Dimensions of Narrative Gaming with Untitled Goose Game
Honk honk. The premise is simple: you’re a goose, and your mission is to be a an obnoxious and bothersome goose. Untitled Goose Game (House House, 2019) has gained viral attention for its amusing premise and simple gameplay. When asked how the developing team crafts the jokes that comedic structure of the gameplay, two of the developers responded:
“We assume that the player already knows how the joke works, and we look at ways to make the joke something that the player actually does. What sort of interactions are required? What are the best props? What are the best animations?”
Whether it was their intention or not, this response clearly evokes many of the debates between narratology and ludology in video game studies. In his attempt to bridge the divide, Henry Jenkins notes fives distinctions in gaming that all scholars can agree on (119–20):
- “Not all games tell stories.”
- “Many games do have narrative aspirations.”
- “Narrative analysis need not be prescriptive, even if some narratologists … do seem to be advocating for games to pursue particular narrative forms.”
- “The experience of playing games can never be simply reduced to the experience of a story.”
- “If some games tell stories, they are unlikely to tell them in the same ways that other media tell stories.”
In this journal entry, I would like to look at my play experience with Untitled Goose Game as an example of a game that is seen less as a story and more as a space “ripe with narrative possibility” (119). The game’s title itself points to that narrative possibility, giving no indication on what the game is or how to play it. The game is left in the hands of the player.
But what is the story of Untitled Goose Game? There isn’t really a cohesive story. Rather, the game is full of tasks, and the completion of a particular task list opens up new areas of play and new objectives. The tasks operate as short-term goals—steal the groundskeeper’s keys, trap the boy in the phone booth, make the man spit out his tea. As Jenkins would say, this game does not tell a story.
However, the game does have narrative aspiration. The virality of the game’s popularity is posed on the ability to disrupt villager lives as a goose. Honking, stealing, and causing a nuisance are all central to the game’s driving element: as a goose, you control a narrative in an otherwise narrative-less world. The idea of disrupting quiet (i.e. interacting with non-playable characters who don’t necessarily do much) with one central character’s actions is a cause-and-effect pattern that creates a narrative, as loosely as one can be defined here in the game. The popularity of the game is also a function of this narrative.
Jenkins further notes that “[a] discussion of the narrative potentials of games need not imply a privileging of storytelling over all the possible things games can do” (120). After playing Untitled Goose Game, it seems like the developers really tried to steer away from a linear storytelling model of progression. As the goose, you can avoid the task list and are welcome to browse areas at your own leisure. Indeed, you may find yourself completing tasks that you don’t even know are on the list while experimenting with the game’s affordabilities in the spaces in which you play.
The last two agreements that Jenkins state need to be applied as well. Ludology functions as a necessary agreement between player, story, and play. The mechanics of the game are somewhat awkward. Perhaps due to my lack of experience with PC gaming, the controls involved using multiple keys of my laptop’s keyboard as well as multiple functions of the trackpad. But the point remains: discussing the mechanics of the game “broaden our critical vocabulary for talking about games to deal more fully with [non-storytelling topics]” (120).
And finally, because of the game’s loose relationship with linear progression, everyone will experience and play this game differently. And that is what helps us talk about the game as a game. We ask “have you played the goose game” rather than “have you taken the goose for an adventure.” And that is because we are the goose—we embody the potential for chaos within a restrained world. That chaos is unleashed by the limitations and freedoms of our mechanics and the rules of the game.
Indeed, this is an untitled experience. It is an experience with and as a goose. And the experience is most certainly a game. While the developers have noted that they did not have enough time to come up with a proper title for the game, I think Untitled Goose Game is perfect for what it is.
