The Most Abused Term in Videogame Criticism - SolePorpoise
26 replies, posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8PAWO4Y_rY
Guy does some really good long form analysis videos on videogames, too bad he uploads once in a blue moon.
don't they all
it's a nice video otherwise but i started getting annoyed at how much he reuses the same video clips over and over
I love how I knew exactly which term it was as soon as I read the title
eh, it kinda is how it is, if it is insisted that ludonarrative to be used for its specialized intent, instead of the semantic shifted version it is used today.
idk, I don't think the word should be for that specific use, as the "new" meaning still fits: ludo(game) narrative(story) dissonance(discrepancy).
If it is up to me I would allow the current usage, but add "thematic" to associate it to the original meaning.
Because let's face it, the original Bioshock argument is confusing as hell for anyone not versed in game design.
ludonarrative disco biscuits.
i thought this was going to be about the comparisons to dark souls a ton of games get these days. I feel like I haven't heard people genuinely use the term "ludonarrative dissonance'' in ages.
Is it really still talked about? Do people still use it?
tbh, I don't think I've ever heard the term until this thread.
I feel like if he wants the term to really stick to the strict original use, it should be called ludothematic dissonance. He even makes a point about not conflating narrative and theming but the original term is already doing that.
"Gameplay and story segregation", traditionally.
I don't remember the original Bioshock argument, but I can't think of a better example of ludonarrative dissonance than Bioshock: Infinite.
Story: A dramatic adventure involving going through all sorts of different grand set-pieces (and later even alternate realities) as you slowly unravel the truth behind Booker DeWitt's past and his strange relationship to this mysterious young woman he was tasked with fetching.
Gameplay: BANG BANG SHOOT SHOOT AGAINST HORDES OF ENEMIES
It is the single most contrasted game I have ever seen before, and it just feels painfully apparent to me that Ken Levine wanted to make a walking sim, but 2K forced him to add bang-bang to the game.
I think ludonarrative dissonance is a great term. I haven't watched this particular video, but I have only ever seen the term used in its correct context, such as the above. There is also a "Why Dishonored needs to fix its protagonist" video that was posted here that uses the term, and I think it also uses it correctly. It describes how the story of Dishonored is of a royal bodyguard and assassin who has been framed for murdering the Empress and his lover, and how he needs to work against the system in an attempt to bring it down and deliver justice unto those who actually murdered her; the gameplay of Dishonored involves using whacky powers to sneak around as you murder or choke-out a small army's worth of people.
It's not as strong a case for ludonarrative dissonance, but they still don't fully agree with one another.
And I think the term has created a great derivative, which I have seen Folding Ideas describe as "cinenarrative dissonance" - the disagreement between what the camera shows the viewer, and what the film tells the viewer. The example Folding Ideas uses is Megan Fox's character in the first Transformers: the film tells us she's a super smart and quick mechanic, able to diagnose and fix almost any mechanical problem. The film shows her as a dumb bimbo only meant to be the main character's trophy girlfriend.
I'm not really sure where the disagreement for the term ludonarrative dissonance comes from, but then I've yet to see these circumstances where it is misused. Perhaps this video, which I admit I haven't watched yet, will shed some light on it. But even if it does, that doesn't make the term bad or wrong. It's an extremely powerful tool, especially for game designers.
if you'd watched the video you'd see that the main argument the guy makes is that it isn't the correct context
I'm pretty sure it's John Bain (TotalBiscuit) that popularized the term but I've rarely heard it used in actual video game criticism outside a few Youtubers.
Yeah but remembering the original argument is pretty paramount in setting up the term for use with other medias.
The short of the bioshock 1 argument is that the game presents you with two contracts. One ludic contract, and one narrative contract.
The narrative contract wishes to sell you the idea on the pitfalls of unbridled objectivisim, and what can happen in such a society.
The ludic contract, as described by the author, is however to, as a player, engage oneself in unbridled objectivism, because you of course in usual game manner, want to become more powerful and likely at the expense of others.
