Stories & video games : investigating narratives through play

URF Langues et Civilisation

Département des Études Anglophones

STORIES & VIDEO GAMES:

INVESTIGATING NARRATIVES THROUGH

PLAY

Mémoire de Master 2

FAUCHIE Quentin

Directeur de Recherche :

Professeur Nicolas Labarre

Juin 2022

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Université Bordeaux Montaigne

UFR Langues et Civilisations

Département des Études Anglophones

Mémoire de Master 2 :

STORIES & VIDEO GAMES: INVESTIGATING

NARRATIVES THROUGH PLAY

FAUCHIE Quentin

Directeur de Recherche :
Professeur Nicolas Labarre

4

Juin 2022

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 9

INTRODUCTION 10

I- Video games and narrative: a story of interactivity and players 16

A- To narrate a story while playing, to play while narrating a story 17

To tie gameplay and narratives together, a work of narrative design 17

Narratives in video games: show, (don't) tell and play 20

Player's agency: to interact or not 25

B- Hades, a story to die for 28

Death as a narrative feature: Hades, the roguelite 29

To hell and back again: playing the game, exploring the tale 32

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II- The world of a game: playground for personal narratives 41

A A place of Freedom, living and retelling in the Open-World

Open world, the playground of emergence

Sail close to the game: a player's methodology 50

Emergent narrative in Sea of Thieves: a pirate life for the player 52

Sea of Thieves, the players and the tales 59

B- The gateway to the virtual world: narratives and immersion through the avatar 66

Immersion in Video Games, a Work of the Senses 67

Avatar: path into the game, vision of the world. 71

Playing a role, developing an avatar: the legacy of Pen and Paper RPG 77

C- MMORPGs and the social Heroes: Forging the tales within a community 86

Online and massively multiplayer: beyond the act of play? 87

The play to the social: investigating emergence from the social dimension 89

Hero for the history books: player character living the story... 96

... then redefining the tale: author of the endgame and builder of the community 102

Conclusion 109

Annex: Sea of Thieves related posts sampled 112

Annex 2: Final Fantasy XIV related posts sampled 114

Work Cited 116

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TABLE OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1 - HADES, THE POOL OF BLOOD THAT SYMBOLIZES BOTH THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE GAME. 33

