Saturday, November 11, 2006
Eskelinen vs Jenkins
Eskelinen vs Jenkins
Markku Eskelinen, an independent scholar and self-professed "ludologist", in his response to Jenkins' paper "Game Design as Narrative Architecture", says:
According to the well-known phrase of David Bordwell, narration is "the process whereby the film's sjuzet and style interact in the course of cueing and constraining the spectator's construction of the fabula." In games there are other kinds of dominant cues and constraints: rules, goals, the necessary manipulation of equipment, and the effect of possible other players for starters. This means that information is distributed differently (invested in formal rules, for example), it is to be obtained differently (by manipulating the equipment) and it is to be used differently (in moving towards the goal).
By systematically ignoring and downplaying the importance of these and other formal differences between games and narratives as well as the resulting cognitive differences, Jenkins runs the risk of reducing his comparative media studies into repetitive media studies: seeing, seeking, and finding stories, and nothing but stories, everywhere. Such pannarrativism could hardly serve any useful ludological or narratological purpose.
Do you agree with Eskelinen's dismissal of Jenkins' approach? Why/why not?
Eskelinen's response to Jenkins' paper appears to be quite an emotional attempt at defending his own turf… when there is in fact nothing to defend against. Instead of taking sides in the "blood feud" between ludologists and narratologists, Jenkins is in actually taking a step back from it and offering an alternative perspective where narrative and games co-exist. I hence disagree with Eskelinen's dismissal of Jenkin's approach and will show how his main arguments are invalid:
1. Jenkins ... reduce[es] all media to story-telling (and story-selling) channels.
Already in the introduction, Jenkins acknowledged the "profound differences between the two media", and that they are often overlooked. In addition, he established that not all games have narratives, hence limiting his discussion to those that have narratives, and that "the experience of playing games can never be simply reduced to the experience of a story". Futhermore, the focus of his discussion is simply to offer middle-ground: to urge ludologists to consider the narrative possibilities that games offer, while narratologists to adapt to the new media, to study the process of narrative comprehension and not to impose the rules and conventions of classical linear storytelling.
2. Jenkins also misrepresents a dispute (on the usefulness of narratology), important parts of which he seems to be unaware of.
It is true that Jenkins does not expound on the elementary differences between stories and games, which is not the focus of his text in the first place. His main argument is in fact to offer an alternative third-perspective, using environmental storytelling as a basis for which games could be build upon (using rules, goals, the necessary manipulation of equipment - which he just didn't elaborate upon). Jenkins obviously doesn't see stories and games as black and white, especially with the current state of the improved media, and is exploring the grey area in between. He is thus not misrepresenting the dispute, but applying its arguments to a more modern context, that of "popular traditions".
3. Jenkins's "spatial story" is a bit of a naive thematic construct; from the ludological perspective it is simply useless
I can see where Eskelinen is coming from, as Jenkins does not refer to much gaming jargon. However, his paper is far from useless. He explores extensively different variations of narratives: Evoked, enacted, embedded, and emergent, and warns game designers that "choices about the design and organization of game spaces have narratological consequences", and ultimately there is an overlap of stories and games.
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