Playing in the Zone of Becoming I: Agency and Becoming in Video Games

Abstract

When the Prince of Persia turns the clock back yet again and recreates his narrative, who is the author of this story? Is it the player acting as (w)reader, both reading and scripting the story, or is it the game designer who shapes the outline of the plot and the spaces of possibility? Finally, what about the Prince himself — as the embodiment of the artificially intelligent processes and the algorithmic environment of the game? The multiple narrative strands in the rhizomatic structure of video games raise yet another key question in the analysis of video games as narratives. How is it possible to explain the creation of these multiple narratives? Can the process of (w)reading these narrative actualisations into existence be likened to authorship? Even if it is, then such a process is quite different from the commonly held conception of the text as a product of the author’s imagination. In video games, as stated previously, the process of narrative construction involves the machine and the player besides the game designers themselves. A straightforward explanation of gameplay as authorship cannot suffice to comprehend the situation in its full complexity.