Ludo, Ergo Sum

The Play's the Thing

Though Aarseth's thinking may sound like it's miles above the surface of the world we gamers occupy, he's recently played his way through both F.E.A.R. and Age of Empires III (which, he goes out of the way to note, can be beat even on its hardest level, if you just keep some water between you and the AI). He's been revisiting Half-Life: Opposing Force in recent months, and has dipped his toe in The Movies and Sid Meier's Civilization IV. With his class at the IT University of Copenhagen, he plays Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Does this game give special insights into narrative as it relates to gameplay? Not necessarily. "It is a good introduction to team-based FPS, and is more forgiving than Counter-Strike," Aarseth says.

Jesper Juul is a game designer and author of the book Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Though he's asserted in the past that "computer games do not tell good stories," nowadays he's more likely to tell you the battle between story and mechanics doesn't really matter - or never really existed in the first place. Fahrenheit, which he's been playing recently, certainly tries, though Juul notes, "I want to like it, but I'm not quite sure." Also in rotation are Donkey Konga ("Still the greatest little social game in good company"), and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, which has surprised him. "I believe that a turn-based strategy game shouldn't work today, but [Black Hole Rising] really does," he says.

"I [have] real trouble identifying with this discussion anymore," Juul says of the ludology/narratology debate. "At the end of the day, it consists of two parts: Real issues such as, 'When and how does the fiction of a game matter for players?' and a plain battle of words that tells us nothing about games, but is mostly about how to define narrative. The games I play always come before the theory. I don't want to become a game snob."

Mark Barrett is a writer and designer who's worked on the story design and other aspects of games, like the Settlers series, The Nations, and adventure title Dark Side of the Moon. Like the other people I talked to for this article, Barrett seemingly plays against type: The game that's keeping his GameCube hot these days is snowboarding title SSX On Tour. I mean, how much story can a game like that offer?

And like everyone else, Barrett takes issue with the straw man I set up at the beginning of this piece. "My take on the ludology/narratology debate has always been that it's a clever and completely false dichotomy," he says. "If what you're into is talking about interactive entertainment, then it's endlessly fertile ground.

"If what you're into is making interactive entertainment, it's literarily meaningless."

Barrett compares the argument to an aircraft manufacturer debating whether to make cargo-only jets or passenger-only jets, but not variants. "You can imagine how the cargo-loading union or the travel industry would vote if forced to choose, but the choice would obviously be a false one. And that's exactly what's happened in interactive with the ludology/narratology debate. People with vested interests have succeeded in putting forward a masturbatory, ego-driven, politically-motivated debate that is never going to help anyone make a better interactive product."

So, the next time someone asks you whether storyline or gameplay is more important to creating a great game, tell them they're barking up the wrong debate. One doesn't exist without the other. If it did, you'd either be watching a TV show or just flipping a coin. But with games, all the answers lie right at your fingertips. All you have to do is play.

Mark Wallace can be found on the web at Walkering.com. His book with Peter Ludlow, Only A Game: Online Worlds and the Virtual Journalist Who Knew Too Much, will be published by O'Reilly in 2006.