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From literary narrative to video game narrative

Conference Paper · January 2022

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1002763

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Human Interaction and Emerging Technologies (IHIET 2022), Vol. 68, 2022, 445–452
https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1002763

From Literary Narrative to Video

Game Narrative
Miguel Cobos and Patricia Salvador
Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, Quito, Ecuador

ABSTRACT
Videogames have become a technological application that goes beyond entertain-
ment; their participation in sociocultural processes is much more interesting and
profitable than one might think. They have evolved from their original mission of amu-
sement to other fields such as social, cultural, medical, and other categories that fall
into serious games. Indoamerica University students generate videogames based on
the contents they receive, however, there has not been a deep emphasis on narrative
during the design process. For this reason, it is intended to define a model that allows
relating literary and videogame narratives, to involve narrative design within the cre-
ative process. Based on classroom experiences, academic work and the result of the
products delivered by the students, an analysis was made that determined that the
story is present but is not immersed in each of the elements that can be seen from the
gameplay. Based on this, bibliographic research was made regarding literary narra-
tive and its relationship with the narrative design for the videogame, considering the
significant contributions of Clara Fernández, Adrián Suárez, Jesse Schell, Scott Rogers,
Oliver Pérez, among others. This work presents a model of the relationship between
literary and videogame narratives, aimed at analyzing the narrative design present in
the students’ works. It is intended to automate this model into an easy-to-apply tool
to determine the relevance of narrative design in existing and future projects.

Keywords: Literary narrative, Videogame narrative, Player experience

INTRODUCTION
New Narrative Discourses
Throughout the history of mankind, human beings have been creators and
builders of life and its stories. They have learned to write and with it they
have kept facts and events that involved their daily life. From the caves of
Altamira, as substrates of cave paintings, we have gone through papyrus,
parchment, cloth, paper, to digital devices, capable of storing large amounts
of information, stories, events, images, and sounds, etc. These substrates have
made the stories preserve the social, cultural, scientific, and economic kno-
wledge of the people. Nowadays stories are not only told through a formal
literary structure, there are stories that have other types of media and other
ways of being narrated, an example of this are the videogames. These new
creative products are a living representation of the reality we live in, a mixture
of fable, narrative, technology, culture, entertainment, fun, among others, as
stated by (Fernández-Vara, 2019).

© 2022. Published by AHFE Open Access. All rights reserved. 445

446 Cobos and Salvador

Videogames are part of the new digital narratives, they are narrative
discourses like literature and cinema, which show the reality of the medium
that produced it, Lotman calls this reality the semiosphere. (Lotman and
Navarro, 1996). Considering this, (Pérez Latorre et al., 2010) believes it
is important to approach a study of the videogame and its design from a
narrative perspective, as any other narrative text that produces semiosis.

Narratology
Narratology is a discipline worked by several researchers of narrative
discourse. in his dictionary of narratology, defines it as the discipline that
studies the nature, form and functioning of narrative through its structu-
ral elements and their relation to the narrative. These important elements
are identified as: narration, narrator, characters, space, time and events,
which support the story told through a narrator in space and time (Bal and
Boheemen, 2009).
Several studies on videogames have been carried out entirely or partially
from this discipline. The videogame, regardless of being built from a story, at
the moment of playing it, inevitably creates in the player an innate narrator
of the individual experience, of the interaction with the game.
Oliver Pérez, videogame researcher, states that narratology is fundamental
and essential in these new narratives, it is applicable to all types of vide-
ogames, where the level of narrativity and the narrative component of the
game experience allow the construction of the plot in the mind of the player
(“Interview Óliver Pérez: Ludología, videojuegos y gamificación.,” 2014).

