Story and Narrative Structures in Computer Games

Computer games can involve narrative and story elements integrating different forms of interactivity and using different strategies for combining interaction with non-interactive story and narrative elements. While some forms of interactive narrative involve simple selection between fixed narrative sequences, computer games more typically involve the integration of narrative with game play based upon a simulation substrate. These three forms, simulation, game play and narrative, involve pre-authored time structures at different levels of time scale. Simulation involves the lowest levels of time structure, with authored principles specifying how time develops from frame to frame based upon physics, the representation of game objects and their behaviour, and discrete event simulation. Games involve pre-designed game moves, types of actions that may be realized as abstractions over patterns of low level changes at the frame level. Linear and interactive narratives form the highest level of predesigned time structure, framing low-level simulation processes and intermediate level game moves within a high level structure typically based upon classic models of narrative form. Computer games may emphasise one or more of these primary forms as the focus of meaning in the play experience. Story construction within computer games is a function of how these different levels of time structure interact in the play experience, being the result of pre-designed narrative content, story potential and the actual unfolding story created by the actions of the player. There are many strategies for integrating these forms. However, a crucial issue in the design of story content is the relationship between how the resulting game experience relates to user play preferences. In particular, categories of play style can be extended to include preferences for how story content is experienced, based upon audience, performance and immersionist orientations to story. Perceived tensions within computer game form, such as the tension between game play and narrative, are explained, not as fundamental formal issues, but issues of player preferences and how these are satisfied or not by different strategies for story content within a game system.