In Defense of Cutscenes
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
In Defense of Cutscenes Rune Klevjer Department of Media Studies / InterMedia University of Bergen Pb 7800 5020 Bergen, Norway +47 55588383 [email protected] Abstract The technique of cutscenes, as typically found in story-based action games, is placed within a wider discursive problematic, focusing on the role of pre-written narratives in general. Within a theoretical framework raised by Espen Aarseth, Markku Eskelinen and Marie-Laure Ryan, I discuss the relations between the ergodic and the representational, and between play and narration. I argue that any game event is also a representational event, a part of a typical and familiar symbolic action, in which cutscenes often play a crucial part. Through cutscenes, the ergodic effort acquires typical meanings from the generic worlds of popular culture. Keywords Ergodics, narrative, rhetoric, representation, genre, popular culture. RADICAL LUDOLOGY In his excellent article about confi gurative mechanisms in games, “The Gaming Situation” [5], Markku Eskelinen rightly points out, drawing on Espen Aarseths well-known typology of cybertexts, that playing a game is predominantly a confi gurative practice, not an interpretative one like fi lm or literature. However, the deeply problematic claim following from this is that stories “are just uninteresting ornaments or gift-wrappings to games, and laying any emphasis on studying these kind of marketing tools is just waste of time and energy”. This is a radical ludological argument: Everything other 191 Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference,ed. Frans Mäyrä. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002. Copyright: authors and Tampere University Press. than the pure game mechanics of a computer game is essentially alien to its true aesthetic form. The theoretical premise of this argument was introduced in Espen Aarseth’s ground-breaking Cybertext [1], the fi rst book to suggest a theory about play and narration as two distinct modes of discourse, not only located in literature, but as a dialectic fundamental to human activity in general. Through his concept of the ergodic Aarseth has provided an invaluable tool for investigating games as a unique form of expression, a distinct category of cultural activity not reducible to other and more established categories. Rune Klevjer: The ergodic signifi es the general principle of having to work with the In Defense of Cutscenes materiality of a text, the need to participate in the construction of its material structure. Some ergodic works lead us towards a fi xed solution (a jigsaw- puzzle), others can be unpredictable and open-ended (an experimental hypertext novel). As a discursive mode, the ergodic can be contrasted to narrative discourse, where the user is invited only to engage in the semantics of the text and does not have to worry about its material confi guration. Reading narrative is, as Eskelinen says, a purely interpretative practice. In narrative discourse the user is only a reader, not a co-constructor, not a player. In any game, the ergodic is the defi ning discursive mode, not the narrative. This means that the user is basically involved as a player (doing ergodic work on the materiality of the text), not as a reader (interpreting on a semantic level). This may sound obvious (games are games), but it is an important theoretical premise if we are to avoid studying computer games as if they were just another narrative genre. Following the general perspective raised by Aarseth, both Jesper Juul [9] and Gonzalo Frasca [6] have developed more specifi cally game-oriented ideas about how to understand this basic distinction, centred around the Latin term ludus, both as a mode of textuality and as a mode of activity on a more general level. Correspondingly, all game research, including the study of computer games, would be labelled ludology. There are good reasons why the ludic dimension of computer games deserves considerable theoretical attention. The fi eld is still developing through an early stage, and it is important not to leave it open to affi rmative appropriation by established disciplines and theories. Also, play and games as a cultural activity has received remarkably little attention, except as a sub- category within children’s development studies. On the other hand – does it follow that other modes of discourse in a computer game are accidental to the gaming experience and hence less interesting to computer game theorists? Should computer game studies be a sub-category of general game theory? Radical ludology only takes us so far, mainly for two reasons: a) A computer game is a computing game. Play is transformed by the computer technology, producing distinctive new forms of challenge and attraction that can not be understood through concepts and theories developed to investigate non-computerized play. Although not the subject of this brief paper, both the procedural logic and the 192 spectacular responsiveness of the computer as a