Videogames as Narratives
The videogame is a narrative structure, which is built within a semiosph-
ere and manifests itself as a communicative product. It emerges from the
combination and interaction of several types of traditional and technological
discourses. As a narrative structure, its backbone is the story and the way it
is told.
Gustav Freytag, a German dramaturge, studied the dramatic structure of
literary works and identified a model capable of defining how plot is stru-
ctured in narrative. This model is known as Freytag’s Pyramid. Based on the
points of this pyramid structure, Kremers, in his book Level Design, propo-
ses the Five-Act Progression’s in Level Design, which is a reaffirmation of
the pyramid model in the actions of the character in each level of the game
(Kremers, 2009).
Another important work where it is stated that a videogame always has a
narrative, whether or not it starts from it, is the one proposed in the book
Level Up. Where through a theoretical-graphical description of 8 steps, the
basic structure of the story is visualized. In which the character makes the
narrative journey in the videogame (Rogers, 2014). This description (see
Figure 1) coincides with Kremers and Freytag.
From Literary Narrative to Video Game Narrative 447

Figure 1: Freytag’s & Rogers’s narrative model comparative.

Narrative Analysis in Videogames

Indoamerica University students have been developing videogames as part
of their training, have conducted research on the subject and published
applications in mobile application stores.
This work is oriented to design a narrative analysis model, based on the
experiences obtained in classes, the review of the state of the art in terms of
narrative and videogames, to later apply it to the products generated by the
students.

METHODOLOGY
This section describes the methods used in this paper. Starting from the review
of relevant literature regarding the design and analysis of videogames, as well
as the narrative from its origin to its application in these media. In this context
it is important to ask ourselves the question, what is the relationship between
literary narrative and video game narrative? To answer this question, it was
necessary to understand the different positions on literary narration and its
real incidence in the video game. In this sense, it was essential to start with
a documentary approach, from the bibliographical research of topics related
to relevant studies, to literary narratology and videogame narratology. From
this, four outstanding authors and their studies were selected, which coinci-
ded with the proposed theme. This allowed a comparative analysis of their
proposals and the delimitation of an important theoretical structure for the
development of this work (see table 1).
Thanks to the teaching experience and the bibliographic review, the formal
elements that relate the literary narrative with the video game were identified,
as well as the narrative experience that the player can have. For this reason,
an initial guide was created and tested on several videogames. For this pur-
pose, the Scrum methodology was used (Schwaber and Sutherland, 2020),
with the objective of achieving fast and relevant results through permanent
448 Cobos and Salvador

Table 1. Comparative analysis of the structure of video games with a narrative focus.

Author Structure Description Comments

Clara 1. Context - Game context - Overly long format
Fernández 2. Game - General description, main - Focuses on the narrative
Overview elements without going into depth
3. Formal - Formal elements: design, - Descriptive analysis
elements technical parameters, player document
experience.

Scott - One-Sheet - One-Sheet: General game - Step-by-step description

Rogers - Ten-Pager information. - Relationship between
- Beat chart - Ten-Pager: Central axis of literary, graphic, and
the video game video game narratives
- Beat chart: structure for - GDD
each level

Ernest - Concept stage - Concept stage: general idea, - Experimental versions of

Adams & - Elaboration target audience, role of the the game; trial-and-error
Joris Stage player. - From the development
Dormans - Tuning Stage - Elaboration Stage: stage, tests are carried
Mechanics, levels, story, out with different types
prototypes. of prototypes
- Tuning Stage: Adjustment - The tuning stage allows
stage, design evaluation. adjustments to be made
to mechanics and game-
play

Jesse Schell - Basic - Basic elements: mechanics, - Important elements for

elements. aesthetics, story, and the design of the video
- Player technology. game are covered.
experience. - Mental skills that make the - Includes story for
- Indirect game possible: modeling, creating compelling cha-
controls. focus, empathy, and racters and narrative:
- proposed imagination. string of pearls and story
lenses - Indirect controls: sense of machine.
freedom focused on - focuses on the player
objectives. experience.
- Lenses: analysis of each step
of the design to fine-tune it.

modifications. Based on the above, the construction process of the guide was
carried out with videogames developed by the students during the last 5 years.
With all the described process, we proceeded to the construction of a
descriptive-evaluative model of the relationship between the literary narra-
tive and the narrative of the videogame. This structure exposes, in a clear
way, elements and structural narrative relationships that contribute to the
best playability of the videogame through the story. In addition, it shows the
irreducible axes that allow the player-narrator to have all the tools to build
the plot once the gameplay process of the interactive story is finished.
From Literary Narrative to Video Game Narrative 449

Table 2. Structure of the model for the narrative analysis of videogames.

