I wasn’t very fond of Gonzalo’s analyses, especially the part about simulation and representation. I think that videogames can very well be narratives. According to dictionary.com, the definition of narrative is:
- a story or account of events, experiences, or the like,whether true or fictitious.
- a book, literary work, etc., containing such a story.
Notice that it has “etc. containing such a story”, which means that it is not confined to printed, non-technology texts. If it were, wouldn’t it be improper to call a story written on a computer a narrative? A vast number of videogames have narratives that support the purpose for the game and the goals of the game. Take gameboy pokemon games, for example, as you play, you meet people, battle, proceed to the next level, etc., and each time you do so, you are presented with texts to read. Regardless of whether you read them or simply press “A” to get past the texts, it tells the audience a story, or a narrative. You could, essentially, say it is a computerized picture book. In order to understand a children’s level picture book, one must interpret it and “access its content”. He doesn’t go into any depth about what he means by that, so I’m going to say he’s talking about accessing certain objects/levels/clues/whatever within the game. However, you find the same things in a lot of children’s books. For example, pop-up books or hidden pictures or texts underneath a flap are both examples of needing to “access its content”.
The other thing that I didn’t agree with was Gonzalo wrote, “narrative is based on semiotic representation, while videogames also rely on simulation”. Representation and Simulation are not opposites, so it’s not one or the other. Videogames are both representations and simulations. When playing games, we interpret (Gonzalo also said we use interpretation with games) representations of actual things which allow us to get the feeling of the simulation. Ergo, his claim that videogames are only simulations and not representations is incorrect.