FIGURE 2 - HADES, SYSYPHUS THE TORTURED SOUL, AN NPC ENCOUNTER IN TARTARUS. 35

FIGURE 3 - HADES, BOULDY, THE BOULDER THAT SISYPHUS HAS TO CONTINUOUSLY PUSH UP A HILL. 35

FIGURE 4 - HADES, THE BONE HYDRA, SECOND BOSS OF THE GAME. IT IS NAMED LERNIE AFTER A FEW CONFRONTATIONS AGAINST

ZAGREUS. 38

FIGURE 5 - CYBERPUNK 2077, IN-GAME AD IN WHICH A TRACK AND FIELD RUNNER APPEARS TO BE IN AN F1 PIT STOP 44

FIGURE 6 - CYBERPUNK 2077, CITY CENTER DISTRICT OF NIGHT CITY. 45

FIGURE 7 - SKYRIM, REGION OF FAILLAISE. 45

FIGURE 8 - SEA OF THIEVES, THE CREW PLAYING MUSIC IN UNISON. 53

FIGURE 9 - SEA OF THIEVES, MY CHARACTER SITTING ON THE BOW. 53

FIGURE 10 - SEA OF THIEVES, RANDOM APPEARANCE OF THE KRAKEN, KNOWN TO BE THE STRONGEST CREATURE OF THE GAME 55

FIGURE 11 - SEA OF THIEVES, A TALE BOOK THAT CONTAINS INDICATIONS OR HINTS FOR A TALL TALE. 58

FIGURE 12 - MEME BY REDDIT USER KMVFEFJKLV, REPRESENTING WHAT PLAYERS TEND TO EXPERIENCE IN SEA OF THIEVES AFTER

CLEARING AN OBJECTIVE (HERE, A FORT). 61

FIGURE 13 - DARK SOULS III, A MESSAGE ON THE GROUND GIVES AND ADVICE THAT ONLY MAKE SENSE OUTSIDE OF THE GAME. 76

FIGURE 14 - DIVINITY ORIGINAL SIN II, CHARACTER CREATION WITH A «CUSTOM ORIGIN" 81

FIGURE 15 - DIVINITY ORIGINAL SIN II, CHARACTER CREATION FOR AN "ORIGIN CHARACTER", HERE THE RED PRINCE. 81

FIGURE 16 - FINAL FANTASY XIV SCREENSHOT BY REDDITOR RENAART. PLAYERS AS DARK KNIGHTS PAYING TRIBUTE FOR THE LATE

MIURA KENTARO. 92

FIGURE 17 - FINAL FANTASY XIV, MY CHARACTER IN THE «PERFORMANCE MODE» PLAYING ELECTRIC GUITAR. 94

FIGURE 18 - PICTURE FROM TWITTER USER @CERESCLOUDSXIV. FINAL FANTASY XIV, MOSH MOSH LIVE CONCERT PERFORMANCE AT

LIMSA LOMINSA. 94

FIGURE 19 - FINAL FANTASY XIV, EXAMPLE OF DIALOGUE TREE OCCURRING DURING QUESTS. 100

FIGURE 20 - FINAL FANTASY XIV, MY CHARACTER APPEARING IN THE GAME'S END CREDITS. 101

FIGURE 21 - FINAL FANTASY XIV, STRATEGY AND POSITIONS FOR A RAID SET UP THROUGH A TEXT MACRO POST IN THE CHAT BOX. 104

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to thank each and every one who accompanied me throughout the writing of my master Thesis.

First of all, I want to thank my supervisor Professor Nicolas Labarre, who never failed to help and guide me whenever I needed it. I am all the more grateful to him for introducing me to game studies. It opened up new reflection perspectives about a medium I greatly appreciate, and allowed me to enjoy the time I spent on my research.

Many thanks to my partners in games, Kévin (Xahes), Antony (Ak_ant), Sébastien (InShuMonki) and all the others with whom I played, and laughed (a lot), whether it was part of my work or not. The writing of my thesis was made easier, knowing I could count on them to blow up some steam at the end of the day.

A special thanks to my flatmates Kévin, who was always ready for the coffee break, and Léa, an amazing Barista who made us drink real (and delicious) coffee.

Finally, I want to thank all of the video game creators whose stories made me who I am now, and forge a medium which allows people to discover astonishing worlds. I can only hope that my work even remotely gives back some of what it gave me.

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INTRODUCTION

Hey! Look! Listen!

[Navi, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.]

With those three simple words, the many people who once saved a whole realm from the clutches of the Gerudo King have probably seen some memories resurface: their terrible struggle within the Water Temple, their endless wandering in Kokiri Forest, and most of all, this deeply annoying (yet touching) little fairy that would not care to stop repeating those words. Others may simply remember a time when they were a genuine hero, dressed in a now emblematic green tunic and a pointed cap, bearer of the Triforce of Courage. But these three words are not only about touching upon one's nostalgic streak; they reflect the story of a video game, the experience of a player. It is a virtual world upon which players encountered a myriad of characters, defeated many foes, explored vast areas and deep dungeons. They faced arduous challenge and learned about a whole new world. Most of all, they went through a genuine narrative experience.

Nowadays, video games are among the most popular form of entrainment worldwide. They are part of many people's daily life: we can play games on consoles, handheld consoles, computer, but also smartphones and with a VR (virtual reality) headset. There is a game for almost every taste and every wish, from the pure heavy action game to the turn-based strategy, through the contemplative adventure. I have played video games most of my life. I have run at the speed of sound through Green Hill, wandered in the slums of Midgard, explored numerous Disney worlds guided by a giant key, and probably saved the world a hundred times. From my point of view, video games have always been about telling stories, and I believe they have unique ways of doing so. They enact a form of storytelling that is participatory: we are ourselves the hero of the story (Ostenson, 2013).

Video games have both a short and long history. Compared to novels or even cinema, video games are rather new, truly taking shape in the 1970s with the first console and arcade games. On the other hand, the medium is already more than 60 years old, with the first video game iteration tracing back to 1961's Steve Russel Spacewar (Newman 2004, 1)--at least it may be. For video game aficionados, 60 years is definitely a long period: in this time span, the medium has drastically evolved and has taken many forms, explored multitude of genres and

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styles, and has developed various forms of play. Besides the huge technical gap between now and then, video games are now able to display huge detailed world, and tell deep, complex stories.

In September 2020, I discover Hades, a roguelite game developed by Supergiant Games, notably known for Bastion (2011), Transistor (2014) and Pyre (2018). The title relates the endeavor of Zagreus, son of Hades, who wishes to escape his father's domain and find his lost mother. After a few hours playing the game, I find myself surprised: the game tells a story, with plots and developed characters, and a compelling one at that. It was a surprise because I did not expect this kind of experience from Hades, which is labeled as a roguelite by its designers. Genres in video games are often subjectively established. They serve to create expectation for the players. Thus, I thought I would play a rather usual roguelite, in which the overall story stays in the shadow of the game world's mechanics and the replayability we get with this genre. However, I delved in a game filled with dialogues, actual plotlines leading to resolution, and a main narrative arc. Yet it was still a roguelite, with its mechanic around death that put us inside a loop where we must redo the game each time we are vanquished.