The reason this argument falls flat is a long-winded one and I won't elaborate fully on it but in short it can be described as there being more to Bioshocks gameplay (use of Little sisters, how you treat the other survivors, the ability to sneak and not to mention the optimal min-max strategy being as kind to all npcs as possible and going for the "good ending", so you're ultimately rewarded for sticking with at least some altruism) and even then a bit more to Bioshock's story (objectivism is a big deal but then there's the whole unreliable narrator thingy and the "mind control" and the subversion of the player).
So with that in mind it's a fairly unfair generalisation to just go ahead and give all games the ole ludonarrative boot because the gameplay is made overly engaging compared to what the story would have you believe. Booker's storyline doesn't contradict the stuff he does at all because he came with violent intent, and his past and future selves hold violent intent against him also. Armed conflict is considered unavoidable and the gameplay tries to mirrors this, with all the funky gadgets needed to make the player feel good about themselves.
I don't see the dishonored point whatsoever. If I agreed with bludobarrotive pissonance as a term I would almost say Dishonored has ludonarrative consonance. You're literally the imperial protector, tasked to protect the family no matter the means, and on top of that your wife was murdered. The people responsible will literally not negotiate with you but rather kill on sight. What the hell are you supposed to do? Esp since the game allows you to go through the ENTIRE GAME without killing a single soul and this is also conisdered the most rewarding gameplay.
Examples like the above is why the term loses weight, it's just loosely applied to haphazard that can more simpler be explained by a specific part having bad game design. It only serves to make people start to pit a games story vs its gameplay, which absolutely should not happen. A piece of media should always be considered as a whole.
I also completely dismiss the idea that cinenarrative dissonance can be a thing but I won't really elaborate on it here.
So I've watched 13 minutes of it, where he describes the original argument (which I will be honest, I forgot most of the details of) and then how it fails to apply to Uncharted.
Through the strict lens of Hocking's original definition, it is indeed true that games like Uncharted fail to meet the requirements set out for the term.
However, I would personally argue that there isn't really anyone at fault here, other than perhaps the people who demand that the term be used as strictly as Hocking used it. The term "ludonarrative", at least to me, strictly implies a segregation. I suppose the technically-correct way to read that is as "ludo/narrative" - "game vs story". The term, as used by Hocking, isn't describing the gameplay and the story as two complementary systems, but is instead describing a relatively rare phenomenon where the gameplay reflects the story.
The argument can (and in this video, has successfully) been made that this use of the term "ludonarrative dissonance" is incorrect, in contrast to the original application of the term. I would counter that the original application of the term was too narrow.
There is a very real problem with games that have a story that tells us one thing, gameplay that tells us another, and the two don't line up at all. A problem where the gameplay (ludo) and story (narrative) disagree with one another (dissonance). I can't think of a more natural term for that than "ludonarrative dissonance".
I won't say that Hocking's use of the term is wrong, because beyond the fact he invented the term, what he described is a form of this disagreement between story and gameplay. But his application, and the application that critics of the term demand it be reserved for, is a very special case, where the gameplay and story at times agree (the gameplay of harvesting little sisters agreeing with the narrative of self-interest with disregard to others) and then at other times disagree (the gameplay allows players to indulge in such self-interest while the story railroads the player into selflessly helping Atlas).
I would argue that the dissonance that games like Bioshock: Infinite and Uncharted present is no less valid an application of the term. It's just not a valid application of Hocking's original use for the term.
Finally, I would second that Hocking's original use of the term is more accurately described as "thematic ludonarrative dissonance," because honestly, that's what the core of his argument really was. It wasn't so much that the game allowed one thing but the story demanded another - it was because the game had a theme of self-interest, but the story had a theme of a player-is-a-slave commentary.
I don't know if that's necessarily an example of ludonarrative dissonance, like he was saying about Uncharted, Drake may kill a small army's worth of people, but there's nothing in the game's story that implies its wrong to do so. Bioshock Infinite doesn't have a story that decries violence, or contradicts what the player is doing. It's not that the gameplay's dissonant, but rather that the gameplay is irrelevant to the story they're trying to tell.
I think some better examples are Watch Dogs, where you're playing a vigilante trying to bring justice to the city, yet you can murder innocent people with little repercussion. Or the opening sequence of Far Cry 3, where your character is horrified by the act of killing a man, but the moment player are given control you become an unstoppable killing machine.