Step 1 – Context Table 3

Step 2 – Literary Narrative Table 4
Step 3 – General Description Table 5
Step 4 - Relationship between literary narrative and videogame narrative Table 6

Table 3. Context.

RESULTS
The model presented here is oriented to the analysis of the narrative within
a videogame, for which it is necessary to take all the available information
of the product, play it several times and try to fill in the steps to follow (see
Table 2).

Step 1. Context
In this step, the generalities of the video game are identified, considering the
structure proposed by (Fernández-Vara, 2019) and One-Sheet proposed in
the Game Design Document of (Rogers, 2014), it is intended to contextualize
the video game before analyzing the narrative present in it (see Table 3).

Step 2. Literary Narrative

Step 2 shows the literary narrative and its elements as outlined by Bal(Bal
and Boheemen, 2009). The story, the presence of the narrator, the chara-
cters as acting elements, spaces, time, and events are identified. This structure
builds the diegesis (Genette, 1989), that is, the fictional world from which the
story emerges. It is important to identify them to determine their presence
throughout the videogame (see Table 4).

Step 3. General Description

This step incorporates general information about the video game (see
Table 5). The first section identifies the world where the story is told, the
levels and the organization of it. We have taken into account the considera-
tions regarding the world worked by Henry Jenkins and the organization of
the game space by levels developed by Jesse Schell (Schell, 2019). The type
of argument is related to the narrative, for this purpose the contributions of
(Pérez Latorre et al., 2010) and (Schell, 2019). The rules section defines the
450 Cobos and Salvador

Table 4. Literary narrative.

Table 5. General description.

structure of the videogame and they end up narrating the story, these attri-
butes have been very well worked by (Salen and Zimmerman, 2003). Finally,
maps with labels are used to help identify game elements and their location,
based on the methodology proposed by (Kremers, 2009).

Step 4. Relationship Between Literary Narrative and

Videogame Narrative
This is the part where it is detailed what happens in each event, this step
must be repeated for each identifiable level in the video game. Several sections
From Literary Narrative to Video Game Narrative 451

Table 6. Relationship between literary narrative and videogame narrative.

have been placed that allow to assess the presence of the narrative in each of
these. The first section, taken as a reference the proposal of (Fernández-Vara,
2019) has been labeled as Formal Structure, contains basic narrative criteria
and others taken and adapted from the Beat Chart (Rogers, 2014). A section
is established for the sense of freedom, these parameters are closely related
to narrative and are based on the indirect controls recommended by (Schell,
2019). The next section is dedicated to the flow, theory worked by (Csiks-
zentmihalyi, 2009) in which many favorable elements have been considered
for this model, they have been taken and adapted from the lenses proposed
by (Schell, 2019). Finally, the mechanics have been considered, as these are
the ones that are present in the gameplay, for this purpose the structure of
(Adams and Dormans, 2012) has been taken (see Table 6).
Step 4 must be applied for each level; the criteria are evaluated based on
the history described in step 2. The results obtained are placed in a summary
table (see Table 7) that allows to determine the aspects to be improved to
achieve the best experience for the player.
 452 Cobos and Salvador

Table 7. Results of the assessment of the video game narrative.

Null low med high

Formal structure
Freedom sensation
Flow
Mechanics
Total

CONCLUSION
In this article, a narrative analysis model was proposed to be applied to
the videogames developed by the students. This model was developed based
on the contributions of major research and systematizing the experiences of
several projects.
The proposed criteria were discussed in workshops with experts in the
topics discussed with the participation of students, this helped to refine the
proposal, until obtaining a document that can be applied in a simple way in
the work done.
Considering narrative design in students’ future videogames can guarantee
works of better acceptance by the public. Having a narrative analysis model
allows to determine how much the narrative fits in the videogames worked
on to improve them in favor of their playability.
It is intended in future works to improve this model to include it in the
videogame design process and thus obtain better products; it is also expected
to automate this model so that the results are obtained immediately.

REFERENCES
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Bal, M., Boheemen, C. van, 2009. Narratology: introduction to the theory of
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Genette, G., 1989. Figuras. 3, Palabra crítica. Lumen, Barcelona.
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