Difficulties of defining video games as narratives

In Egenfeld-Nielsen’s chapter “Narrative” taken from his book Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction, the author focuses on video games and narrative as well as discusses their differences. Maybe, the most obvious difference between traditional narrative and video games is that video games are far more interactive than books or movies. In a book or a movie, the reader/audience has to watch whereas in a video game the player has to act – otherwise nothing will happen (170). The player, or the protagonist, takes an active part of the “story”. Nevertheless, he/she is still following a settled structure or plot. The people who had written this game created a story with a particular plot. For being successful in this game the player has no other chance than to experience this story. In my opinion, this makes a video game similar to a book or a movie.

As mentioned in the chapter a number of video games “try to make as many objects ‘alive’ as possible” (175) in order to make a game more interactive and diverse . Further, producers came up with another model of narration where the gamer goes from chapter to chapter, making individual decisions leading to individual endings (182). Doubtlessly, all these “specialties” makes video games extremely interactive and give the gamer the feeling of “writing” his/her own story. Nevertheless, a video game is still a narrative because it is based on a particular story, different chapters, a protagonist and end (even if there are several possible endings available). If a gamer does not act, nothing will happen. But if I do not continue reading a book, the story will also stop. In my opinion, books, films and video games are all based on narrative and follow its structure because without narration there is no story and that is what books, films and games are based on.

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon. “Narrative”. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. New York: Routledge. 2008, 169-195. Print.