Video Game Fiction

Reading Summary

This reading from Juul discusses the rules and fictional worlds that are created within video games and how these dictate how the game is categorized. Juul first highlights the importance of recognizing that while “rules can function independent of fiction, fiction relies on rules.” Some games make use of number of rules to help establish a fictional world and storyline, but others use rules without this objective. The extent to which rules are used and a storyline is established dictates the category in which a particular game falls. Abstract games do not represent anything beyond the rules that make them up, such as the game of checkers. Incoherent games contain a fictional world, but one that contradicts itself, a contradiction that can not be explained without referencing the rules of the game. Staged games are those where an abstract or more representational game is played within a more elaborate world, think playing a game within a game. Juul goes on to discuss ways in which games create worlds, including graphics, sounds, text, cut-scenes and other features.

Outside Connection

During quarantine I recently watched the first of two remakes of 1995 film Jumanji, in which the world of a board game enters reality. The 2017 remake attempted to modernize the story by pulling individuals from the real world into a video game. To escape, they must beat the game, playing as characters with specific traits and abilities helpful in completing tasks and defeating enemies throughout the storyline.

Reading Connection

The fictional storyline within the movie adhered to many of the same principles that are common in most adventure games. One of the major aspects of the movie that the reading reminded me of was the fact that the characters, once in the video game, had three lives, represented by tattoos on their arms which disappeared when an individual died in the game. Therefore, the game in the movie most closely fit the description of Coherent world games from the reading, where nothing prevents us from imagining the world in any detail, but there are still aspects of the game (like characters having three lives) that the world cannot explain by itself.