Reading 03

Book: The video game theory reader
Chapter: Stories for eye, ear and muscles

The chapter describes how media such as movies and games indulge the audience in realizations of basic real-life experiences. In both of these media types there is a story or narrative that is put forward which acts as a simulation of an experience that the observer can relate to, with real life. Usually theres a story that unfolds as time passes and the audience tends to react physically and mentally to the unfolding process.

The story itself has its levels. At the macro level, theres just a few major goals like getting married, or becoming king etc, but all these macro goals feed to a series of levels of micro goals like what to do to become king, who to fight, what kind of weapon to carry. These further level down into goals such as eating, sleeping, getting dressed etc.

Modern video games provide a very close to real-life experience as the story is input driven. Even with a canonical story, the pace and direction in which the story unfolds is controlled by the player. Usually there are split paths on developing a story but ultimately all paths converge to a single result because of a somewhat linear story when seen from a macro level.

Moreover video games provide an experience far more similar to that of everyday life. By learning and controlling events by repetitive rehearsal, we are able to relate it more to how we spend our lives. The video game experience can thus be differentiated into three phases; challenge, mastery and automation. The author writes on how the player quits playing or is bored by the game once it reaches the automation phase. I pretty much disagree because in most modern multiplayer games, its actually the automation phase that give the player complete control and then is the time the user can actually overpower his opponents or achieve his goals without much struggle.