Playing with meaning: The role of fiction in the processes of meaning-making in video games

Ryan Nicholas House

The importance of fiction has been contested in video games studies since the field’s inception – scholars often argue that, at most, fiction serves a secondary, marginal role in the processes of a game. I argue, however, that a game’s ontology is just as dependent on its fictional elements (metaphors, representations, narratives, etc.) as it is on the procedural rules that govern its systems. To do this, I employ the lenses of narratology and ludology to examine the ways that games from various genres use fiction to engage players in the process of meaning-making. My first chapter looks at the way that The Old City: Leviathan, an entry into the genre of storygames, affords its players agency by allowing them to construct the narrative of the game on a discursive level. Although the game does not allow players to invent narratives, players are able to control the method of their telling. In chapter two, I turn to Minecraft to explore the ways that games without overt narrative elements still employ fiction to guide the player’s experience. I argue that the representational aspects of Minecraft relay to the player the behavioral operations of the game’s code and that this allows players to achieve a phenomenological presence in the gameworld. Finally, in the third chapter, I discuss the concept of ludo-narrative dissonance and v its negative effect on player engagement through an examination of The Stanley Parable’s commentary on the problematic relationship between a game’s story and a player’s choices. I argue that ludo-narrative dissonance is a corruption of Espen Aarseth’s concept of the textual machine, rendering the informational loop between player and game incomplete and, therefore, innately meaningless. Thus, just as a bug highlights the significance of a game’s code, ludonarrative dissonance underlines the importance of a game’s fiction. I conclude by arguing that game designers should consider the fiction of a game to be just as procedural as its code.

Playing with meaning: The role of fiction in the processes of meaning-making in video games

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