I thus played a game that cleverly merged its narratives with the gameplay. A relationship I had not put much thought into until now. It was appealing to me because I have always been fascinated by the stories video game made me experienced. Hence, when I was introduced to game studies, it compelled me to further explore this relation, investigate how video game stories were told. Not just as a player, but as researcher that feels the need to understand how it works. Whereas I was very familiar with video games, it was not the case with game studies. The field of research was mostly unknown to me, especially regarding the pre-existing theories it had developed for many years. That is to say, it represented the main difficulty I had to face. I needed to familiarize myself with a lot of previous works and approach the theoretical concept that surrounded the medium. Since video games have taken huge technical leap (in every part of the game design) over a «short» period of time, I had to pay particular attention to the period in which these works were carried in order to avoid any kind of misleading direction in the thought process.

Eventually, guided by my thirst for knowledge for the medium and my attraction for its stories, I chose to study video games narratives' structure. More precisely, the object of my research is the narrative relation between the game and the player, how narratives occur through

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the act of play. Although Hades was the stimulus that motivated this work, I decided not to solely focus on it. Instead, I extended my research through several games thus relying on three major ones including Hades, Sea of Thieves (Rare, 2018), and Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix, 2010). For starters, the premise of my work is that every video game has narrative values. Whether it is through the writing, the gameplay, or even the environment they put players in, each one of them deliver a narrative experience. Moreover, addressing different games enables to highlight the diversity in storytelling devices; the craft of their storytelling relies on many, if not all, the elements they are composed of (game design, level design, sound design, etc.). These games were thus selected with a need to approach narratives from different angles and encompass a rather large scope. They have also been chosen by taking into account their «community's» activity, to ensure that I would be able to gather sufficient data. Thus, I excluded games demonstrating very low player base. Plus, I directed my focus on them as they were on the press line of sight: to obtain as much empiric data as possible, I chose these games which were reviewed, analyzed or just discussed to some degree within the video game press.

Given the multiple narrative properties of these games we might consider, I devised my methodology around «participant observation.» It allowed me to conduct my research as an active unit within the games (a player), rather than being a sole external observer. The purpose was to observe the world in which players play «but also participates at varying degrees» (Nardi 2010, 28) in order to understand the player practices in it. Since the participant observation aim at an overall better comprehension of a game's world and its players, the methodology usually includes data extracted from players interviews. Rather than direct exchanges, I collected the data using two main sources: the games' dedicated subreddit and their official forums, from which I sampled a certain number of posts. The sampling process targeted player's shared experience with the games, that I intend to compare with my own observations.

Whilst I used references from game studies, especially to strengthen the theoretical framework, I also supported my research with multiple press references and insights from developers. Again, given the evolving nature of the medium, I mainly focused on a rather recent period, broadly ranging from 2010 to 2022. Of course, I did not disregard earlier works. Though many of them display analysis which cannot be applied to current video games, they remain particularly relevant, especially for the different definitions surrounding the medium. Readings from prominent game studies figures such as Jesper Juul, Ian bogost or Aarseth Espen provided me with precious knowledge that certainly helped to produce this thesis.

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Throughout the whole work, I intend to develop and back my arguments using meaningful examples from a large ludography, specific mechanic of gameplay and screenshots from the games. My objective is to explore the devices video games used to tell stories through a thorough analysis of some of them. The games I selected are meant to provide a large ground of study according to their distinct design. The notions of progression (linearity) and emergence are thus confronted and used to demonstrate how narratives form throughout the player's experience.

Ultimately, my studies will be guided by one query: How do narratives intertwine with the act of play and forge the play experience?

In order to properly conduct the following analysis and examine the various elements brought by the research; the thesis is divided in two main sections. First is the study of narration within the game studies pre-established concepts and from the codification adopted in the industry. I will focus on the inherent relation that links the act of play and the narratives. Through an analysis of Hades, I will expose how a video game can tell stories through gameplay. It is about investigating the relation between the gameplay and the narratives, and how the player is incorporated in it.

The second, more consequential, section will explore storytelling using the prism that is the open world design. It will allow to highlight the narratives occurring when the player is put in free navigable space. Firstly, from a participant observation conducted in Sea of Thieves, I will also demonstrate the nature of emergent narratives, how it shapes the player's experience through the possibility space that enables freedom in play activities enactment. Then in a second step, I will further expand the theoretical framework with a deep analysis on the avatar as a character. It will focus on its immersive properties, but also the influence it has on the player's perception regarding a virtual world. Among other confronted examples and academic insights, Divinity: Original Sin II will serve as the basis for examining the avatar-character in the RPG genre.

Eventually, the last part of the thesis will focus on the MMORPG and how this particular type of game extends the medium's narrative scope, notably through its social dimension. Using Final Fantasy XIV as the main empirical source, I will examine the act of play in a social environment and what it entails regarding the narratives and the personal story players fashion from it. Depicting the player in the position of the author within a whole community, the game

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further extends the emergent narrative possibility. Furthermore, with the «endgame,» we will approach an MMORPG aspect which enables to create personal stories intertwined between the game and its community.

