Abstract
“Ludonarrative dissonance” derives from Clint Hocking’s review of the videogame Bioshock, and refers to instances where gameplay seemingly runs counter to the narrative. The procedural (e.g., mechanics, or gameplay) versus narrative debate has waned within the ludic discipline, however, in the larger gaming community these underlying tensions surfaced in the most toxic rhetoric. Gone Home met tremendous hostility (in the “Gamergate” controversy), because conventional gameplay is elided in favor of narrative. The narrative focuses on a young queer woman, and this vividly contrasts with the supposed “default” videogame demographic. And for these reasons Gone Home might be read as stupid. Casual games (typically phone-based games), relatively unplayable without micro-transactions, are implicitly placed in a contingent relationship with triple-A console games, also, might be viewed as stupid.
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- 1.
Clint Hocking, “Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock,” Click Nothing, October 7, 2007, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.clicknothing.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html.
- 2.
Marcus Maloney, “Ambivalent Violence in Contemporary Game Design,” Games and Culture vol. 14, no. 1 (2016): 35–36.
- 3.
Hocking.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2016).
- 8.
Nick Ballantyne, “The What, Why & WTF: Ludonarrative Dissonance,” gamecloud.net , February 15, 2015, accessed April 10, 2019, https://gamecloud.net.au/features/opinion/twwwtf-ludonarrative-dissonance. Italics in original.
- 9.
Ballantyne. Italics in original.
- 10.
Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), ix.
- 11.
The Smithsonian The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect exhibition catalog similarly observes, “ BioShock manages to deliver an action game that forces the player into uncomfortable situations and requires him or her to think about the implications of one’s actions.” Chris Melissino and Patrick O’Rourke, The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect, exhibition catalog (New York: Welcome Books; Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2013), 162. At the same time, however, the game is not necessarily a wholesale rejection of sadean logic, or Randian Objectivism. As Parker observes, “ Bioshock is neutral enough in its politics to be widely marketable. As Aldred and Greenspan argue, the game is politically ambivalent, sometimes interrogating and sometimes celebrating the ideology it engages.” Felan Parker, “Canonizing Bioshock: Cultural Value and the Prestige Game,” Games and Culture vol. 12, nos. 7–8 (2015), 747–748. Parker, in this instance, is drawing from Jessica Aldred and Brian Greenspan, see: Jessica Aldred and Brian Greenspan, “A Man Chooses, A Slave Obeys: BioShock and the Dystopian Logic of Convergence,” Games and Culture vol. 6, no. 5 (2011), 480.
- 12.
Scott Hughes, “Get Real: Narrative and Gameplay in The Last of Us,” Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology vol. 6, no. 1 (Summer 2015), 150.
- 13.
Ibid., 153–154.
- 14.
Jason Sheehan, “Reading the Game: The Last of Us,” NPR, December 31, 2016, accessed December 31, 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/12/31/505592646/reading-the-game-the-last-of-us.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Elijah Gonzalez, “What is Ludonarrative Dissonance,” gamrvw.com , July 22, 2018, accessed April 23, 2019, https://gamervw.com/2018/07/22/ludonarrative-dissonance-matter/.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Undertale WIKI, accessed April 21, 2019, https://undertale.fandom.com/wiki/Genocide_Route.
- 19.
Frederic Seraphine, “The Rhetoric of Undertale—Ludonarrative Dissonance and Symbolism,” Digital Games Research Association JAPAN, Proceedings of 8th Conference, accessed April 21, 2019, 2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323545890_The_Rhetoric_of_Undertale-Ludonarrative_Dissonance_and_Symbolism.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Chris Isaac, “Interview: Undertale Game Creator Toby Fox,” The Mary Sue, December 102,015, accessed April 232,019, https://www.themarysue.com/interview-undertale-game-creator-toby-fox/.
- 22.
Jake Krajewski, “‘Undertale’ and Permanent Consequences in Video Games,” Reporter, November 30, 2015, accessed April 23, 2019, https://reporter.rit.edu/leisure/undertale-and-permanent-consequences-video-games.
- 23.
“Wisp-Odyssey,” post to Steam discussion boards on January 24, 2016 @11:12 pm, accessed April 23, 2019, https://steamcommunity.com/app/391540/discussions/0/458606877328944567/.
- 24.
Jason Schreier, “Inside Rockstar Games Culture of Crunch,” Kotaku, October 23, 2018, accessed April 20, 2019, https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1829936466.
- 25.
