The Phantom Narrative.

Well, I admit the blog layout is fairly sparse, but after spending a gratuitous amount of time preparing my website for a series of school projects and et cetera, I just didn't have the "oomph" to push my limited graphical design skills any further. Perhaps in the near future, but not just now.

Once my time is less absorbed by school, I'll be reviewing and discussing matters of game theory on this blog (which is a more vast and interdisciplinary field than most realize, I think). So stay tuned! Otherwise...

This blog's (and my website's) title is a comment on Dr. Janet H. Murray's discussion "The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies" at the 2005 DiGRA conference in Vancouver, and the general response it motivated. How any scholar can claim to have the "last word" outside of reasons of masochism, I'm curious, particularly when said word is highly polarized. So while I obviously agree that video games are certainly worthy of study, like similar issues in book history, I feel - as scholars - we're doing little to help ourselves (and the material) by focusing too much on the particulars of singular disciplines in a massively interdisciplinary field. Dr. Murray does say this later in her discussion, though the bulk of the "blame" does seem to be pointed at the ludologists, and this is really not the way to go. I'll admit, however, that I may be reading her points too strongly.

“The ludology v narratology argument argument [sic] can never be resolved because one group of people is defining both sides of it. The "ludologists" are debating a phantom of their own creation.” - Dr. Murray

While I'd have to consider myself a narratologist apparently despite my literary background, I find myself in agreement with the sentiment that focusing too much on games as systems of play or whatever is as bad as focusing on narration as the necessary, perpetual pull of players through a gaming cycle. At what point did Lara Croft's sex appeal not entice a certain 90's demographic to indulge (as opposed to the often laughable gameplay)? Do the narratives of Halo, GTA, etc., act as singular, stellar reasons to play the game? And exactly when were narratologists not responding to at least moderately compelling ludological arguments?

Regardless, I think the issue here is less one of creating phantoms to argue against, and more a matter of creating a series of idealized narratives that fail to explain the myriad examples of why and how games are played. There likely will be no answer that doesn't have a multiplicity of explanations, and I, for one, am certainly not saying this is a bad thing.