Ow.
I've never been to emergency before, at least not in my immediate recollection. It was an interesting experience, people asking me to grin and frown and sticking what appeared to be incredibly small anus-toys on sticks into my inner-ear and jamming wide paddle-pop sticks down my throat. I don't know how this will make me better! Clearly, the mechanical implement that rammed into my ear dispensed a small chemical that would seep past my ear drum and into my head, and with the paddle-pop stick they must have applied another dormant chemical agent to to the roof of my mouth that would remain quiet and inconspicuous until I sneeze! Climax! The two chemicals mix in tandem with the friction created from my convusing and presto, we have a cure.
>_>
So most of the week I've either been trying to squeeze the pain and pressure out of my head or so doped up on Codepane forte that in either instant I've been relatively useless. The funny part happens to be that I had a New Com Tech essay due on Friday and I was either in too much agony or too fucking doped up to take a fair crack at either. Salvation however lies in the miracle composition of instant coffee, also notably usable as weedkiller. So yes, I do have an essay for you, dear, dear readers. I can't claim that it's headache, painkiller and caffeine free but it's a very decent attempt. I can only hope that it'll be appreciated as one of the great literacy works of this decade. I can only hope that I, mere touch-typing sociopath Me4 Michalski can win the Nobel Peace Prize in the allocated field of -videogames-.
That's be hilarious.
Anyway, here's the Essay with all the subliterary innuendos, relatively uninteresting referencing and lack of aesthetically pleasing pictures. Enjoy.
1501ART New Communication Technologies
New Communication and Technologies Academic Essay
The Absorption of Creative Information and Inspired Learning through Narratology in Video Games
Robert Steven Michalski
Student Number: 2576246
Video games have long been subject to negative accusations and connotations regarding psychological influence and particularly association of aggressive behaviour. Only within the last decade however has research been conducted to conclude more objective, less-overblown studies of video games and their effects on users. Particularly, many studies have been carried out to determine the details of narratology, or storytelling, interlaced in video games. Within that spectrum of research, it has been proposed that narratology within video games provides ample resource for the absorption of creative information and inspired learning.
There is a well-known literacy saying that entails ‘the more you read, the better you write’. Many other creative texts have had the same proverbial label attached to them - music, audio dialogue, video and visual aesthetics, and further combinations of these mediums evident in film, television and other cross-platforms are all texts that are associated with the creative information absorption recognised in pure literary reading. However, the medium of video games is the only media platform that potentially combines the visual aesthetic seen in films and television with music and printed text, and intertwines them all in an interactive environment. In this context, video games have the potential to be the forefront of innovative storytelling across the various creative modes, with a wealth of creative resources stemming from the amalgamation of all the aforementioned texts.
The aforementioned interactivity combined with abundances of visual, audible and primarily printed texts (specifically storytelling) is most readily identifiable in the video game genera of the Role Playing Game (R.P.G.). R.P.G. games notoriously focus specifically on the storytelling, plot and character development aspects of interplay to achieve immersion. Developers of this game genre expend most of the available creative resources on the narrative and dialog of the game, resulting in volumes of print text, audible dialog and detailed virtual environments that promote the contexts and content of the story. Similarly, the Role Play community of many multiplayer capable R.P.G. games offer a multi-user role play experience. Neverwinter Nights (BioWare, 2002) was one such R.P.G. that offered the option to create ‘Persistent Worlds’ for role play purposes, where collections of users could create fictional characters to interact with each other in a constantly evolving, persistent narrative. R.P.G. games like this added an extra dynamic to the creative information gathering processes. A user could contribute their own content to many of these perpetual servers, even of only being able to contribute with the ‘in character’ role play of the characters they manipulated with print text, interchangeable visual aesthetics and design-bound movements. It has been formulated by Ph.d student Stuart Woods (2004), among others, that with the player-driven content and broad parameters of many online multiplayer games, this medium in particular may become an innovative form of creative expression, comparable to literacy novels and ‘serious’ content matter typically considered idealistic for a trivial video game to portray realistically.