For some laughs search: “Red Dead Redemption II cinematic mode fails.”
- 26.
Quoted in Film Crit Hulk, “Red Dead Redemption Six Months Later: A Detailed Look at the Failures and Success of Rockstar’s Latest Hit,” Polygon, April 22, 2019, accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/22/18298277/red-dead-redemption-2-review-rdr2-story-design-criticism?fbclid=IwAR1r8A5zVy6X0o4ZfiHnHmt7Hx3quHyda3xfxcw_aY4ubrUorH6htpUoMJA.
- 27.
Film Crit Hulk.
- 28.
The Netflix series Love, Death, and Robots (2019) some of the episodes use photo-realistic animation, but the movement in some cases is slightly stilted. It is difficult at times to determine what we are looking at—wait is this real, or is this animated—and in this confusion, there is a possible encounter with the stupid.
- 29.
Almost invariably Gone Home is compared to, or placed in the company of the Myst videogame franchise (the first in the series released in 1993) where players were likewise invited to read diaries, and to manipulate parts of the world to unlock secrets.
- 30.
Felan Parker, “Canonizing Bioshock: Cultural Value and the Prestige Game,” Games and Culture vol. 12, nos. 7–8 (2015), 743. For “embedded narratives” see Henry Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan eds. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004), 118–130.
- 31.
Graeme Kirkpatrick, Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game (New York: Manchester University Press, 2011), 163.
- 32.
Ibid., 165. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 129, 121.
- 33.
Kirkpatrick, 165.
- 34.
Chris Suellentrop, “Student’s Trip Ends; A Mystery Just Begins in Gone Home, a Family Mystery Unfolds,” New York Times, August 18, 2003, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/arts/video-games/in-gonehome-a-family-mystery-unfolds.html?_r=0.
- 35.
Patricia Hernandez, “Gone Home: The Kotaku Review,” Kotaku, August 15, 2013, accessed November 10, 2018, http://kotaku.com/gone-homethe-kotaku-review-1118218265.
- 36.
Anonymous, “Gone Home: THIS IS NOT A GAME,” no post-date, accessed August 8, 2016, https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Gone_Home.
- 37.
Daniel Nye Griffiths suggests that it might be best to read Gone Home as a novel: “It might be best to think of Gone Home as a novel—once it is read it is read, although you may wish to dip back in—and a set of modifiers allowing the player to unlock all doors and turn on all the lights will allow second runs to focus on neglected areas without retracing too many superfluous steps.” Daniel Nye Griffiths, “‘Gone Home’ – Review A Teenaged Girl at the Heart of a Grown-Up Game,” Forbes, August 15, 2013, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.forbes.com/sites/games/2013/08/15/gone-home-review-a-teenaged-girl-at-the-heart-of-agrown-up-game/#b84cafc583a5.
- 38.
Sam Anderson, “Just One More Game … Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games,’” New York Times Magazine, April 4, 2012, accessed November 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmville-and-other-hyperaddictive-stupid-games.html.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Aubrey Anable defines “casual games” in the following way: “The industry classification of casual games encompasses several genres—online puzzle, word, and card games such as Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds, and solitaire; simulation, time management, and social games such as Words with Friends and FarmVille; and less definable hits like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Clash of Clans. These very different games share some basic similarities: they have simple graphics and mechanics, they are usually browser or app based, and they are free or cost very little to play. Perhaps more than anything, casual games are designed to be played in short bursts of five to ten minutes and then set aside. With the advent of micro-purchases, often these games have built-in features that limit the amount of time a person can play in one sitting before being prompted to take a break or pay to continue playing. These games are designed to be interruptible because they are understood to be played in the context of work done while sitting in front of a computer or played on a mobile phone that might at any moment receive an email, text, or call.” Aubrey Anable, Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 74.
- 42.
Anderson . Related to the topic of “wasted time,” see Katherine Isbister’s discussion of networked-games, many of which are app-based intended to be used in small snatches of time, and how this potentially interferes with “real world” interactions. Katherine Isbister, How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2016), 126–130.
- 43.
Anderson . Anderson cites Charles Pratt, “a researcher in New York University’s Game Center, refers to such games as ‘knitting games.’” This seems slightly problematic, it connotes a gendering of “casual games” or phone-based games as feminine; while “real” console based games are presumably masculine. We understand the analogy of knitting being an activity that can be done during “idle time,” nonetheless the cultural connotations of the analogy are impossible to overlook.
- 44.