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I- Video games and narrative: a story of interactivity and players

Narratives in video games are a much-discussed matter in game studies - and have been since before the field first gained recognition. With the medium's growing reliance on strong narratives, it has increasingly drawn the attention of the academic community, scholars who seek to investigate video games as storytelling devices and theorize the nature of their narrative (Koenitz & al. 2013). After all, unlike other media, video games deliver a story through the player's input: the different techniques for telling a story involve different approaches in the role the player play within it. On the GDC (Game Developer Conference) podcast of March 2021, Creg Kasavin, Creative Director and writer at Supergiant Games (Bastion, Pyre, Transistor...) shares his view about storytelling in videogames:

I think we have certain value in common from game to game. We are always interested in that sort of interconnection between the interactive experience and the narrative experience in context. How can we tell stories in a unique way that would not translate to other media? How can we take advantage of what is unique about games in our approach to storytelling (Kasavin 2021)?

To recount a story through a video game is to invite the player to unfold said story by interacting with the world it is set on. Here, Creg Kasavin introduces the connection shared by narrative design and the act of play: contextualizing the game's world, its story and the gameplay mechanics altogether, for the sake of the player's experience. I intend to observe and study this relation in Hades, for it is a game that made narrative its primary strength despite belonging to a genre that usually ignore that aspect. The analysis that will follow will be focused on how the game's story contextualizes the mechanics for the players, how it is «told», as well as the methods used to keep the player engaged with that story. But first, I believe it is crucial to understand how video games storytelling works, the rhetoric of narrative elements and their synergy with interactivity, and how the plots (the events) thread the narratives and form the actual story.

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A- To narrate a story while playing, to play while narrating a story

Understanding video games as a storytelling medium can be difficult, to say the least. A vast array of theories surrounds the notions attached to the subject, which animated debates in the mid-2000. Ultimately, story and narrative are shrouded in a certain vagueness when one tries to extract a precise definition.

To comprehend how a video game story is told, and how it resonates with the player, it is then essential to establish a framework for «narrative design». Moreover, for the purpose of studying player's creativity in relation to a game, we will see several narrative methods and how they are used. Examining the tensions between narrative and interactivity will then enable a deeper reflection on how a game resonate with the players, and shape their experience.

To tie gameplay and narrative together, a work of narrative design

To pinpoint the exact role of a narrative designer is no easy task. By observing numerous video game studios, it appears that the scope of that job remains quite large, and depends on several factors: studio's size, country, type of game, etc. (Manileve 2021). There is also dissension among those who share the label: what it means and where the responsibilities lie can be specific to each individual. Writers and authors sometimes see themselves as narrative designer, as their responsibilities lay beyond basic writing.

In an article from Ubisoft Stories, in which several narrative designers were interviewed, Sarah Beaulieu, Associate Narrative Director at Ubisoft, highlights the disparity of opinions among the industry:

Ask 10 narrative designers to describe their job, and you will get 10 different answers. Without going into the more technical aspects, I think the narrative designer is a sort of hybrid, cross-disciplinary role that spans across game mechanics and narrative. (Beaulieu, 2021)

As it serves both gameplay and narration, narrative design encompasses a wide range of functions. However, it is not uncommon to have the narrative designer associated with other roles, especially with writers--particularly outside of English countries, where jobs terminology shows even more disparity, since in the first place, many fields of expertise in the game industry do not necessarily possess a commonly accepted term (Fregonese 2017, 25).

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Indeed, both the narrative designer and the writer are dedicated to the story, and it is true that the line that separates the two often appears blurry. Julien Charpentier, former Narrative Director and current Editorial Narrative Advisor Senior at Ubisoft, underline the thin barrier between the two roles:

I like comparing my job to that of a writer. When an author starts writing, they systematically go through three different phases: researching, planning, and drafting. In video games, writing is split in two halves. The scriptwriter drafts the script and the narrative designer--or director-- maps everything out. Of course, it isn't clear-cut, and the roles can overlap, but narrative design is mostly about wielding game systems (Charpentier 2021).

That is to say, the use of the term within the industry (and to a certain extent, by scholars) lacks the precision that would otherwise enable an accurate definition. Nevertheless, narrative design does have a role in the game development ecosystem. According to Eric Stirpe and Molly Maloney, respectively Writer and Narrative Designer at Telltale games, writing «is responsible for the characters,» while design «is responsible for the player,» mentioning among other things that the latter prevents «mechanics from feeling different or out of place with the narrative» (Maloney & Stirpe 2020). In that sense, narrative design is the bridge that connects the story with the game systems, and by extension, the player. It is what allows the narrative to make sense out of the gameplay, and it «uses the gameplay and all visual and acoustic methods to create an entertaining and stimulating experience for the player» (Mauger 2010, 10).

