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Charlotte Wang

The narrative experience in different forms of media: FPS games and cinema's subjective shot

The discussions in lecture today about Tacoma on how the story would be different if told in a short story or novel reminded me of Alexander Galloway’s essay “Origins of the First-Person Shooter,” where he considers a similar question, instead exploring how an FPS narrative would compare to a film narrative and why the two experiences are different for their respective users.


Galloway first defines a relevant distinction between the point of view and the subjective shot in cinema. While the point of view shot approximates what the subject sees, the subjective shot is used “primarily to effect a sense of alienation, otherness, detachment, or fear” (56). In cinema, the subjective shot is inherently linked with experiencing the mental state of the character on which it is imposed. He then compares subjective shots in cinema to the point of view offered in FPS games, quoting Vivian Sobchack: “[...] she writes that ‘electronic presence has neither a point of view nor a visual situation, such as we experience, respectively, with the photograph and the cinema.’” (63). This quotation suggests that with FPS games, we are able to detach from something that we are locked into in the cinema. Although films are open to multiple interpretations, the path set is relatively linear, and the subjective shot, specifically, can lock us into one point of view and character mentality. FPS games, in lacking this character-specific mental state, open us up to a more choice-oriented and exploratory experience. The ability to be detached from an authored point of view is the essence of the FPS narrative.


In regards to the FPS games we played this week, it is clear that video games may be conducive to the portrayal of certain kinds of narratives. The multilinearity that this detachment from one character mentality offers allows us to unfold, in particular, mysteries in a way that a film does not. As much as a film may be open to interpretation, the audience is still stuck on one initial linear path, and the mystery will always be solved in the same manner. With games like Return of the Obra Dinn and Tacoma, we see how a mystery can be left to be discovered by the player simply out of curiosity and acquisition of clues in a less constricted manner. What this serves to do is to take the authorship out of the creator and put it in the hands of the player, giving us a control that feels more similarly to how we might uncover this type of narrative in reality.


Overall, the new dimension of narrative experience that FPS games offer allows us to consider how new forms of media impact storytelling and how the experience differs in existing forms.

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3 comentarios


zene
21 oct 2019

I agree with ayresn in that audience interaction plays a big role in the difference between these two mediums. I would argue that beyond this, the audience needs to be engaged in some sort of decision making or active role within a game, interaction in many cases is not enough. This is one problem that I had with Tacoma. When watching the playbacks of scenes around the space station, I never really felt invested or thoroughly engaged in the story being told by the characters. Beyond opening some doors, I didn't really feel that any of the information I was learning was used for anything (although admittedly I didn't get to the very end of the game so this could…

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ayresn
16 oct 2019

There's a lot to be said about the potential differences here, but I think one of the more obvious differences between cinema and games comes in audience interaction and our need to actively be doing some kind of thinking or providing some sort of input for the story to progress. I think we can draw a kind of similarity between Obra Dinn and not just puzzle games like sudoku, but mysteries in general. We can move the viewpoint around, and that is likely the most obvious connection there, but I think making a connection to film also helps demonstrate differences. I think Memento in particular is an interesting movie to compare Obra Dinn to, especially at the beginning of sections,…

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mozkan
mozkan
16 oct 2019

Concerning the point you made about authorship in Obra Dinn and Tacoma, I would like to provide a claim that pushes back against this. Although we are able to maneuver freely in the space of these games as you mention, I think that the creators still push us towards certain objectives by limiting the spaces we can travel and the things we can see at a certain amount of time. Even though we are able to choose feely where to go, I still think it is almost like a predestination of the game to stumble upon certain features of the game in order to progress. We cannot just drive a bus around town like in GTA or build our own…

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