Anderson.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
“Freemium Isn’t Free,” Trey Parker, South Park , Comedy Central, Season 18, Episode 6 (November 5, 2014).
- 47.
Incidentally, Fallout 76 could also be viewed as a stupid genre fail because, in the opinion of many of its players, the new genre added nothing to the franchise and that, arguably for gamers more than the consumers of other media, game genre directly implies and addresses questions of respect between developer and consumer.
- 48.
Paul Tassi reports in his 2018 Forbes’s article that, “The game made $104 million in May, which is a 174% jump from the previous year, and the game had 147 million active users in May.” Paul Tassi, “ Pokémon GO Is More Popular Than It’s Been At Any Point Since Launch in 2016,” Forbes, June 27, 2018, accessed November 10, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/06/27/pokemon-go-is-more-popular-than-its-been-at-any-point-since-launch-in-2016/#7ecededacfd2.
- 49.
Rebecca Hersher, “Holocaust Museum, Arlington National Cemetery Plead: No Pokémon,” NPR, July 12, 2016, accessed April 20, 2019, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/12/485759308/holocaust-museum-arlington-national-cemetery-plead-no-pokemon.
- 50.
Sam Kriss, “Resist Pokemon Go,” Jacobin, July 14, 2016, accessed April 13, 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-pokestops-game-situationist-play-children/.
- 51.
Abdelhafid Khatib, “Attempt at a Psychogeographical Description of Les Halles,” Internationale Situationniste #2, December 1958, accessed April 28, 2019, https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/leshalles.html.
- 52.
Jeff Sparrow, “Live in the moment: the Situationists & Pokémon GO,” Overland Literary Journal, July 12, 2016, accessed April 25, 2019, https://overland.org.au/2016/07/live-in-the-moment-the-situationists-pokemon-go/.
- 53.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (London: Rebel Press, 2002), 7.
- 54.
Kriss.
- 55.
Jessica Lachenal, “It’s Super Effective: Players say Pokémon GO Helps Their Mental Health,” The Mary Sue, July 12, 2016, accessed April 30, 2019, https://www.themarysue.com/pokemon-go-mental-health/.
- 56.
News report, “New Research: Pokémon Go: A Potential Tool for Mental Health,” American Psychological Association, May 06, 2018, accessed April 30, 2019, https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/new-research-pok%C3%A9mon-go-a-potential-tool-for-mental-health.
- 57.
Note that among Sheehan’s “Reading the Game” series, is a review of Walden, a videogame premised on the Henry David Thoreau’s memoir Walden. See Jason Sheehan, “Reading the Game: Walden,” NPR, December 13, 2018, accessed December 13, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/12/13/676129780/reading-the-game-walden.
- 58.
Jason Sheehan, “Reading the Game: Red Dead Redemption 2,” NPR, January 1, 2019, accessed January 1, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/01/01/681222316/reading-the-game-red-dead-redemption-2.
- 59.
Michael Nitsche, Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), 44. Others have drawn on Fredric Jameson’s conception of cognitive mapping to frame the discussion of spatialized storytelling. See for example, Luke Arnott, “Mapping Metroid: Narrative, Space, and Other M,” Games and Culture vol. 12, no. 1 (2017), 21–22.
- 60.
Helen Hester, Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex (New York: SUNY Press, 2014), 65.
- 61.
See Aaron Kerner, Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11: Horror, Exploitation, and the Cinema of Sensations (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 2011), 56–59.
- 62.
Parker , 751. Parker has assimilated a lot of research here, see: Roger Travis, “Bioshock in the Cave: Ethical Education in Plato and in Video Games,” in Ethics and Game Design, eds. Karen Schrier and David Gibson (Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2010), 97; Tom Bissell, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 153–154; Grant Tavinor, “Bioshock and the Art of Rapture,” Philosophy and Literature vol. 33, no. 1 (April 2009), 101; Anonymous, “Game Play: BioShock Narrative,” blogpost, September 21, 2007, accessed February 12, 2019, http://cathodetan.blogspot.ca/2007/09/game-play-bioshock-narrative.html; A. Pfister, review of “BioShock” blogpost, August 16, 2007, accessed February 12, 2019, http://www.1up.com/reviews/bioshock_3; Andrew Vanden Bossche, “Analysis: Would You Kindly? BioShock And Free Will,” Gamasutra, August 18, 2009, accessed February 12, 2019, https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/115766/Analysis_Would_You_Kindly_BioShock_And_Free_Will.php; R. Tulloch, “Ludic Dystopias: Power, Politics and Play,” in Proceedings of the Sixth Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment, ed. M. Ryan (New York: ACM., 2009), no pagination; Sparky Clarkson, “You Can’t Put a Price on Your Soul,” blogpost, Ludo-narratology, April 4, 2009, accessed February 12, 2019, http://ludo.mwclarkson.com/2009/04/you-cant-put-a-price-on-your-soul/; Charles Onyett, “Bioshock,” review, IGN, August 17, 2007, accessed February 12, 2019, https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/08/17/bioshock-review-2; and Tavinor, 104.
