Raise Emotions from Interactive Narrative: A Narrative Analysis on This War of Mine
ABSTRACT
Compared with movies, games have unique narrative which can be divided into linear narrative, nonlinear narrative and simultaneous narrative. Linear narrative tends to present a fixed story, while nonlinear and simultaneous narrative enable players to choose or create their stories. Based on the analysis of This War of Mine (2014), this essay will distinguish the difference among these narrative forms and find out the most proper narrative applied to game narrative.
INTRODUCTION
This War of Mine is an independent war game which provides an experience of war seen from the perspective of civilians. In the game, the player should make decisions and take actions to survive the war.
Pawel Miechowski (2015), the senior writer of the game, suggests that games are superior than movies because they are more likely to raise spectators’ emotions from inside. Just like most war movies, mainstream war games tend to lead the player to the presupposed story. On contrast, This War of Mine is more reflective in the brutality of war because the player in the game is more like a narrator and immerses himself in the story he creates.
The narrative of This War of Mine is totally different from mainstream war games. Mainstream war games focus on the conflicts of battlefields and glorify war heroes, while This War of Mine depicts the occupied city and observes hardships of civilians under siege. In addition to the narrative factors in the stories, more importantly, the main narrative forms between mainstream war games and This War of Mine vary from linear narrative to interactive narrative. In order to analyze the narrative of This War of Mine, I will introduce three narrative forms including linear narrative, nonlinear narrative and simultaneous narrative to elaborate the story and the narrative structure. Among the three forms, nonlinear narrative and simultaneous narrative can be considered as interactive narrative which enables players to decide the game plots and narrate their own stories. This essay is to clarify what the interactive narrative in the game is and reveal the impact of interactive narrative.
LINEAR NARRATIVE
Linear narrative is the form which movies and games share. Riedl (2006) suggests that “linear narrative is a traditional form of narrative in which a sequence of events is narrated from beginning to ending without variation or possibility of a user altering the way in which the story unfolds or ends.” The linear narrative in games is most close to the traditional narrative. In linear narrative, plots consist of characters’ actions, choice and states. According to Chatman (1980), plots can be divided into kernels and satellites based on their importance. By this definition, the story background and the structure of events belong to linear narrative. For example, the background of This War of Mine is the Siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1996 which is considered as the longest siege in the history of modern war. The city is short of supplies, teeming with vandals and gangsters. In the morning, the snipers from Serbian and Bosnian militaries hide on the roof and surveillance the streets. The civilians are frightened to venture out in case the snipers shoot them on sight, so they can only produce necessaries of life and construct defenses in their shelter. Only in the evening can they go out and seek some resources like food and medicines.
Moreover, kernels are presupposed in linear narrative. Most games set a basic direction and ending of stories for the future journey of players. Through a mix of scavenging resources, producing necessaries and trading products, the players of This War of Mine finally solve living problems and survive the war. No matter which player plays this game, he will experience the similar development of plots, more specifically, the same destiny in the game. Different players focus on different parts of the game. Sometimes they may take unusual actions like stealing and even murdering others and sometimes they may fail to survive. However, the core story of the game is still concerned with survival instead of defeating the enemies just like elite soldiers in mainstream war games.
Thirdly, in the key points of games, game clips, dialogues, windows with scroll bars will be presented to provide story plots, pushing development of the game story. There are several special events occurring on certain days of the war in This War of Mine and main events revolve around the crime or weather in the city of the game. To take Outbreak of Crime for example, on the day the event starts (indicated by a different day intro picture and the words “Outbreak of Crime” below the Day number), the crime rate rises sharply and raids occur daily. In this event, the players have to strengthen their defenses in order to protect their belongings from robbery and the difficulty of the game climbs up to a higher level. Therefore, such special events play important role in game stories and these key points communicate important messages of game stories.
The narrative mentioned above is controlled completely by the computer rather than the game players, and it is responsible to link and make up the plots between the game levels. In this narrative, the game players lose their ability to control the protagonist and is informed with dialogues and cutscenes, which coincides with the narrative of movies. The Call of Duty series employ a great quantity of game cutscenes in which players trigger a plot as they play for a time. In order to enter the next level, players have to break off the experience and accept the compulsory cutscenes. Compared with other mainstream war games characterized by linear narrative, this kind of narrative is less involved in This War of Mine and pictures and texts are the most frequent forms we can find which can conserve the interactivity of the game. In general, in this narrative form, even if players make different decisions to complete the tasks, they cannot influence the narrative ending, which make the players feel passive and powerless.