James P. Gee, author of What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003), suggests that storytelling, writing and practical simulation of dialogue and other texts will eventually outweigh the violent aspect of many video games in favour of more intellectually creative stimulation. He states that “as realistic forms of conversation become more computationally possible (a very hard task), I predict that shooting will become less important in many games, including shooter games. Even now, many shooting games stress stealth, story and social interaction more than they used to.” (Gee 2004: p10-11) Furthermore, Gee’s prediction is already heavily applicable in modern First Person Shooter games compared to their near decade old predecessors. An early First Person Shooter (F.P.S.) game titled Doom (iD Software, 1993) was very simplistic in conveying mediums compared to modern day successors. Doom presented the player with no more than a single blurb detailing the scenario and aim of the game, a user manual with the obligatory instructions and system directions, and was thrown into a very liner action-filled environment where the user simply battled his/her way through throngs of sprite enemies to the end of each level, progressing through the levels of varying difficulty until the user reached the climax and end of the game design. There are little to no external or internal cut scenes, minimal sound recordings with no audible dialogue and little to no print text, narration or development to any conventional plot or story from the otherwise evident moving from one obstacle to a large, more challenging set of obstacles. However, less than a decade later a video game titled Deus Ex (Ion Storm, 2000) relies heavily, if not entirely, on evolving, non-linier narrative and plot, multiple characters and associated complexities, audio dialog and intellectual strategic opportunities and non-linear, often unconventional player choices. Yet it still qualifies as an F.P.S. Other examples of more traditional F.P.S. video games still show similar advancement in aesthetic and narrative texts. F.E.A.R (Monolith, 2005) is an example of this development, utilising aesthetic texts of audible dialogue, evolving narrative and plot, multiple and complex characters to further enhance and potentially level out the visual and interactive stimulation with similar attention to the adjoining creative mediums. Other recent examples that show clear evidence of development and accentuation of narratology in F.P.S. genre alone are Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (Arkane Studios, 2006), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl (GSC Game World,2007) and less acclaimed titles including Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the Earth (Headfirst 2005/2006). All of the aforementioned titles show clear progression of storytelling by way of all the different creative mediums and texts.
Through studies of narratology in video games research suggests that rich resources of creative information and learning material are available to be absorbed by the user. Video games across many platforms and genres, even F.P.S. games, are also contributing to this with further utilisation of visual, audible and print texts in advancing interactive design, leaning in a more story-driven, progressive direction.
References
Gee, J.P. 2003, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Palgrave Macmillan,
Perlin, K. “Can There Be a Form between a Game and a Story?” in Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Harrigan, Pat (eds) 2004 First Person, MIT Press,
Curran, S. 2004, Game Plan - Great Designs that Changed the Face of Computer Gaming,
Furner,
Woods S. “Loading the Dice: The Challenge of Serious Videogames” in Gamestudies, Vol. 4, issue 1, http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/woods/
Dormans J. “On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and their rules” in Gamestudies, Vol.6, Issue 1, http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/dormans/
Castronova E. “On Virtual Economies” in Gamestudies, Vol. 3, Issue 2, http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/
BioWare 2002, Neverwinter Nights, http://nwn.bioware.com/
iD Software 1993, Doom, http://www.idsoftware.com/
Ion Storm 2000, Deus Ex, http://www.eidosinteractive.com/games/info.html?gmid=50
Monolith 2005, F.E.A.R., http://www.lith.com/home.asp
Arkane Studios 2006, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, http://www.ubi.com/UK/Games/Info.aspx?pId=4503
Headfirst 2005/2006 , Call of Cthulhu – Dark Corners of The Earth, http://www.callofcthulhu.com/
GSC Game World 2007, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow of Chernobyl, http://www.stalker-game.com
Well, there you have it. A little over a thousand words of pure Me4 antagonizing drivel.
Douch.
-Me4.
P.S. Movie quote of the week: "You want to get nuts? *grabs fire poker and bashes a silver-tray table* Lets get nuts!"
If it's any help, it's an earlier Tim Burton movie. >_> That was a big fucking hint. Goodbye!
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