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.)

"When the last round of the Roger Ebert vs. Video Games grudge match was flaring up, I wondered aloud (in a IM to N'Gai, I think) if what bothered Ebert was the way that games attempted to place players in something akin to an authorial space? Videogames are an interactive medium, after all, and moreso than in other entertainment forms, what you wind up getting isn't just what the content creators intended but what you put into it as well. The end result emerges as a gestalt experience that changes with each different user."

So, while it can be argued that Portal doesn't have a story or I can have issues with the story Assassin's Creed does present, I think there's a kind of narrative created by playing these games. The way I split the difference on Croal's "fundamentally non-narrative" thesis is to think about whether a title seems designed to deliver an experience or a narrative as its primary function. There's been lots of buzz online lately about how necessary writers are to game design. Thing is, the two aren't mutually exclusive and I think that mapping particular games to an experience/narrative axis could be helpful for understanding specific titles and videogames as a whole. I started thinking this way after meeting comics writing genius Grant Morrison at this year's New York Comic Con. During a brief conversation, the Scottish-born writer said, "I keep on waiting on videogames to get punk rock, y'know? Where some guy at home can create a crazy world for me to visit." Punk rock wasn't about delivering a narrative through song lyrics, rather it aimed to communicate through its visceral experience. Again, that's not a hard-and-fast rule where experience and narrative are mutually exclusive.

To me, Rez and Every Extend Extra, newer offerings like Everyday Shooter and echochrome, and indie games like The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and Crayon Physics Deluxe either minimize plot elements or do away with them altogether, but the experience of besting the brain-teasing aspects of all those games still leaves you with a story to tell. When you consider the stand-up arcade games of yore like Dig Dug, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, the whys and wherefores of controlling a character barely registered. Of course, as games evolved, the opportunities to tell bigger stories grew and the traits of other media seeped in.

Croal's jumped into the fray of the "writing for games" discussion with an analysis detailing what he calls the Three E's. I think we can add a fourth E-type called Encompassing Narrative to Croal's list. It's the province of the player in an ecosystem created by player and game, allowing for varying percentages of experience and types of narrative in the game itself. Within the Encompassing Narrative, those narrative types all serve as a platform for individuated experiences to jump off, with the experience creating singularly specific story bursts.

I can use the aforementioned Hangman's NOOSE session as an example: Our four-man squad was having our butts handed to us by Liberty City's tactical squad time after time. Totally on his own, one of our team got the bright idea to drive around the airport and found a helicopter for the taking. After holding off NOOSE and getting mob boss Kenny Petrovic to the chopper, we were exultant and home free. Or so we thought. Our pilot accidentally hit the Y button and plummeted to the river below. With our copter in freefall, I hit the Y button, foolishly thinking I could jump into the pilot's seat. Instead, I followed after our fellow gunsel, as if we had some bizarre suicide love pact. We'd managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and the feeling of empowered control suddenly vanished. You may have a story totally similar to this or your co-op playtime may differ wildly, but you're creating a narrative just by playing.

Recently, Stephen Totilo of MTV's Multiplayer blog wondered, "Are Our Games Our Fantasies?" It reminded me of the first installment of Thought/Process, where I wrote about superplayers:

Superplayers will be gamers who can see how a game creates its own context, supports that context, and fits into a larger continuum of creativity.

The awesome potential of Encompassing Narrative means that you or I as individual players could be part of that continuum, too, just by picking up a controller and thinking about the way you're playing. Honestly, I can't dream up anything better than that.