The Narrative/Gameplay Paradigm: Why Games Depend on Violence

There is a phenomenon in game design that demands the presence of violence (as a specific type of conflict) in the stories of video games. Though this principle is not universal, and can be overcome, it is powerful, and the overwhelming majority of video games conform to it. This principle is the Narrative/Gameplay Paradigm. This, at its heart, is the fundamental problem of the juxtaposition of gameplay and narrative.

Were I to sum this principle up in one sentence, it would be as such: A game’s structure must be known to the player, whereas the story’s structure should not. Hopefully this somewhat cryptic idea will make more sense by the end of this article.

First, though I am not going to launch into a lesson on story structure, I am going to emphasize one thing about it. Though stories are structured, and most good stories share many structural similarities (even all, if you strip them down to their most basic forms), the way that structure plays out should never be known to the viewer/player/reader (excluding, of course, adaptations of known stories or historical events). Though we usually know how a movie begins based on a trailer, we should not know how it ends. Though we know that the end of the movie will feature either the success or failure of the protagonist’s quest, we should not know which and what it will mean to the story’s characters and world afterwards. Stories are structured, yes, but the one experiencing the story should not have full understanding of a given story’s structure until it has ended.

However, games, by nature, are not like this. A game, be it a video game, board game, sport, whatever, requires the player to know their goal and the ways they can accomplish it. Even games like the classic point-and-click adventure games, in which much time is spent trying to figure out what the player has to do, the structure is constantly present. The controls are the rules, the tools by which the player completes his/her goals. Completion of the goal is success, whereas failure is to lose the game, and the criteria for either outcome are part of the rules. Even if the goals are unclear, the game’s rules, its structure, must be understood by the player. The game cannot be played otherwise.

You may already be seeing the paradox that is forming between the two. The combination of a game, which must be understood in order to be played, and a narrative, which must involve mystery in order to have full effect, can cause issues. Namely, if you know that victory in the game equals victory in the story, there is no surprise in the narrative, but how can one know they are making a victory-oriented decision in a game if the mystery of the story is preserved? Both narrative and game need conflict, but how can both play out when the structural difference is so great?

Sometimes it's hard to tell what the
best choice is in Clannad's
emotional romance story.  

For instance, consider a video game that tells a romance story. What is the goal? You could say it is for the protagonist to “get the girl,” but is life really so simple? Is there any one “right” way to win a girl’s heart that could be emulated by a set of rules? If the protagonist ends up losing this girl, is that really failure? In a game it could be, but that approach weakens the story by not considering the potential good that could come of this outcome; life is never so simple for such a thing to be considered an absolute failure.

However, the opposite is true as well. If story attempts to wholly dictate gameplay, how can a game possibly emulate the amount of choices and abilities that would be available in real life? It is a technological and creative impossibility. There is a reason the player cannot roundhouse kick an enemy in the face in Halo; it would be fully possible for the Master Chief as a character, but including every action he could perform in the gameplay mechanics simply would not be possible, least of all practical (thus leading to the whole, "That cutscene was awesome; why can't I do that in the game?" issue that plagues so many action games). For that matter, if you’ve played Phoenix Wright, you know how frustrating it can be to work out a solution and find out you were mistaken, not because your conclusion was wrong, but because it’s not the specific solution the developers programmed into the game. This is inevitable; it is impossible for a game to include every response Phoenix could have, or even every logical path he could follow to a solution.

In this way, gameplay and narrative are inherently at odds. How does one provide the player with a clearly rule-based game while also presenting a narrative not driven by these rules, but by a workable plot and natural characters? It is a difficult question that few developers have even dared to stare in the face, which leads to the most important function of the Narrative/Gameplay Paradigm.

Take a look at your game library, or at least think through the games you own for a second. Consider how many games you have that are not centered around a life/death conflict. If you have mostly adventure games or visual novels, you're in a minority; think about the majority of games as a whole. The vast majority of narrative games are like this; one obviously thinks first of violent games like Grand Theft Auto or God of War, but even Pac-Man and Asteroids are defined by a life-or-death struggle. Have you ever wondered why this is?

The Narrative/Gameplay Paradigm gives us this answer (though it’s hardly considered anymore since violence has become the base model for most games); death is the only thing in life that can really be considered an absolute form of defeat. Guy doesn’t get the girl; maybe he can win her back, or maybe there’s another girl. Detective doesn’t find the evidence he needs; there will be more opportunities, more crime scenes. But death is the end. Unless a game's story goes into the afterlife or something, death is the end. No questions asked. If the player character(s) die, that is the end. There is nothing left.

What better way to work around the Narrative/Gameplay Paradigm than this? Consider Halo: if Master Chief dies, the player fails and has to try again. If he lives to advance through the story to the eventual end, he wins. Survival is success, death is failure, and there is no reason to question either. The same works for Mario, Prince of Persia, even older games like Missile Command. The struggle between life and death is the easiest thing to portray in an interactive context, because it provides a straightforward framework for victory and defeat.

The resulting problem is that video games mostly tell stories that could best be compared to action films. There is nothing wrong with that kind of story: as it is, video games have told plenty of stories that, in my opinion, belong among the best works of classic literature and great film. But video games can only evolve so much as a medium when genres such as romance, domestic drama, and mystery are as overlooked as they are.

There are many ways to overcome this paradigm. Far too many for me to cover here, else you’d still be reading this article an hour from now (or, more likely, you'll have stopped a good deal before then). I’ll cover them later, either in their own articles or mentioning them in other contexts, whatever works best for them. Until then, feel free to comment with your thoughts on this concept! This is one of the original ideas I’ve had, and I’ve been developing it for a while, so feel free to criticize and help me develop it further in your comments or emails!  If you think this stuff is interesting, please consider liking Binary Narrative on Facebook.