All Fun And Games

Today we learnt about video games from a more academic perspective. It started off easy by stating that their played on bulky arcade machines, consoles hooked to the telly and computers. It started getting a bit heavier after that introducing a couple of new words to my vocabulary. The first is narratology which is quite simply seeing them as and through the story line. This works fine for some of the games that have a story such as the Spiderman games or television based games such as The Simpson's or Family Guy. I have these on my XBOX and know that the character you're playing as has tasks to perform to get further into the story. Although I'm not 100% sure, I would place my NRL and cricket games in this as in the game you have a certain role and a logical task to follow. The other word was ludology which is concerned with the game play aspects itself such as my first console Pong. Even though this may seem to contradict my previous statement about NRL and cricket, but Pong was very different in that you couldn't relate it to the real world with the same tangible aspects. Although you were performing a logical set of tasks, you couldn't feel the same attachment. There are those of the opinion that the story is only secondary to the game play making the idea of narratology redundant. I don't agree with this as the story is what gets me into a game whereas the game play is what stops me finishing. Even with the sports ones I feel I am a cricketer or a footballer during the course of the game. It's the role I play that makes it enjoyable. Conversely the role of the mindless shooter in other games would see me placing them in the ludology basket as the task doesn't follow a story or seem at all logical to me. I suppose at the end of the day your own preferences and perspectives play a major role as how certain games are classified.