That intrinsic relation between narratives and gameplay appears to be one of the narrative design's cores. The designer is in charge of harmonizing the game design with the story, and has a hand in every corner of the development team, wherever the story is concerned (sound design, level design, quest design, etc.). This can be observed in various job applications, in which studios give a rather precise description of what they expect for a narrative designer. For that very purpose, I extracted three of them, from Remedy Entertainment, Kochmedia and Amazon Game Studios:

· If you like the idea of taking ownership and creating compelling, engaging, and memorable narrative gaming experiences, through designing and scripting key narrative gameplay systems and content, then this job is for you! (GameJobs 2021)

· Become a creator, guardian, and advocate of the story, characters, tone, and storytelling engagement. Team up with game designers to implement and execute all narrative aspects through mission, level, and game system design. Design interactive narrative game systems to create a compelling, emotional gameplay experience. Collaborate with writers and editors to

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write, edit and implement game text and dialogue. Shape the game world and its characters' tone, maintaining its consistency throughout the game (Koch Media 2021).

· As a Narrative Designer, you'll be responsible for conceptualizing, writing, and supporting the implementation of quests, dialogue, lore, and characters in New World. You will work collaboratively with quest designers, world builders, character designers, and level designers to create engaging gameplay experiences. It will be a combination of your experience and an understanding of narrative fundamentals for MMO and RPG quest design that will define success (GameJobs 2021).

Though it is clear that their role consists in branching the story, they also have the task to guarantee its consistency with the other game designers. In each of these three applications, the Narrative Designer not only manage storytelling, its implementation across the different section of the team, but they undertake the creation of a gameplay «experience,» highlighting here again their responsibility towards the player's experience.

Narrative design works like a hub for every narrative element in a video game. It coordinates information relative to the storytelling between each other creators. A narrative designer asserts that they get a good understanding of the game's story and subsequently allow them to transcribe it accurately in their respective field. They can thus explain the atmosphere that should emanate from a particular section of the game to the Level Designer, or can describe a specific mood needed at a given time to the Sound Design team. Even so, the role of a Narrative Designer remains dependent of the development team's size, but also its needs. For instance, Florent Maurin, head of The Pixel Hunt studio (Inua--a Story of Ice and Time, Enterre-moi Mon amour), explains that they barely use the term «narrative design,» stating that as a small independent studio, they «don't really need to structurally differentiate between narrative design, game design, and scriptwriting» (Maurin 2021).

Overall, Narrative design may well be the jack of all trades--just like Game Design-- supervising each part of the creating process to ensure that narrative and gameplay are in a state of symbiosis. Narrative design then refers to the branching of an interactive story that uses gameplay and design tools to create coherent yet stimulating narrative for the player's experience; that would be the definition I believe suit narrative design the most, and the one I shall use for my work. Still, it is essential to keep in mind that the definition retains its porosity, and it is not my intention to set it in stone. Nonetheless, it is the framework needed from there on, that will enable to explore deeper narratives within video games.

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Narratives in video games: show, (don't) tell and play

Down the line of Narrative Design is, of course, narrative, which one can broadly define as the art and manners of telling a story and connect events within it. Scholars were (and still are) very passionate about the term--whether we talk about video games or not--and which animated strong debates, most famously in the early 2000s, regarding whether games can tell stories (Juul 2001), with ludologist on one side and narratologist on the other. Since then, game studies, as an interdisciplinary field, has moved away from this binary view, and developed its own array of theories, with the premises for us to consider video games as neither «purely narrative nor purely ludological» (Cheng, 2007, 15). In the course of my work, I do not intend to reiterate debates around narrative, even more so since it remains at the heart of many studies in literacy as a whole. Nonetheless, for a global comprehension of video games as a narrative medium, one needs to comprehend the rhetoric of their narratives, how it is intertwined with both the players and the gameplay.

The video game industry evolves at a fast pace: should we even limit our observation to a single decade, the medium's transformation remains visible. Minus the obvious technical feat, video games are now capable of deeper and more complex stories, to the point that «story-driven» (or «Story-rich») often comes out as a genre--or at least a category--as it is the case on Steam for God of War (Santa Monica Studio, 2018) or Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (Eidos Montréal 2021) to name but two examples. Sony's PlayStation even focuses on this «type» of games, stating their commitment «to strong narrative-driven, single-player games» (Gamesradar 2020). From the first steps of the creation, the story elements represent the core of the design and tend to affect both the worldbuilding as well as the gameplay (Picucci 2014). Beyond the player's appeal for those games, that tendency demonstrates a clear strengthening in writing, directing, and needless to say, narrative over the years.

But as Espen Aarseth pointed out, games are not just games, «they are complex software that can emulate any medium» (Aarseth 2012). Consequently, to summarize narrative as I did above is too simplistic--while not entirely inaccurate. Video games' narratives, as I mentioned earlier, extend throughout the other part of the creating process. Besides recounting the events that form the story, narratives delimit the frame of the game, the background and blend them within its rules. Each and every task the player performs potentially becomes part of the story. In Ori and the Blind Forest (Moon Studios, 2015), we quickly encounter areas that are

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inaccessible. In order to reach them, we need to progress through the game and return with the right abilities or tools--one of the core principles of what is called metroidvania¹. The designers use rules to constrain the players and coerce them to «come back» later while at the same time, applying narrative elements for the character's growth (Ori). Therefore, these elements inevitably reflect the player's progression, which in turn becomes not just a gameplay mechanic but also a prominent element in the story's structure.