media technology has indeed created unique, although not entirely new, textual attractions. b) A computer game (in the narrow, ludological sense of the term) frequently uses conventions of popular culture. In fact, game genres offering ergodic challenges within a fi ctional universe known from other media make up a large portion of the games that people actually buy and play today (sport and driving games being the other major Rune Klevjer: commercial category). The marketing of these genres addresses the In Defense of buyer primarily as a reader, packing their games with heavy intertextual Cutscenes references, most often based on expensive licences from the fi lm industry. Already a standard convention, narration of events within this fi ctional universe is typically conveyed through cutscenes – cinematic sequences adressing the reader, putting the player on hold. Within the radical perspective raised by Markku Eskelinen (inspired by Aarseth) this category of games can be nothing but a bastard discourse, an impure commercial practice that may well be appreciated by mainstream consumers, but cannot be taken seriously by computer game studies, other than as a discursive misunderstanding that probably will go away as games mature (or, admittedly, will live on due to the inherent corruption of mainstream entertainment). Expanding this logic, one could say that not only cutscenes, but any pre-written narrative, fi xed path, scripted event or movie-based character is a sign of immaturity, a dependence on fi lm parallel to the way much early fi lm was dependent on the conventions of staged drama. A mature, involving gameplay would not need any “You are James Bond” or the like, especially not when forced upon the player through elaborate and game-spoiling cinematic narration. DISCURSIVE MODES The problem with this line of argument is that the (necessary) theoretical project of articulating the principles of a specifi c discursive confl ict seems to be confused with an ideology of ‘pure’ gaming. This ideology prescribes an ideal receptional mode of games, a strictly no-nonsense, gameplay-oriented attitude typical among the real (or ‘hard-core’) gamers – the ‘cineastes’ of the game world. This counter-establishment ideology of gaming, partly rooted in the dark arcades of the late 70’s and early 80’s, partly rooted in hacker culture, is instinctively sanctioned by a new breed of oppositional scholars, vaguely identifying mainstream players and mainstream commercial games with established theory. There is a deliberate confusion of ‘game’ as a discursive mode and ‘computer game’ as an actual cultural product. This implies, rather conveniently, that the relevance of narration in any given computer game can be denounced simply by referring to the fact that ‘games’ and narratives are two different things. Originally suggested as tools for the study of computer game aesthetics, the concepts of ergodics and ludology turns into self- 193 contained arguments for advocating the purity of games, targeting a broad category of games (story-based, single player action games) as unworthy of serious attention. Alternatively, the purist can be less categorical, and argue like Espen Aarseth [2], seriously doubting the feasibility of games that try to integrate fi lmic narration: But there seems to be a limit to the usefulness of these kinds of modal crossovers, in that an audience will want the work to perform as either one or the other, and Rune Klevjer: their own role to be either that of player or observer. [2] In Defense of Cutscenes Arguing like this, having no empirical evidence, or even indications, of what different kinds of audiences will actually want or not, is not as hazardous as it may seem. It is based on the assumption that two distinct discursive modes – of which the basic theoretical principles have been soundly established – cannot be mixed into new, stable, meaningful and enjoyable cultural practices. Consequently, a game (read: the cultural product) should stick to being a game (read: the discursive mode), in order to avoid being a confusing half-game. Therefore, we should not even bother to understand story-based action games as a phenomenon, as they are, and probably will always be, an artistic failure (even if consumers continue to enjoy ‘modal crossovers’ like Metal Gear Solid, for empirical reasons we do not know). Contrary to the project of the die-hard ludologists, my general concern is how the ‘alien’ dimension of cultural conventions can work as an integrated part of the gaming experience. In this paper, this is not an empirical question about modes of reception in actual users (however interesting), but rather a call for a stronger interest in a typical textual practice, at once confi gurative and interpretative, both unique and intertextual. The most accentuated expression of such an impure duality is found in the oscillation between cutscenes and play in typical story-based action games. These games offer a highly structured, linear and progressive gameplay, framed by a pre-written story.