Narrative and games

We have heard in the lectures and readings that because of the challenging ideas of narratives in games, when another media text tries to base itself off a game, it generally does not go that well because a video game functions in a very different way. There may be a set up intro to the game that you have to sit through, to situate your character and the journey you have to go on, but the majority of game play seems to be you as your character going through the game world and interacting with challenges placed before you in different ways. As Kevin has stated, there are some points when you're playing a game where you are just repeating things in order to gain more experience and skills or money, that will help you out later. It is a much longer process that say, a film, could ever be, emphasising the challenge film makers have when trying to accurately interpret a game on the big screen. It seems that generally a game has a story, but it also maybe becomes secondary to what you as the character choose to do in the game. You create the story almost, it may be different for different players. People may end up with different endings, no matter what you do you may get stuck in an area and not be able to get past it.

It is interesting to consider those games which are based on films. An example here is the Harry Potter games. When I was younger I would play the Chamber of Secrets game on my computer a lot. What is different about these types of games is that even though you are given the agency to go about tasks, you are following the known story of the Chamber of Secrets and you know how it will end. There are various points in the game in which an automated video will appear telling you something that has happened in the story and no matter how well you play in terms of getting experience and skills, you will always get these videos at certain points. There are parts of the game however that move away from the projected story, if you find enough of a particular object you can go into secret areas to get more objects for trading, something that can be spent a long amount of time on, drawing you away from the story. It follows the story overall, but the game definitely includes aspects that weren't in the book or film, things that have been invented for game play. When you have agency in a game, it is hard to argue that you are following a set narrative, you experience it in a much different way than you would in a film because it feels as if you are changing and having an effect on what is going on. Even if a game is highly structured, it seems that this feeling undercuts any positioning with traditional narrative form.