WC Archive

The ludologist approach to gaming essentially focuses on the nature of the interactive system, the rules and the game process. Nearly every game can be described as a set of rules for determining the outcome of events: draw a card; roll a 20-sided die; move a pawn one square forward; modify the result of a random number generation and compare to target; and so forth. Narratologists, conversely, while acknowledging that games have structural elements, claim that games can best be understood by the stories they describe, with story understood as meaning something more akin to "mimesis" than "drama." The story may be a tattered remnant, as with the use of cards displaying figures of royalty in poker, or a fundamental part of the game's structure, as with role-playing games.

The debate about the role of story in games predates the existence of game studies; in my experience, in face, it first arose in the mid-70s in the hobby games industry, when those who liked wargames wanted to brand the hobby games industry as "simulation games," while those who liked RPGs wanted to brand it as "adventure games"--both trying to find a way to distinguish it from the conventional boardgame industry, but placing emphasis on very different aspects of a diverse field: one on simulation and the other on story. And the debate has certainly existed in digital games almost from their inception--I suspect you can look at the topic list from GDC (and before it CGDC) from the very first conference through the present, and find talks by people talking about the primacy of story, and contrariwise talks by people challenging it.

The academic debate, therefore, merely recapitulates a debate game developers themselves have been having essentially forever--but in the context of the academy, it gains an ideological hue it lacks among game developers. That is, at its most extreme, the stereotype is that it's a struggle between those who view games simply as an alternative form of story-telling media [...], and those who maintain that "narratologists" are essentially scholars from other media attempting a colonial grab, wishing to annex game studies to their own discipline, and that the brave, few ludologists who understand games as formal systems must fight to the death to insist on the primacy of rules, structure, and interaction.

Costikyan admits that this is something of a caricature, and that most ludologists and game narratologists are happy to admit that the other side has some good points. But what struck me was that these two approaches are particular versions of a larger cognitive struggle -- that of process versus goal-seeking. Put crudely, goal-seekers are less concerned with the particulars of how the goal is achieved, while the process-focused are more intent on understanding how something is accomplished rather than on the achievement of the goal. Both approaches can be readily identified in almost any community or movement, and each is subject to derision -- "getting bogged down in minutiae" versus "the ends justify the means."

The ludology/narratology split also misses an important element, in my view: the role that games play in providing a perceived model for reality. I will admit at the outset that the paradigmological approach to gaming isn't as complete as the ludological or narratological concepts, but its inclusion adds a flow missing from the other two. If ludology and narratology are concerned with how social rules and stories are integrated into games, paradigmology is concerned with how games become integrated into our social rules and stories.

This is most obvious when the games in question describe themselves as simulations. We've talked before about the drawbacks and benefits of using SimCity as a learning tool for urban planning; more common, perhaps, are the simulations and "wargames" undertaken by military and political planners as a way of crafting battle scenarios. But we can see examples even with games that have a far less simulationist approach: consider how memes closely associated with poker -- such as "bluffing," "folding" and "high stakes" competition -- are woven into our language around political struggles. These are metaphors, of course, but metaphors are powerful because they carry an abundance of meaning.

The question that the paradigmological approach poses is "what is the model/metaphor missing?" If SimCity provides no way to build mixed-use neighborhoods, the lessons it teaches about urban planning will be missing an important element; similarly, if a military wargame disallows unconventional tactics, the generals hoping to learn something about their operations end up with a dangerous hole in their plans.

Ultimately, ludology, narratology and paradigmology are mutually-reinforcing approaches to understanding the development of games and their role in our culture. Ludology gives consistency to story; narratology gives meaning to structure; paradigmology gives context to the behavior. A game designer -- or, more broadly considered, anyone crafting a model or scenario -- needs to take all three aspects into account in order to build something lasting and powerful.