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:

1. a story or account of events, experiences, or the like,whether true or fictitious.
2. 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.

The article “Video Games can be Highly Effective Training Tools“, published by Science Daily, incorporates both conversations about casual gaming and games as a representation of reality. Galloway categorizes video games into “fantasy world” games and realistic games. The article published in Science Daily is about realistic games because the purpose of the study is to determine the effectiveness of video games as a training mechanism. Interactive games have been used by Cold Stone Creamery, a Brewing Company, and the Department of Defense as a way to enhance the workers’ performance and ingrain a particular task into the employees’ brains. Nevertheless, the games for each company or agency differed greatly, but there was a common element within each training game. For example, the game for Cold Stone taught its employees the correct amount of ice cream that should be used in each scoop; the Department of Defense used video games to teach soldiers and sailors how to react to disaster scenarios. Each of these games were created with reality in mind because the information one learns within the games were going to be applied to real life scenarios. Also, the Cold Stone and Brewing Company games were meant to be casual games because the level of difficulty is significant in the repetitive play by employees. One of the study’s results found that the game as a training tool is more effective if the game is primarily interactive, rather than instructional. This study demonstrates the realistic application of video games, for it was found that “organizations using video games to train employees end up with smarter, more motivated workers who learn more and forget less”.