The study of the medium of video games are shaped by two ideas NARRATOLOGY AND LUDOLOGY. Narratology according to Wiki: is the study of narrative and narrative structure and, the ways that these affect perception. Basically from my understanding narratology is
viewing the video game as a story the same way we see novels and movies. Ludology definition according to Wiki: is the study of games and, gaming. Ludologist says video games aren’t like other mediums because there’s a player/users actively controlling the experience.
Personally I believe that video games share similar characteristics as books and movies but it’s still a game and, should be studied as a game. Jeesper Juul argues that they shouldn’t even be mentioned together because they are totally different. Juul case claims that narrative events have to follow each other to form a certain order while in a video game the player determines the outcome because there in control.
Pretty much hit it on the nose. Juul is a hardcore ludologist but its funny that in some of the recent readings like in “The Art of Failure” where he at points suggests that the story has to do with failure so the question I have at that is if we are processing the failure of not saving the princess as our failure then we are directly relating the procedures that we failed to perform correctly to the story. I definitley think these ideologies were great for getting the conversations started but there should be a third school in which they marry each other and take ideas from both. Ill again use the Art of Failure as an example. If games are nothing except procedures, then the tragic endings in video games such as when a protagonist dies, would have no effect on us. However people who know the endings of games will specifically not complete a game because of that, they dont wish to follow the procedures so they dont have to experience the arc that goes along with them.
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