There are also some responses on Hite’s blog, including his thoughts on Leavenworth’s riposte (“so another beautiful example of theory founders on the foam boulders of experience”) and a few questions and thoughts from his readers. I’ll be keeping tabs on the conversation there, as well as any that develop on Costikyan’s blog, Czege’s blog, or the Yog-Sothoth forums.

Let’s say that humans find useful some things: experiences, explanatory modes, learning analogies. Let’s also say that I’m prepared to assume that liking something implies an evolved taste for it’s usefulness, while also being prepared to concede that such tastes can later go off on their own in sophisticated creatures and be sought out just for the pleasure in them.

So linear narratives did, and still do, all that stuff. A film gives you experiences – to keep this short you’re asked to make up your own examples – and of course a film, or heck a pretty picture, is a mode of explanation about something. Jason kills the chicks who shag out of wedlock. Could there be a moral in that somewhere?

So there’s kind of a learning point to that stuff in terms of explanation or discourse, but let’s not forget that there’s also specific learning in terms of ‘I read about it and here’s how you tie a fly for fishing’. I used the gunnery simulator and gosh darn if I don’t have a better idea now of how to load the 12′ guns on a DD.

Given these purposeful functions (purpose in this case not at all implying individually conscious intention) it isn’t surprising that games want to integrate with narratives. Hell, they’re steps along the evolutionary path for one and the same cultural toolset. Dynamical and systemic is in abstract ‘better’ than linear and static, because the world we’re trying hard to explain is dynamical. Stories have beginnings and endings. Right? Doesn’t that suggest that our Universe better have those same features? Uh…

So just as complex numbers are ‘better’ for describing and predicting our dynamical world than linear numbers are, it’s not surprising good analysis starts to come down in the affirmative on whether games and stories should mix. It’s a bit like we’re wondering whether we are allowed to use our new blender when that old whisk we’ve got is still quite good for beating eggs. Okay, let’s say you can use either, or mix them. Hmm, I broke my analogy, but you get the concept.

If there’s an argument, it should be about advancing our craft with system making, because our weakness with games is basically our weakness at making them. We’re not habituated at knowing how complex non-linear systems will play out, just as most people don’t learn quarternion mathematics. Games are going to be more powerful modes of explanation, but not yet. It takes a lot of time and effort to, in a game sense, do something really banal like make a man walk down a street. We forget how much time we spent making up and advancing our use of words. Reflect on how easily I make my man turn down an alley, light a cigarette, and shoot himself in the head. Try making that vignette into a game using less than 100 keystrokes.

It’s late and I don’t want to get into all the aspects of this, but just illuminate it a little. Hopefully you get the picture.

-Klaude Thomas

ripostes have been received the same way as any essay: they can go to any ebr editor, to a thread editor, or to the editors [at] electronicbookreview [dot] com. Once the editors have read and approved a riposte, we send the text to either Stef or Ben for markup.

I hope some GTxA readers will take up this form of response, in dialogue with the ebr editors, in addition to any fast-moving blog responses.