It’s a long running joke between friends of mine (ok, mostly between Sam and I), that I hate narrative. I skip quest text, I skip cut scenes, and I never look up the lore to a game I play. This semester, however, has thrown me into the narrative deep end. I’m teaching Writing for Video Games, which has me reading countless books and articles on storytelling in games, watching hours of “game movies” (spliced together scenes from a game to make a cohesive story), and playing through games I hadn’t fully payed attention to. Not only that, but I’m playing and reading the stuff my students come up with, and I love it. I REALLY love it. So what gives? How does a self-professed ludologist suddenly fall in love with story?
To find the answer, I had to journey back to the beginning of my gaming life, when I was about 5 or 6. Super Mario Bros 3 came out in 1988, when I was just 3 years old. So by the time we got our NES, I was a little older. I played like many girls my age played: I would stay up and watch my brother and his friends play. I would beg him and throw a fit until he agreed to let me quietly sit behind the couch and watch the boys play (games are boys’ territory, after all). Then once they all fell asleep or headed outside to the tent they were staying in, I would play. It would often be quick and in short bursts, since I didn’t want to get caught staying up past bedtime. Sometimes I would play until the sun came up; those were glorious nights. My gaming continued this way for a long time, until I grew up a little more, my brother grew up a little more, and gaming grew up a little more.
At around 9 years old I got my turn at the controller. The boys would play a level or boss fight over and over and over. I would sit behind them, watching, analyzing, thinking. They’re jumping too soon. They need to counter before shooting. Then I would get my shot, and I sometimes would beat the boss or pass the level, strictly by virtue of being an observer. Then my friend and I each got a Sega Genesis, and with it some games that were more “mine.” We played Toe Jam and Earl slowly, deliberately. I loved those crazy aliens. I became Earl. I had never been able to play a game that way, since my previous play had always been in short bursts and observational. In many of those situations I had watched for so long and was so anxious to push buttons and control the character that by the time I got the chance I totally disregarded the narrative. But when the Sega Genesis came out and I got my own games, that began to change.
The first narrative I fell in love with was Resident Evil 2, released in 1998 for the Playstation. I was 13; most of my friends had a Playstation. I spent nearly 48 hours awake beating the game with a friend of mine. We loved the story. We wrote fanfic about the story. It had a female protagonist, and we related to her. It was truly a breakthrough time, as I began to fall more in love with the story of games. I didn’t give a shit if the critics thought it was a good game. I didn’t worry about how my gamer skills looked to observers. It was just her and I, kicking ass. Of course, this wasn’t happening in a vacuum. Final Fantasy VII came out in 1997, which many think changed the landscape of storytelling in games. Half-Life, another groundbreaking narrative game, came out in 1998. This was probably the golden age of video game storytelling, and it was when I was finally able to see myself and make others see me as a gamer, despite being a girl.
Yet it’s never that easy, is it. A 13-year-old girl doesn’t just get to plop herself down into a “boy’s space” without repercussions, not to mention all the other issues that come with being a teenager. Still I played, but the glory days of being able to slowly devour a narrative were gone. Replaced by a couch full of friends all taking turns, or me trying to get really good at the mechanics of a game to seem valuable enough, or good enough, to be counted a gamer by my male friends.
So if I fell in love with narrative, why do I skip cut scenes, dialogue, quest text, and so on now? I have enough time to read and experience, but I don’t. I have been reflecting about this for weeks, and here is why: I grew up in a climate of scarcity when it came to gaming. Now I am conditioned to play through as quickly and efficiently as possible because that’s how I had to play during my formidable gaming year (I have many more stories like this if you don’t believe me). If I had grown up playing D&D, I think my ability to enjoy story would be different. But like many women and girls, my very existence as a gamer relied on being ludically proficient: if I couldn’t hang on this level or that boss, then I was out.
I have decided to stop this madness right now. I’m going to play games slowly. I’m going to allow myself entrance into those elusive online worlds of lore. I’m going to change my experience of storytelling in games. I don’t live in a climate of scarcity anymore, and I’m hungry for a good story.
