone rings.
Oh, no -- how long have you been asleep? Sure, it was a tough night, but-- This is bad. This is very bad.
The phone rings.
It is a very short game, but the game obviously plays on the conventions of text gaming (and gaming in general). When we play character-driven games, the first thing gamers do is to identify with the character they are controlling. We look around. We try things. We see what "we" the character, is capable of doing. We look for clues as to what our identity is, what we should be doing.
After the above intro in 9:05, the starting room is as follows:
Bedroom (on the bed)9:05 gives you everything you need to identify with the character, figure out who he is, and clues as to what you should do next. Upon answering the phone, the person calling yells at you to get down to work now or the boss will fire you. So what do you do? You go down to work, right? Everything's there to get you started -- everything makes sense. Your driver's license tells you who you are. The ID card tells you how to get to work. You take a shower, change into some clean clothes. You take the keys to drive to work. You get off the highway onto the right exit. You go into work using the ID card.
This bedroom is extremely spare, with dirty laundry scattered haphazardly all over the floor. Cleaner clothing is to be found in the dresser. A bathroom lies to the south, while a door to the east leads to the living room.
On the endtable are a telephone, a wallet (which is closed) and some keys.
The phone rings.
>
And you promptly get arrested.
Why? Turns out, you were a robber who was burglarizing the house you woke up in. Nowhere does it ever say that you actually live in the house. Nowhere does it say that you are the man the caller assumes you are, or that you are the same person as the one on the driver's license. It is just assumed by the gamer as part of figuring out the situation. The game takes advantage or our willingness to put ourselves into this situation.
As an aside, the neat thing about the game is that it's consistent. If you happen to look under the bed, you find the body of the person you're robbing. As you walk through the living room, it casually mentions that the place is bare -- no TV, no VCR...the clues are scattered about, but in general, you are so worried about getting to "work" that you just ignore the clues. And oh yes, you can choose not to get off the right exit and instead escape down the highway...
9:05 is a really, really short game that's purpose is to illustrate what traps we fall into when starting to play games. But there are other, more substantial games that really push the boundaries of narrative structure.
Probably one of the greatest examples of this is Spider and Web, by Andrew Plotkin. You start off as a tourist in a dead-end alley, with a closed door and no obvious means of opening it. Faced with this obvious puzzle, the player will attempt to open the door (push it, examine it, look for a button, look for a crowbar, etc...), but will eventually give up and exit the alley to see what else is in the world (maybe you find a crowbar somewhere else?).
At this point, there is a bright flash of white light, and you find yourself strapped in a chair being interrogated. The interrogator knows that you're not a tourist, and he knows that you didn't just leave after getting frustrated by the door. So this is the essential structure of the game: You are a spy in some sort of Cold War and have been caught and are recounting your actions. But you recount them not verbally, but play them out in your memory and they are picked out by a mind probe.
So you replay the memory again. This time, after again trying unsuccessfully to open the door, the interrogator stops the scene, and tells you that he's not stupid, he knows you had your "little electronic gadgets." So you replay the memory again, this time with a bag of gadgets.
The game continues in the vein for a while. If you do something wrong, the interrogator has you start the scene over again, saying "no, no, no, that's not what happened." The descriptions are very well put together -- the first time through, the city is a beautiful tourist location. The second time, you apparently can't resist by calling the city "crusted with squat brick and faceless concrete hulks," apparently as a jab on the interrogator's society. Subsequent playthroughs drop the description of the city altogether, essentially subtly acknowledging that the interrogator doesn't want to hear of such drivel.
The game continues with you repeating scenes over and over again until you get it "right" to the interrogator's satisfaction, but makes a sharp left turn about half-way through. All of a sudden, it becomes apparent to you, the player, that you are not helpless in the face of your interrogator and mind probe. That, in fact, what you've been doing all along is to reconstruct a plausible but false history of your actions. At some point, you escape, and now the point of the game is to not only survive, but to figure out the true set of events that occurred because the omitted/obscured parts of your "story" hides the key elements needed to finish your mission.
Even at the end of the game, you are given a choice to succeed in your mission, thereby "winning" the game, but the game hints that such a decision would result in an escalation of the conflict. Or you can choose to violate your orders instead.
The whole story is so masterfully put together and provides much food for thought. If we could only get more games like this that are fun and enjoyable and yet provide striking food for thought into the mainstream, then I think it would be much less difficult for video games to be regarded as an art form...
