Read "Game Design as Narrative Architecture",  "Introduction to Game Time", and "Towards a Game Theory of Game" and reflect on how the content relates to your personal experiences, learning programming, and artistic practices. Write a paragraph to summarize each reading and make a connection to your project or a personal experience

Game Design as Narrative Architecture:

In this essay by Henry Jenkins, he talks about the concept of Ludologists, who are people that are more interested in a game's mechanics rather than the storyline, and Narratologists, who are people that prefer to focus more on comparing games to “other storytelling media”.  He mentions that there is a “blood feud” threatening “to erupt” between these two ideologies in the academic world, yet he calls for a balance between the two.  He goes on to explain that stories unfold differently within games than other forms of media like film or books, and that a narrative, while necessary for some forms of games, is not necessary in others.  One of the differences he mentions is that in games, the actual world the game takes place in is actually part of the story.  There are also different approaches such as using embedded narratives and emergent narratives.  I think my personal takeaways from reading this article are that, although I don’t really have much experience with creating games, I do tend to focus a bit more on the narrative rather than the mechanics.  This has made me more aware that games are not “just telling a story” like in novels for example. It has also made me aware of different approaches you can have when creating games and the worlds they reside in depending on the goals you want the players to achieve.

Introduction to Game Time:

This essay, written by Jesper Juul, talks about the different ways games use the concept of time.  This is partly because the player has to consider themselves as two characters, so to speak: the first is the player is themself playing the game, and second is they are also the character that resides within the game.  So you have two different types of time with these two perspectives in mind: game time, which is the actual time it takes the player to play the game, and event time, which is how time is approached within the game.  Sometimes, game time and event time are equal, or 1:1, but not always.  Also, you can have games, such as abstract games, that, because there is no “game world”, there is no event time involved, only game time.  There are also ways that time can be played with within this framework.  For example, if the game has cut-scenes, event time is paused while game time continues.  Flash-forwards and flashbacks in the storyline can also occur within the chronology of the game. Also, if a game has different levels, the transition between the levels (and the levels themselves) can be separate time events.  Interestingly, these jumps between levels don't seem to affect game play.  Before reading this article, I didn’t know about these different approaches to the timing of games.  It makes sense though, because while someone who is reading a book, for example, can decide how fast they want to read a book, it is up to the game creator to consider the pacing of the game to prevent the player from becoming overwhelmed or bored and to keep the game play engaging. This is something I will be more aware of while creating games moving forward.   

Towards a Game Theory of Game: 

In this essay, Celia Pearce discusses the lack of conversation of computer games in the “academic discourse”.  This is an issue because she says “this medium is still erroneously considered to be in its ‘infancy’”.  However, she notes that when a new discipline arises, it tends to be analyzed and treated in ways similar to preexisting disciplines, such as literature and film.  Because of this, she calls for a different way to analyze games as opposed to other “narrative-based media”. She says the focus should be more on “play” rather than “story”.  She goes on to say that “a game is most simply described as a framework for structured play”, and lists six “narrative ‘operators’”, such as experiential, performative, augmentary, descriptive, metastory, and story system.  I find this proposal for new vocabulary to describe computer games interesting.  It’s something I didn’t really consider has to happen whenever a new technology is created (for example, like when the term “emoji” was invented).  I’m also curious as to why there is this lack of discourse, because even though computer games are relatively new, games have been around for thousands of years (as Flanagan mentions in her response to this essay).  I will keep this essay in mind whenever I am discussing, describing, and creating games in the future.