Compared to what they were when they debuted as a mainstream medium, video games have now «matured and does not solely relate stories through text anymore» (Fregonese 2017, 52, my translation); whether it is a linear narrative with a straight chronological order or a branching narrative that uses players' choices to work the story like a tree diagram, video games embrace many different narrative forms with their specificities, their own purposes, and take advantage of the design diversity the medium can enjoy. Although that multitude of narratives is by no means standardized--interpretation and terminology remaining dissimilar between individuals in the industry and in the academic field--I will use the narrative denominations found in Pierre-William Fregonese's Book, «Raconteurs d'Histoires : Les mille visages du scénariste de jeu video,» which I believe accurately describes the forms broadly used by developers:

· Textual Narrative

The most basic narrative, which develops the story and events through writing. It encompasses dialogues, quests and in-game documents like books, letters and every other text which nurture our knowledge about the game's world. In the simplest form, we find that narrative style within almost every game, to various degrees. Still, the RPG genre probably use it the most, since it tends to seek a very detailed worldbuilding. A good example would be Divinity Original Sin II (Larian Studios 2017); with its deep roots in tabletop RPG (mostly Dungeons and Dragons in that case), the game strongly relies on dialogues and the multiple choices the player can make out of them. The staging essentially happens through texts, with a narrator describing most of the actions, whether it is the player's or NPCs'². On top of that,

¹ Metroidvania is a portmanteau word that take its name from the games Metroid and Castlevania. It is a genre (or subgenre) define by interconnected level design, back and forth progression (backtracking) marked by the discovery of items and abilities, and the presence of RPG elements (Gamekult, Loop, 2018).

² «NPC» is an acronym that stands for «non-playable character». It designates every character in a game that is not under the control of the player.

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details about the lore can be found among an enormous number of books and various other types of written work.

· Environmental Narrative

A style of storytelling whose presence has grown along video games' technological advancement. Environmental narrative focuses on indirect elements that shape the world the player is exploring. It is «the art of arranging a careful selection of the objects available in a game world so that they suggest a story to the player who sees them» (Stewart, 2015). In a broad sense, it is the story (more like "a sequence of events») related by the environment and all elements that belongs to it. It can refer to NPC talking to each other on the background, the background itself (the design it displays), cutscenes or even specific colors--like the stages in Hades (Supergiant Games, 2018) that each display a distinct hue. Through a single look at Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt, 2020), you understand the kind of world you set foot on: the explosive number of ads displayed absolutely everywhere, the characters' behavior, their design... With those elements, the player's imagination has the needed groundwork to grasp the world's stakes, and what it means to «live» in it.

· Cyclical Narrative

Cyclical (or circular) narrative refers to a story that connects its ends to its beginning, thus making a loop. It works more or less in the same way for video games: the cyclical narrative is based on «renewal» and «replayability,» with the story expanding each time the player starts the game over; usually in what is commonly labeled «New Game +.» The Soulsborne³ series by From Software uses that principle, with the player facing stronger challenges and discovering new elements every time they finish the game and starts again, therefore extending their experience. Other games integrate that type of narrative as an inherent part of the storytelling, as it is the case for NieR: Automata (Platinum Games, 2017). Each «new game» let the player discover the story through a different point of view, with a different playable character or with new events. They are compelled to see the game through the end several times in order for the

³ «Soulsborne» or «Souls Series» refers to the series of game developed by FromSoftware, which includes Demon Souls, Dark Souls I-III and Bloodborne. Players and journalists came up with the label since they share very similar game design.

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true ending to be unfolded. Most roguelite games such as Hades would also serve as good examples. They rely on a gameplay loop where the player redoes the game. With Hades, they start the game all over gain whether they fail or not; each time they do, they progress through the narratives, obtain more skills, weapons, and learn more about the game's lore.

· Emergent Narrative

Although we will see emergent narrative in more details later on, that type of narrative aims at providing unique experiences to each individual. To put it in a nutshell, the storytelling is essentially made by the players through the variety of interactions at their disposal. Sea of Thieves (Rare, 2018) offers above all else the possibility for players to live their own story (alone or with a crew) within its world. Most of the time, they are making their own objectives (treasure hunt, naval battle, exploration, etc.) and use everything they can (like playing music, getting drunk or fishing) to shape a unique experience each time they play. Hence, the player is in charge of the story and its direction, free of any intervention from the authors (Chauvin, Levieux and Donnart, 2014). The strong appeal here is the replayability it generates, since the player's actions stimulate a persistent world in which they will often create unexpected and memorable situations.

