storyworlds: from movies to games to real life and the other way round

On one of my previous articles I discussed the difference between movies and games in regards to the environment. I was particularly interested in the notion of whether the artificiallity we sometimes find in movies is intentional in games. I felt that, the article response was a bit weak becuase the nature of the topic was very ambigous and broad.

However, today I am taking a slightly different look at the two, specifically how games are made of movies, and how that may change the story or alter the perception of the story. I will base this off one of the blogs I am following online SOURCE by Martin Nerurkar and try to weave in ideas that regard social interactions in the encapsulation of the "event." This article was a reaction to a very major multimedia expo that is currently happening in San Fransisco involving major industry leaders from movie and game studios. They are all focusing on what we call "narrative design," or in other words "story worlds."

In the article, a speaker by the name of Marie-Laure Ryan listed themes that constitute narrative-design, they were as follows;


-An inventory of existents


-A space with certain geographic features


-Physical laws


-Social laws and values


-Events. A history of changes that happen in the narrative


-Mental events

Most of these I have already mentioned and covered, but it is important for the sake of establishing conections within gaming and films to re-annalyze some of these themes. You will notice that in this list, there is a clear notion of the importance of time, ("events"), rules as was mentioned in the last article "physical laws," and "inventory of exsistents" social importance e.g encounters (social was and values) and the users interaction with all this "mental events." Basically my entire investigation narrowed down into a list! From here I am going to wing it...

One of the key ideas that the article seemed to moniter was the "story", that much like vernacular design, some stories have developed and manifested further through the transition of media. I will bring to light a personal example: Alice in Wonderland. Now I have actually just recently finished reading this insanley popular book because it came free with my android tablet (so I was kind of forced to read it, being a fan of adventure and strange new environments). It was from the very begining chapters that I began to understand how some of the themes I was exploring, particulary memorable moments in architecture that revolved around social encounters, helped in making this story exactley the brilliant story that it was.

It it also wasn't as if the author, who wrote this amazing novel in the late 19th century didn't realize the importance of that as well, in fact it was perhaps one of the major notions of this novel. Take the first page, where Alice is sitting on a green pasture;

"once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or
conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?'"

This basically goes to show the authors argument, that a good story, like a good game, or like a good movie, or like a good book (in this case) should have some level of social interaction to be appeasing to us (as social creatures). Following this, Alice falls into her epic adventure where she meets the strangest creatures and has the strangest arguments in the stragents environments that are broken up into what seems like a million individual events that keeps me turning the pages and keeps me reading more and more. Thus, it is clear to me now how relevent this novel is in my investigation, becuase it argues and abides by all the arguments and notions I brought forth; that a good game should be memorable, it should instill events in our brain, and meaningful social encounters in quality environments.

Reading the article the writer mentions a person named Jason who narrowed down narrative design into two familiar strategies, expansionst and the other "fold in on itself to provide denser information about the character themselves, to help viewers get into their heads." We are comapring Lost to Breaking Bad....

"The former is expansionist, where the transmedial material expands on the world an adds new histories, characters and events. The Breaking Bad material on the other hand aims to “fold in on itself” to provide denser information about the character themselves, to help viewers get into their heads."

Now it is clear to me that The Adventours of Alice in Wonderland were clearly expansionist, just think about what we started with (basically just Alice and a rabbit) and what we ended with... also, I am not bringing forth Alice in Wonderland as an example simply because it abides by the key notions I have mentioned about characters and events. The point is,  the book itself has turned into numerous movies, games, in fact as we speak a new game "Alice" is comming out soon as well, for a second time. So what this allows me to investigate is how the experience of the story changes between media.... (which is really is a new thought for me altogether).

image taken from source

Have you ever heard the saying, "let the readers use their imaginations;" What do you visualize when you read a book? What do you realize when you see the movie of the book? What do you come to think of playing the game of the movie of the book or vice versa? Specifically how do you re-exerpience the environment, the social engagement around the environment and how does the environment seem to re-inform the social engagement and your whole notion of time? This is clearly "a developing storyworld"...
In the article sourced above,  "Jason also noted that there are three different kinds of tie-in games to movies and TV shows:

1) Exploratory: These games allow you to explore the fictional storyworld yourself.
2) Imitational: Games that allow you to “try on the skin” of the story characters. These often fail because the expected drama from TV and Movies is missing.
3) Narratively: Games that try to retell the story of the movie in the game. This is almost never done for TV shows. Here the approach is usually to have the game be “one extraordinary episode”.

In other words their are certain techniques games use to tie into movies. And its not as if movies don't use games... take Tomb Raider for instant, the whole story could of been arguabley redfined once Angelina Jolie came forth as the leading actress, and various set designers strived to accomdate the script, her acting etc.
 and the faithfulness to the game, (it wasn't very faithful)...

Another great example (I could go on...) is H.P lovecrafts Cthulhu monster that reappeared in various forms of media (probabley most recently in Southpark)...

Now this is all very interesting but then we come to think of it... don't video games essentially, and I am speaking very macrospocially here, always borrow and reinterpret things that already exsist! Isn't that what its all about! People say that "anything is possible in games," but that anything is always taken from somewhere. I suppose, one thing I've learned from reading Alice in Wonderland and just generally playing good games, is that good games have the ability to take everyday exerpiences and exaggurate them and alter them to the point that they leave you with something memorable but convince you that they made perfect sense and that for that time that it took you to play you were in that other reality that was worth being in. It goes without saying that the ability for games to give you that exerpience is something that is clearly a difference to the experience of real architecture, otherwise why would computer games be so popular? Its funny to think however, that in a way real architecture strives to achieve the impossible level of brilliance found in games, but games strive to achieve the level of realism and clarity found in real architecture. I think that in the future we will see this relationship more clearly, especially as games continue to become more prominent in society....