Response to “Game Design as Narrative Architecture” by Henry Jenkins

To speak to the piece and supplement my understanding I would like to connect the theses of the piece to various examples that I relate to personally. While this piece references some of the seminal works that defined narrative design, I hope to provide some more recent examples which I feel employee each of the described techniques.

“In the case of evoked narratives, spatial design can either enhance our sense of immersion within a familiar world or communicate a fresh perspective on that story through the altering of established details.”

Blue Prince (2025) – A narrative based puzzle game that relies on the player’s ability to manipulate the floorplan of an “escape room” style mansion. As time (the in-game days) progress, the player must use their ability to manipulate the world around them to uncover more of the overall narrative. This and games like Hades II (2025) are categorized as “Roguelikes”, named after the dungeon exploration game Rogue (1980). These games exploit preconceived notions about the procedurally generated levels of Rogue to create spiraling narratives in which you gain more information as you progress through the ever-shifting world.

“In the case of enacted narratives, the story itself may be structured around the character's movement through space and the features of the environment may retard or accelerate that plot trajectory.”

Hyper Light Drifter (2016) - An ARPG that heavily relies on the exploration of the world to understand it’s narrative. There are notable no likes or dialogue in this game, nor do I believe that there is any parsable text. Within the game, the player explores an unfamiliar world expanding their narrative space mental map as their knowledge of the “physical” space grows. There is an early computer game Another World (1991) that employs a similar narrative tactic this time in the setting of an alien planet.

“In the case of embedded narratives, the game space becomes a memory palace whose contents must be deciphered as the player tries to reconstruct the plot.”

Alan Wake II (2023) – The sequel Remedy’s Alan Wake (2010), a game with a narrative structure that can only be described as Twin Peaks -like. Further, the game draws deeply from the narrative behemoth that is House of Leaves. As such, the player must defy laws of space-time to reconstruct the game’s looping maze of a story. Undoubtably stylistically influenced by horror films and games. A retro game I would like to bring into consideration here as well is the structurally focused narrative horror game Clock Tower (1995).

“In the case of emergent narratives, game spaces are designed to be rich with narrative potential, enabling the story-constructing activity of players.”

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) – A follow up to the 2017 title The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild is an open-world, narratively expansive title that requires the player’s participation with the world to unfold the story. Throughout the game there are hundreds of these micro-narratives. There is an entire genre of these kinds of games that rely on the players ability to transform the world to serve as an agent in creating the narrative. Immediately, games like Garry's Mod (2006) come to mind.

Response to “Introduction to Game Time / Time to play” by Jesper Juul

I find the case of Valve’s Half-Life to be a very interesting example for the case of carefully crafted time. I have been playing Half-Life on and off for a few years now. I have been playing the game on the Steam Deck, a device created by Valve themselves. The experience itself has been great. The performance capabilities themselves have been so great, it has bled into the game’s presentation of time. Due to the Steam Deck being decades newer hardware than the computers that Half-Life was originally designed for, the “loading” portions of the game are neigh imperceivable. This is to such a degree that I am struggling to recall instances of even seeing this screen / pause during my play through. Reflecting on it now, there is one notable exception. The Steam Deck offers a unique way of controlling / interfacing with the game via its touchpads. With in the context of Half-Life, these touchpads offer a direct manipulation of game time. Gesturing on one, you can create a quick-save point and with the other you can immediately load back to this previously saved point. Again, due to the performance capabilities of the hardware, this is near instantaneous and only for a brief second do you experience the “loading” screen. As consequence, you are able to traverse the event time in a much different way that the developers of the game probably ever intended.

Response to “Towards a Game Theory of Game” by Celia Pearce

“Game designers are much less interested in telling a story than in creating a compelling framework for play.”

I find this comment to be very interesting and in alignment with film critic Roger Eberts notorious line, “Video games can never be art”. I bring this up here as I see Celia Pearce’s statement as a corollary derived from Ebert’s statement. In this statement, there is an implied concession to Ebert in that “games are not designed with this telling of a story in mind”.

“Interactive "novels" have been slightly more effective from a critical perspective, but they have made virtually no impact on the mainstream of interactive media.” … “Again, a play-centric model, in which the player is revered and constantly accommodated.”

Looking at this piece retrospectively, it obviously was written at an inflection point in the history of computer video games. In the few years following, works such as Danielewski’s interactive behemoth House of Leaves and Hussie’s Homestuck would be released to the public. Both pieces I feel challenge (challenged?) our understanding of where the lines between traditional narratives, interactive fiction, and video games lie. There would soon be the calcification of the “Walking Simulator” genre of games, which further pushed the boundary between narrative and interactivity.