· Procedural Narrative

Among the narrative style presented here, procedural narrative may be the hardest to tackle, especially because this type of narrative is quite recent--at least in its common usage to describe a game's narrative--and has yet to truly display its potential. More often than not, procedural narrative is mistaken with emergent narrative, since both of them seek the unique experience of the players. But while emergent narrative let players create their own story with numerous interactions allowed by a few simple rules, the procedural relies over more or less complex algorithms which generates narratives ensuing from players' action. In other words, it is reactive stories (not branched nor pre-written) that responds to one's way of playing. Back in 2016, No Man Sky's built-up player's anticipation over its supposedly infinite universe with randomly generated planets that called for never-ending adventure. Though reality came knocking at the door pretty fast at launch, notably with the complete randomness of planets'

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wildlife that displayed unfathomable creature⁴, players could indeed visit entire galaxy with not a single planet resembling the other. Perhaps a more relevant example would be Watch Dogs: Legion, seen as the «most ambitious blockbuster attempts at procedural storytelling» (The Verge, 2021) in recent years. The gameplay revolves around a recruitment system that lets you play almost any NPC in the game, each with their own generated background. Of course, it does not alter the game's main story, but the system adapts itself to the players.

The list of narrative presented above is not exhaustive and reflects but the most prominent types. Moreover, as stated by Espen Aarseth, «there can be no single mode of narrativity in entertainment software, given the diversity of design solutions» (Aarseth, 2012). Indeed, most of the time, they are products of various combinations. For instance, and as far as this list is concerned, Dark Souls (FromSoftware 2011), or any Soulsborne for that matter, also falls within the environmental narrative. The game relies on its strong level design that put an emphasis on a well-organized world; the players create connections between different areas «that display distinctive tint, enabling [the players] to easily recognize them and associate a name to a color» (Gamekult 2018, my translation). At the same time, the game also uses basic script narrative elements: every item's description contains a glimpse of narrative, cleverly places next to the item's effect that players will eventually seek out.

The goal here was not to try to list every type of narrative there is, but to illustrate the idea that video games possess many tools for storytelling purposes, that embrace the medium capacity to stir together several art field. Accordingly, their means of conveying «messages» to players are quite large, and expanded even further by the fact that the said players interact with them. In that sense, the premise of my research is that every game is narrative in its own specific way.

⁴ One of the problems with procedural can be the complete absence of fixed design, whether it is the world or its characters. In No Man's Sky case, it resulted a severe lack of coherence, especially with the wildlife.

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Player's agency: to interact or not

When we talk about narrative ability, we usually mean storytelling in the broad sense: a story that is told to us. However, video games do not necessarily aim at telling any sort of story; in the medium's early days, one could say it was not even considered, as we observe Space Invaders (Taito, 1978), Pac-Man (Namco, 1980) or Pong (Atari, 1972). Nowadays, there are still numerous titles that have no intention to relate a story properly speaking: Rocket League (Psyonix 2015), Fortnite Battle Royale (Epic Games 2017) or Minecraft (Mojang Studios 2011) to name but those three, are all about the «immediate» experience, thus not bothering themselves with specific plots. Although they also use narrative devices, the story mostly forms through the player's own experience.

In his essay «La narrativité vidéoludique: une question narratologique,» Marc Marti explores the relation between the game and the player through narratives:

Empirically, video games are therefore both based on a static, pre-established and scripted narrativity, and a dynamic storytelling produced by the player interaction with the game. The combination of the two is what constitutes video game narrativity [...] As narratologist, we postulated that video games always had a narrative basis, but at various degrees (Marti 2014, 12, my translation).

In a media that involves interactivity, storytelling operates differently from «traditional» media--like books or movies. Game narratives must take the player into account, in other words, the fact that the game's story progress with the player input--the amount of interactivity influences how narrative elements are set. That tension between interactivity and narratives grants agency⁵ to the players that allow them to become storytellers themselves. That is also why the definition I exposed earlier for narrative was a bit off the mark. Video games, though they can perfectly use narrative to convey a particular story, are also able to simply deliver the groundwork for the players to make their own.

The case of Minecraft can provide insights in that regard. The game is very simple: a giant sandbox in which you can build your own world with (almost) no limitation but your imagination. Although there are things to explore, there are no quests, no characters (besides

⁵ Agency is the degree to which a player is able to cause significant change in a game world (What Games Are, https://www.whatgamesare.com/agency.html#:~:text=Agency%20is%20the%20degree%20to,the%20world%20 with%20every%20action). In other worlds, agency represents the differences the player can make when interacting with a game.

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you) and, of course, no pre-established plots. Minecraft puts the player in an environment where they are by themselves from the beginning and have to exploit their own creativity to survive -- depending on the mode they are playing--and craft their world.

