Duh.

The props idea is unfortunately not my own, even though I’d like to say it is. I shamelessly ripped the idea from a particular philosopher of literature, Richard Wolheim. He applies the idea to novels, plays, and movies; there’s considerable contention over how well the analogy fits, but I’m convinced the theory works the best for games and video gaming. I wonder if we’ll see philosophy of video gaming courses in a few decades…

Looking forward to any additional posts on this topic; they’ve been very insightful.

I think you’re right, in so far as you say the average player of Civilization probably doesn’t come up with a story as they play; however, I don’t think that stops what’s happened from being a personal narrative. I think (he can correct me if I’m wrong) when Pontifus uses the term “human narrative” or any derivative, the word “narrative” means something different than, simply, “a plot.” Now, since that’s typically what that word means, it might be necessary to use a *different* word, certainly. I think he’s referring to the experience, rather than the story.

Games, movies, books, so on, they all deliver an aesthetic experience. They have visuals, sounds, characterization (even Space Invaders uses one style over another in depicting its aliens and alien-shooting-guy). What I think any form of criticism is meant to do is find ways of describing those experiences, to create another in the reader of the criticism, and games, to that extent, are capable of bearing criticism.

Of course, I don’t think you’re saying they’re not — when you argue a point long enough, you (I) habitually bring it out. But, yeah. I think games aren’t necessarily predicated by traditional narrative, though tellingly, they’re usually more satisfying when a good one is present and well-executed (in my opinion the “storytelling” of games like PoP: Sands of Time, Shadow of the Colossus, and Half-Life [2] are all very good, but different in execution, and those games are some of the most satisfying I’ve played, because the mechanics *and* the stories are good).

I’m not sure any of that made any sense. I just woke up…

I also like your idea of props, and I think it’s relevant to what I’d like to do. A video game surrounds the player with props; I think a good place to start in analyzing games would be a catalog of props available to the player and an investigation of the relationships between these props. There may be some dispute as to what constitutes a prop, however; to use your MMO example, I’d say that the hard rules or “natural laws” of the game, in addition to its NPCs, quest lines, etc., are its props, while player etiquette is not — etiquette and general consensus are sociological elements between players, which I’m inclined to say sets them apart from hard-coded elements of the game world to the point where they aren’t “rules” in the same sense at all. I’m not even prepared to delve into the politics of online worlds, though, so I haven’t given it much thought.

Essentially, narrative is critical to movies and books in a way that they are not in games. Although I suppose one might think of animation buffs who really couldn’t care less about the story of a movie and just instead appreciate on the basis of visual effects, or literature buffs who simply appreciate the technical execution of prose… but these certainly do seem rarer than people who appreciate the mechanical aspects of a game. I suppose as you guys have noted, this might be more to do with the whole “immature medium” thing.
So then narrative isn’t quite a bulletproof way to define games versus movies as I thought, but perhaps there’s something significant there nevertheless.

Okay, on to number 2 – Cuchlann’s bit about the hard-coded rules of the game, and Pontifus’s doubts about the similarity of video games. That’s a definite difference for sure between games of pretend and videogames. For most traditional games, the rules are established by consensus, usually on some sort of rulebook, whereas most games make it impossible to change the rules. Hopefully, I can convince you that despite the differences, they’re still work in similar ways.

The best counter-example I can think of using cheats or hacks to change the rules, but really at most you can only bend them; you need to build a new game from scratch in order to achieve the same sort of thing that happens in a role-playing game when the moderator says “Okay, now you’re in a dragon’s cave.”

Still, I think these “hard rules” are more a semantic confusion (possibly my fault, since I used it first, I think) – it’s not a lack of will to change the rules (that’s why cheats and hacks exist) but rather a physical impossibility. Most games up until the digital age are of course unable to provide perfect control over the environment, and instead establish rules by consensus. Games on the other hand can and do both. A good example might be a typical MMO, which illustrates this “virtual world” idea.

The “rules” of an MMO – the character system, for example, do not strike me as mapping onto the “rules” of a game like Monopoly. Rather, the “rules” of an MMO are more in-line with natural “laws” – like the laws of physics, gravity, etc.
On the other hand, things like acceptable player behaviour, methods of playing a character class, or guild etiquette I would think more closely follows the rules of Monopoly.

I’ll admit it is a bit of a stretch, but at heart I think this is the big difference – traditional games provide some props, however minimal, to augment the reality we already exist in: the Monopoly rulebook, playing pieces, fake money. Video games, on the other hand, provide an entire system of props that replaces everything. In the course of play, players might create particular narratives, but I don’t think that all games provide enough props to do so (the Space Invaders example prior), or narrative creation might just not be an interest to the player.

As a final example, and food for thought, I offer Civilization-style empire-managing games (Medieval: Total War, Civilization, Alpha Centauri, etc.). These games provide a huge system of props – an entire world, if you would. Yet with all these props in place not all players necessarily will spin their own narratives – some players certainly might – a quick perusal of any Civilization-game type board will reveal plenty of fictive histories – but not all will (perhaps playing for the “DING!” of crushing opposing nations).
At the same time, one could certainly read a game log of events taken by a player who has no intention of constructing a narrative and still read it as a narrative… in which case is narrative actually constructed through the game, even though the original player was not doing so?