Analyzing the Game Narrative

ANALYZING THE GAME NARRATIVE: STRUCTURE AND TECHNIQUE by Huaxin Wei B.Sc., Xi’an Shiyou University, 1996 M.Sc., University of Alberta, 2001 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology © Huaxin Wei 2011 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2011 All rights reserved. However, in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada, this work may be reproduced without authorization under the conditions for Fair Dealing. Therefore, limited reproduction of this work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting is likely to be in accordance with the law, particularly if cited appropriately. APPROVAL Name: Huaxin Wei Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Title of dissertation: Analyzing the Game Narrative: Structure and Technique Examining Committee: Chair: Dr. Marek Hatala Associate Professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology Dr. Tom Calvert Senior Supervisor, Professor Emeritus, School of Interactive Arts and Technology Jim Bizzocchi Supervisor, Assistant Professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology Dr. Magy Seif El-Nasr Supervisor, Assistant Professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology Dr. Ron Wakkary Internal Examiner, Associate Professor, School of Interactive Arts and Technology Dr. Drew Davidson External Examiner, Professor and Director, Entertainment Technology Center – Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University Date Defended/Approved: ii Declaration of Partial Copyright Licence The author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, has granted to Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project or extended essay to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital copy for use in its circulating collection (currently available to the public at the “Institutional Repository” link of the SFU Library website <www.lib.sfu.ca> at: <http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/112>) and, without changing the content, to translate the thesis/project or extended essays, if technically possible, to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation of the digital work. The author has further agreed that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission. Permission for public performance, or limited permission for private scholarly use, of any multimedia materials forming part of this work, may have been granted by the author. This information may be found on the separately catalogued multimedia material and in the signed Partial Copyright Licence. While licensing SFU to permit the above uses, the author retains copyright in the thesis, project or extended essays, including the right to change the work for subsequent purposes, including editing and publishing the work in whole or in part, and licensing other parties, as the author may desire. The original Partial Copyright Licence attesting to these terms, and signed by this author, may be found in the original bound copy of this work, retained in the Simon Fraser University Archive. Simon Fraser University Library Burnaby, BC, Canada Last revision: Spring 09 Abstract With rapid innovation in computational technologies, storytelling has found a new home in interactive digital media. Among all forms of interactive narrative, story-based digital games are clearly the most prosperous domain thanks to their incredible popularity. Narra- tive design for such games, however, is often under studied in the current practice of game analysis due to the lack of a mature discourse model specifically for games and interactive narratives. To facilitate a deep understanding of game narratives, powerful analytical in- struments are needed to characterize game narratives and describe how narrative works in games. This research seeks to develop a descriptive framework to characterize and describe interactive and game narratives by applying and extending narrative theory. The framework aims to bring out new insights on interactive storytelling by observing how game narratives are constructed, what narrative techniques are used, and how narrative structure and technique affect the narrative and gameplay experience. By applying this framework to three games, the in-depth analyses systematically unravelled how various narrative principles and techniques operate in games and demonstrated the utility of the framework as an analytical instrument for the observation and understanding of the structure of interactive narratives. Keywords: Digital Game; Game Analysis; Game Narrative; Interactive Narrative; Interac- tive Storytelling; Narrative Structure; Narrative Design; Structural Narrative Analysis iii To Rilla iv Acknowledgments I would like to express my deepest gratitude and respect to my mentor and senior supervisor Tom Calvert. Thank you, Tom. Your incredible patience has always calmed me and helped me get past that difficult point. Your generous support has made my studies enjoyable and your valuable advice has greatly shaped me and motivated me on the challenging path to an academic career. I cannot thank you enough for your great mentorship. I am also grateful to my supervisors Jim Bizzocchi and Magy Seif El-Nasr for their wonderful guidance and intellectual challenge during the course of developing my research. It is Jim who pointed me to that shiny star of interactive storytelling, among the constellation of research topics that dazzles anyone who steps out of computing science and wants to explore something different. It is Magy who led me into the fantastic world of video games and helped me position my research. I have enjoyed a lot working with both of them. I would like to thank my external examiner Drew Davidson for his time and energy invested in reading this thesis and making travel arrangements for my defence. Thanks to my internal examiner Ron Wakkary, too, for taking time to read this thesis and asking me inspirational questions, and for his long time support in my years in SIAT. My gratitude also goes to Rob Woodbury, who recruited me into this graduate program, enlightened me, and helped me to adapt to the exciting interdisciplinary culture in SIAT, and Alissa Antle, who has been such a great faculty to work with and learn from, and Gordon Pritchard, for his excellent technical support and the friendship we shared. Thanks also go to my colleagues in the School for Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University for their companionship during my long years in the research lab. In particular, I would like to thank Zhenyu (Cheryl) Qian, Congcong (Coco) Jiang, Andrew Park, Zhen (Lesley) Xie, Ben Unterman, for their wonderful friendship, and Kyung Jae Lee, Jinsil Seo, Meehae Song, Greg Corness, Lorna Boschman, Melody Siadaty, Arefe Dalvandi, Aaron Levisohn, Susan Olubunmi, Eddie Hou, for all the enjoyable conversations. Moreover, I have been fortunate to be part of those intellectual dialogues between members of the v EMIIE game lab at SIAT: David Milam, Natalie Funk, Hector Larios, Joshua Tanenbaum, Bardia Aghabeigi, Wendy Foster, Michael Nixon, Andre Gagne, Beth Aileen Lameman, and everyone else. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge my family and closest ones for their tremendous love and support. I have to thank my parents who “kicked” me out of my home country and gave me the precious opportunity to experience the world, and my sister, Louisa, who shared the amazing sisterhood with me and showed me the door of media and art. I would also like to thank Lenny for his genuine love with which I survived my most difficult days, and, of course, his helping hand in LATEX-ing this dissertation document. Thanks also go to Ying Shui for being my best friend outside school, and Shaun for his strong support by sharing the uneasy parenthood. Finally, I am forever indebted to my daughter, Rilla, for all the sacrifice she had to make during my absence. Thank you, Rilla, for being such a wonderful child. You are the best gift I have ever had. vi Contents Approval ii Abstract iii Dedication iv Acknowledgmentsv Contents vii List of Figures xii List of Tables xv Glossary xvi 1 Introduction1 1.1 Background and Definitions...........................2 1.2 Research Goal...................................4 1.3 Previous Methods and the Problem.......................5 1.4 A Framework for Analyzing Narrative in Games................7 1.5 The Dissertation Map...............................9 2 Narrative and Games 11 2.1 Roles of Narrative in Games........................... 12 2.1.1 Recent Views on Narrative in Games.................. 13 2.1.2 The Status of Narrative in Game Analysis............... 17 2.2 Research Method and Scope........................... 20 2.2.1 Reflection on Textual Analysis for Game Studies............ 21 vii 2.2.2 Strutural Analysis of Game Narrative.................. 23 2.2.3 Method of Play.............................. 26 2.2.4 Scope of Investigation.......................... 27 2.3 Theoretical Foundation and Key Definitions.................. 29 2.3.1 Basic Narratological Instrumental Tools...............

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