In his essay «Minecraft and the Building Block of Creative Individuality,» Josef Nguyen assimilates Minecraft to island narratives, arguing that the isolated geography entails the player's creativity through a simulation of «Crusoe's Island»:

Minecraft participates in an enduring narrative tradition that deploys the island, or similarly isolated geography, as the experimental setting to negotiate tensions between the individual and the social in the development of creative subjects [...] Minecraft and its two primary playing modes--Creative and Survival--enable players to experiment with various environmental and sociopolitical conditions imagined in island narratives (Nguyen, 2016).

By being in an isolated environment, the player, thus in total autonomy, experiment as an «inventive subject». They create «their own social and environmental conditions»: the narrative aspects of the game become solely their own, build over time with their world, along with the numerous events that occur in between--the basis of what we named above emergent narrative. The player fashion their story through playing.

The key point here is the agency given to players. In the case of Minecraft, they can shape the world as they see fit: they hold the reins throughout the entire course of their play session. Henceforth, with full agency for the players, the game loses part of its ability to be the storyteller itself. It then relies more on indirect form of storytelling (mainly environmental) set by its world building. This particular tension between games and players, where one forfeits their role as a storyteller over the other, is explored by Sky Larell Anderson in his study:

Agency to tell a story oscillates between the storyteller--in this instance, a game--and the interactive participants--namely, the players. The more agency that interactants possess, the less agency the storyteller has to construct the narrative. (Anderson, 2018)

Conversely, story-driven games intentionally limit players' capacity to interact within their worlds, with the object of keeping them invested with the narrative arc. Hence the use of cutscenes, which deprive the players of any interactive capability; they interrupt the gameplay in order to provide narrative contents that they cannot alter.

The same idea lies behind particular sequence that wants the player to feel and contemplate instead of playing. A remarkable scene in NieR: Automata illustrates my point quite well. After hours and hours playing as the android 2B, one of the three main characters, a

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virus infects you and corrupts your system. Slowly, you lose the abilities you had enjoyed since the beginning: your screen glitches more and more, you become unable to even run but still have to try to avoid enemies; at some point, you can only see in black and white. Ultimately, you cannot play at all: your character stops moving which led to cinematic that marks the end of the game as 2B.

The whole objective behind that memorable and powerful scene was a deep emotional engagement from the player, by taking away what they thought was granted. As they lose their power of interaction, cleverly displayed by the game in a step-by-step process, they steadily start to play without actually playing. One can see it as a sort of narrative break meant to involve players in a specific sequence of events, without completely cutting them off from the game like a cutscene (Fregonese, 100). The tension between interactivity and narrative unbalances itself in favor of the latter. The interactivity gradually becomes «fake»: though players can still act, they are only given the illusion that they are still control.

Some scholars like Sebastian Domsch refer to this feature as «event trigger.» Players, by performing a specific action--usually spatial movement--trigger a «narrative relevant event»:

Most often, the trigger is connected to the player character's spatial movement, that is, an event is triggered when the player character enters a specific space. The event itself is a scripted sequence, but in contrast to a cut-scene it happens within navigable space and without an interruption to gameplay time [...] The design is to create the impression that an event happens by chance, though usually exactly at the narratively and dramatically relevant moment. [...] While many game design features attempt to create the illusion of agency where there is none, event triggers are largely used to veil the fact that the player actually does have agency over the happening or not happening of a specific event, while at the same time hiding the fact that the event is in no way contingent, but determined. (Domsch, 41)

More than just taking away players' control, an event trigger creates the illusion that they still have it. In Nier: Automata's example, you actually can move until the last seconds of the event, yet your actions cannot change the outcome: the character's death. The players are still in a state where interaction is permitted--unlike with a cutscene--but the denouement actually happens through a narrative straight line.

Event triggers address some of the problems that a game encounters when it seeks to communicate narrative events from the gameplay standpoint. In his study, Cheng Paul explains the need for games to «balance the delivery of narrative information against the notion of player agency» (Cheng 2007, 21). Because for a story to be unfolded, game designers need specific

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actions from the players. The agency provides players with a certain margin of actions, they de facto «don't always do what designers need or want them to do.» That is the core idea behind cut-scenes: remove their agency (their access to the game's interface) to advance the game's narrative. But the mere use of cut-scenes raises another problem which is the passivity it induces; though it is often perceived as reward upon achieving a meaningful action, an overabundance of cut-scenes or wrongly placed ones can break a game's rhythm and build up players' frustration over their deteriorated experience. Event triggers spare the game's pacing from being unnaturally altered, while at the same time «guarantee that the players actually get to experience events without feeling that they are forced to do» (Domsch 2013, 42).

Eventually, video games rhetoric works around the agency given to the player. The designers structure the storytelling and the whole story into interactivity either for the player to unfold the events through their actions (Piccuci 2014) or to create their own. In any case, there is a «dialogue» between the designers and the player that form the overall narratives. Exploring a game through this perspective, we are able to comprehend the basis behind the story delivery.