NONLINEAR NARRATIVE
The main narrative difference between traditional media and digital games is that player’s behavior constitutes game narrative. Linear narrative in games constructs discourse and platform of games for players, in which players can start with their own virtual journeys. Ben McIntosh (2010) suggests that “Nonlinear narratives extend the benefits of linear narratives. The player is given options as to what he or she chooses to do.” In nonlinear narrative, player can choose different branches to develop different plots. In the city’s map of This War of Mine, there are several places which players can visit, scavenge and trigger relevant plots. Some places may be blocked due to the special events and the others are open. Not only can players visit the place they want, but they can also experience the special plots which depend on the time you visit, the character you arrange and the items carried by your character. For example, when the player chooses to visit Decrepit Squat, he will meet a starving painter when he carries any food. If the character gives the food to the painter, he will receive satisfactory returns. If the player reject the request, the painter will starve to death and it will make all the characters feel sad. It is players’ choices that make more potential, mystery and diversity for game narrative.
In addition to offering choices, according to Ben McIntosh (2010) nonlinear narrative can dynamically generate plot elements based on players’ performance aand players have no option. It seems that players are deprived of their rights to choose, but this nonlinear narrative form is actually on the basis of players’ behavior. In This War of Mine, almost all the decisions are vague except some explicit dialogue boxes. Most of the time, the story plots depend on characters’ values of physical conditions and mental conditions. Among them, the value of mental health contributes to significant influence on game plots. To take Bruno for example, once he feels sad, he will fight and hurt your fellow survivors and make your shelter into trouble. Notably, every plot will be keep in character’s diary. This invisible mechanism can create various character biographies. In this way, the same player can gain totally different experience even if he plays the same game.
The variability is the key which distinguishes linear narrative and nonlinear narrative. Once players make differences in game narrative, their sense of efficacy can enhance their experience of games, and any book or movie on siege of Sarajevo can hardly make it. However, the plots of This War of Mine consist of all the decisions triggered by players rather than fixed scripts, and players narrate their own stories in a certain sense. Every character in the game has multiple endings. Whether the characters survive the war or they are all killed unfortunately, the end of the game will present all the key decisions the player has made during the gameplay, which makes up the multiple destiny of the characters. When players can affect the game narrative through their avatars, they will gain more emotional value than pure stories in the game.
SIMULTANEOUS NARRATIVE
Diane Carr (2006) suggests that some game plots exist in the intersection between linear narrative and nonlinear narrative of game, such as emergencies, and they will be presented in the forms of cutscenes or dialogues. This special plots can be considered as simultaneous narrative in which narratives and actions happen simultaneously. Just like live sports events, emergencies in games obey some characteristic of linear narrative but players are mastermind behind and they can change the development of game plots. However, all the actions and events are ruled by certain game discourse. In the gameplay of This War of Mine, the character can trigger instant dialogue when he encounters NPCs. More importantly, NPCs’ reaction will change simultaneously depending on your action. For instance, if you show your weapons and get close to the gangsters, they will warn you and threaten you with force. Once you leave them alone, they will acknowledge your self-awareness. Even if what the NPCs say is preset and hard to be changed by the player, the action or behavior of the player can make difference and enhance a sense of control. As we analyze in the part of linear narrative, the plots we are encountering are fixed and preset, and players can only organize and change based on the fundamental plots of the game.
Making decisions is a more and more popular theme in contemporary games. Players try to immerse themselves in the avatars and make their own decisions. Crawford (2012) considers nonlinear narrative and simultaneous narrative as “interactive narrative”. He argues that game writer should create an interactive story world rather than stories, which is totally different from creative process in traditional media. The key to the interactive narrative is that an interactive world is bigger than a story. The process which players interact with games means that players create a new story in the interactive world and the process which players experience in games refers to the development of the story. In other word, the writer of the interactive narrative creates a world, while the true narrator is the player or the character in the game.
CONCLUSIONS
According to the narrative structure, game stories can be divided into linear narrative, nonlinear narrative and simultaneous narrative. Linear narrative, also concerned with traditional narrative, ignores any impacts of players and lead them to the fixed story plots such as cutscenes and dialogues. On the contrast, nonlinear and simultaneous narrative, also considered as interactive narrative, empower players to make difference in game stories in both ways of self-determination and performance evaluation. The game designers of This War of Mine has good command of the game mechanism and interactive narrative so that players are immersed in an interactive world rather than a fixed movie and they can create their own survival stories. On the further thinking of game narrative, interactive narrative will take up larger proportions than linear narrative because interactive narrative can present the infinite possibility of stories. Compared with story plots, the variability the player encounters in the story world is more attractive.
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