noitCARetni-interACTion

narrative in interactive media. My take on it with Spiderman

Alright.. time to get down to blogging again.
Here is my thoughts for the first question. :P

2. In the Introduction to Story and Discourse, Chatman quotes Claude Bremond, who says: “Any sort of narrative message… may be transposed from one to another medium without losing its essential properties: the subject of a story may serve as argument for a ballet, that of a novel, can be transposed to stage or screen, one can recount in words a film to someone who has not seen it.” Chatman goes on to suggest that “transposability of the story is the strongest reason for arguing that narratives are indeed structures independent of any medium”. Choose a narrative that has been expressed in both an interactive and a non-interactive medium, for example the game Tomb Raider and the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Discuss how the transposition to/from interactive media has changed the narrative. Has the structure of the narrative remained intact?

Here I refer to the Spiderman 2 game. The transposition of the narrative from a movie to that of interactive media certainly has an impact on the narrative itself. Yet, it must be remembered that the structure of the narrative remains somewhat intact.

The key concept of the game is simple and its narrative structure is similar to the movie in the sense that Spiderman helps to stop crime by villains such as Doc Ock. The game allows players to explore the world of the movie. Players get to be Spiderman and interact with other characters from the film, battle movie villains and experience settings and scenarios which have been inspired by the film. The discrete elements of the game -the characters, settings and events contribute to the wholeness of the story, which is, in this case similar to that in the movie. In addition, as the player manoeuvre in the virtual world, transformation is constantly taking place as Spiderman strives to save the world. In this sense, we can safely say that the structure of the narrative thus remains intact.

In tackling the question on how interactive media has changed the narrative, we must first remember that the player has now taken on the role of spiderman. In other words, the player is now immersed in the story line and is no longer having a third person viewpoint of the sequence of events. Rather, the individual now is seeing things from the perspective of Spiderman. Having a first person perspective, he/she may not be entirely aware of the intentions and evil plotting of the villain. This is quite unlike the movie whereby, having a third person perspective as an audience, the viewer is able to see and understand the intentions of both parties. The understanding of the story is thus a result of ‘first hand’ experience on the part of the player. To put differently and to use another form of illustration, this form of narrative is like the use of process statements (instead of stasis statements) to talk about an event.

In addition, how the story unfolds is to a large extent dependent on the skills of the player in handling crime in the game. The player can also decide how he or she wants to fight a particular crime. This bestows a degree of control and choice on the user. However, losing to the villain in the game will result in the ending of the game and therefore the ending of the story will probably not be the same (in that round at least, there is always the option of restarting the game :P. The wonders of interactive media).

posted by shamanthayan @ 3:19 AM