Thought/Process: Building Better Wor(l)ds

How does story happen in videogames, if at all?
5/9/2008 12:52 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

So far, playing Grand Theft Auto IV reminds me of a lucid dream. In this particular kind of sleep state, the subject knows he's in a dream and can use that knowledge to influence his own abilities, the way he interacts with characters, as well as the look and feel of the dream world. I used to have lucid dreams a lot when I was a kid. I can still remember the vividness of the sequences where I pedaled my BMX bike out the window of my shared Long Island bedroom, sending it rocketing over earthbound traffic, or the times I flew back to my old Brooklyn neighborhood. While I dreamt lucidly, events would pop up that I hadn't planted. In the bike dream, despite the fact that I had "control," the asphalt of the streets below cracked open underneath me, revealing a murky underworld that I just had to investigate. I was reminded of that feeling of shock during a Hangman's NOOSE co-op multiplayer mission in GTA IV I played with some friends.

The multiplayer options in GTA IV deliver the same kind of thrills in that I can affect the game world significantly, screwing with the flow of traffic, people's groceries and generally creating escalating levels of chaos. Yet, I'm still moving through a landscape I didn't create, populated with surprises that I can't anticipate, just like my lucid dreams.

Real-world responsibilities keep me from doing much multiplayer in general, but I think GTA IV's options stand out from the norm by taking place in the same chaotic, randomized Liberty City of the single-player mode.

Over at Level Up, Newsweek's N'Gai Croal uses GTA IV to call for new approaches to writing about gameplay. He's also been nurturing a thesis that the medium of games is "fundamentally non-narrative" at its core. It's a supposition that I flit back and forth on. On one hand, lots of games try to tell stories as a matter of course but they often lack cohesion or flow. On the other hand, the games that I find most memorable are ones where my playing them creates a story, one that's separate from the plot through which I might be advancing an avatar. I touched on this in a guest post I wrote for Level Up, where I talked about playing through single-player games with a friend and how that dynamic changed the way I/we reacted:

"I started noticing that my experience of Portal differed from other titles I'd played recently. By my lonesome, I might've chalked up my occasional frustrations to poor design, frazzled reflexes or my own cognitive bottlenecks. Playing co-operatively with B allowed me to take some of the pressure off of myself and let the game seep in. The way I heard GLaDOS's snippy commentary changed completely. Were I playing Portal solo, I would've asked myself if I'd heard her snark correctly, shrugged and gone back to solving the puzzle of whatever room I was in. With B by my side, whoever was playing would pause, we'd look at each other and break out into guffaws when GLaDOS's dry condescension or blatant panic made itself known. By the time the camera careens through the underbelly of Aperture Science and the first gentle strains of "Still Alive" start up, we both were dizzy from flinging Chell through Room 17 and aching from laughing through GlaDOS's final rant. (For my part, I started to well up a little bit, too.)