- 63.
Matthew Thomas Payne, “War Bytes: The Critique of Militainment in Spec Ops: The Line,” Critical Studies in Media Communication vol. 31, no. 4 (October 2014), 269.
- 64.
Ibid., 270.
- 65.
Ben Whaley cites Catherine (designed by Atlus 2011) as an example where ludonarrative dissonance is used for comedic (and meta-gameplay) purposes: “a crucial difference between Hocking’s critique of Bioshock and Catherine is that the latter consciously uses these jarring, alternative design choices precisely for meta-narrative and comedic purposes. Catherine wants to make players laugh and think at the same time. Because of this, the distanced engagement of Japanese game design capitalizes on the feeling of ludonarrative dissonance and redeploys it as a useful tool for player creativity and immersion” (Whaley , 109). Whaley suggests that the objective of Catherine is actually to get gamers to stop playing games, and to get out into the “real world”: “With regard to distance, the self-reflexive and meta-narrative elements continually force the player to be cognizant of the fact that they are playing a video game. This is accomplished via the confessional gameplay segments and online indexing of poll answers as well as the occasional breaking of the fourth wall in character monologues. Meta-gameplay such as this purposefully detaches the player from the game world and encourages them to think about their real everyday life and actions. Indeed, one cannot progress through the game if they do not answer the polls and the sheer act of answering elicits self-reflexivity from the player. It is the synthesis of these two forms of engagement that give video games like Catherine the potential to function both as effectual social narratives and also potentially encourage real social change through player self-reflection.” Ben Whaley, “Who Will Play Terebi Gemu When No Japanese Children Remain? Distanced Engagement in Atlus’ Catherine,” Games and Culture vol. 13, no. 1 (2015), 110.
- 66.
Ian Bogost, “Perpetual Adolescence: The Fullbright Company’s Gone Home,” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 28, 2013, accessed November 10, 2018, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/perpetual-adolescence-the-fullbright-companys-gone-home/.
- 67.
Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” 126.
- 68.
John Lanchester also associates videogames with pornography, but in a decidedly less generous manner: “And what do they want? The same thing the audience for any new medium always wants: they want pornography, broadly defined. They want to see things they aren’t supposed to see. This is why video games, in general (and away from the world of Miyamoto-san) are so preoccupied with violence—it’s what young men want to see. (Pornography in the sexual sense is less of an issue: they can get that from the internet, any time they want.) Their rule-bound, target-bound educations and work lives leave them with a deep craving to go and commit imaginary crimes—as well they might. Not all games are cynically, affectlessly violent, but a lot of them are, and this trend is holding video games back. It’s keeping them at the level of Hollywood blockbusters, when they could go on to be something else and something more.” (John Lanchester, “Is It Art?” London Review of Books vol. 31, no. 1 (January 2009): https://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/john-lanchester/is-it-art.) Summerley, however, similarly recognizes the structural similarities between the pornographic (and musical) genre and that of videogames: “Pornography, musicals and games are all forms that can be enjoyed apart from a fictional context and it is surprising that they are not compared more often given their remarkable structural similarities. For pornography, games and musicals an explicit narrative is arguably optional and their formal structure means that they often come across tensions when trying to convey fictional information. Fiction in pornography is fraught with difficulty when reading it mostly due to the nature of pornography and its audience. Like games, there are those who would question whether there is even any need for any kind of fiction, narrative or story in pornography. Game developer John Carmack made the infamous analogy that, ‘Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.’ … However, this does not detract from the fact that there are audiences that engage with stories in both games and pornography.” Rory K. Summerley, “Approaches to Game Fiction Derived from Musicals and Pornography,” Arts vol. 7, no. 3 (2018): no pagination. Summerley cites David Kushner, Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture (New York: Random House, 2003), 120.
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Kerner, A., Hoxter, J. (2019). The Stupid as Ludonarrative Dissonance. In: Theorizing Stupid Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28176-2_5
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