No really, games are a compound enterprise.

Readings

Narrative, Games, and Theory, Jan Simons

This is somewhat of a new evaluation of the narratology/ludology issue (circa 2007) that essentially promotes what I’ve been saying from the beginning: They should work together. Simons utilizes Game Theory (in the economic, political, war games sense) to justify the existence of narrative as something beyond a descriptive element that can always be superseded by simulation, since Game Theory is most interested with the choice and reasons behind particular actions, rather than the alleged rules that contain and modify them. It seems that Simons is essentially claiming ludologists entered the field already on the defensive, and this particular attitude has prevented them from realizing that while rules constrain players in certain ways, players are not observers to their game; the act of playing and the act of watching are distinctly separate experiences, as Mayra also suggested.

“The trick of the trade of game design is indeed to make the player believe they are in control,” Simon offers, echoing some of Chris Crawford’s sentiments that complete agency is technically inefficient at the moment. The controller may offer the illusion of control, and in most cases does offer the player power over the game, but in truth, it is the player’s belief, modified by the game experience, world, and understandable rules that grips the player into becoming immersed into what is offered. A game need not manifest complete agency to keep a player entertained, and in practice, no game does. Any argument that suggests narrative is too limiting seems to be forgetting that rules do the same by their nature, and even so, emergent behavior (such as the subtle rules undefined by poker ‘a poker face’) continues.

Further is the point that ludologists draw on the existing tools of the humanities (narrative theory and so on) to create their own, doing little to sever the umbilical, and yet denouncing it (as applicable to Games) while still attached. Simon declares that this in addition to strict categorizing and distinctions are an obsolete and sterile game nobody can win. ‘Games’ by the nature change by nature of their participants and perspective, and so the definition (as many scholars have realized) is generally fluid and malleable, and constantly redefined for a variety of purposes. Additionally, attempting to appropriate and monopolize objects of study away from the narrative fields is no less “imperialistic” in manner, and is again a game itself that has less scholastic payoff than suffering a compromise and agreement that there is no one “right way” of analyzing games, just as there is generally no one “right way” to play them, given the variety of perspectives and philosophies players bring to their entertainment media.