I completely disagree. This is fundamentally a story about violence. Booker is set up as a man with a very violent past, capable of extreme violence, and they reinforce that through both the story and gameplay several times. Remember when he and elizabeth are waiting for the train ticket, they get ambushed, and booker kills a bunch of folks? Elizabeth is terrified of him, she runs off and you have to go find her. You have to calm her down and explain that people are trying to kill you and violence is the only way you're going to escape. The player at this point, by playing other shooters and by getting this far in this game, has become desensitized to it, and for me at least, seeing Elizabeth run away was actually a surprise. It did not occur to me that an ally would be put-off by my killing spree, because killing in video games is completely normal to me at this point. The game is reminding you that what you're doing in the game is not the behavior of a normal person. They are making it clear that Booker, and by extent the player, is a specifically jaded and violent individual, justifying why they are more or less unphased by their own killing spree. This scene helps establish the theme of violence being perhaps necessary in some cases, but still rather horrible and dehumanizing, which we see expanded upon as Elizabeth's character develops. Liz starts out completely innocent, terrified by violence, and becomes jaded as she has more experiences with violence. The scene with Fitzroy is a very strong example of this, where she stabs someone to death with a fucking pair of scissors. It's for a good reason, but it's clearly very traumatizing for her, and by this point in the game the carefree girl dancing around in her library and dreaming of Paris is very clearly gone. By the very end of the game, Elizabeth is cold and distant, and it ends with a final act of violence as she kills Booker. An act that's necessary for preventing all the horrible things that happen in Colombia, but one that leaves her, as far as we can tell, pretty much emotionless and no longer really human (she's like a time god now or something).
There's a lot more examples of violence being central to the game's themes. Yes, you get whiplash at the beginning of the game when you go from a calm, lovely stroll through a beautiful city in the sky to an extremely gruesome killing spree, but that's because that's exactly what Columbia is: A beautiful city on the surface, with a powder keg of extreme violence underneath that could go off at any moment. Behind the lovely exterior is a disgusting pile of racism, oppression, and exploitation so extreme that a violent revolution is inevitable. They're using this exaggerated version of early America (though I guess it'd be hard to argue that the oppression itself is exaggerated per say, nothing we see in game matches up to the horrors of actual, historical American slavery) to show how something can be beautiful for those living at the top and yet still be built on extreme oppression, and that such a situation is bound to result in violence eventually.
Other violence-related themes are explored too. The entire Vox half of the game is specifically trying to hammer in the theme that good-intentioned groups of people using violence to meet their goals can easily turn into a bloodthirsty mob that destroys and murders without any clear goals or ideals. This is represented to an extent in the gameplay, by having a group of people you helped a hell of a lot, and who fought along with you as allies now attacking you (though it's not a particularly groundbreaking example of "ludonarrative harmony" as the video puts it). Point is, this violence is all completely in line with the story.
I'm not trying to jerk off Bioshock Infinite too much here, there's definitely issues with the way the story is told (sending us to an alternate timeline in the middle of the game is a great way to make me way less invested in your world, the luteces still don't really make much sense and come across more as excessively wacky fourth-wall breaking comic relief than anything, the rules for the nosebleed ghost versions of people are inconsistent ((why isn't booker a ghost like the chinese gunsmith???))) and I can see where people are coming from when they talk about how they didn't like the gameplay (gameplay here is almost nothing like Bioshock and it doesn't make even the slightest attempt at being an RPG, imo they should have ditched the bioshock connections entirely). But if you think extreme violence in Bioshock infinite is ludonarrative dissonance you fundamentally do not understand the story of bioshock infinite.
Bioshock Infinite's story is a shitshow but yeah I wouldn't say there was any ludonarrative dissonance. It makes sense for Booker to do what he did and to be as violent as he was.
I interpreted the story for Bioshock Infinite as more an exploration of determinism and fatalism. Booker is a violent man, but he is trying to escape his violence.
After the war, he became a Pinkerton thug known for extreme violence. His violence cost him everything: his wife, his career, his esteem. He spiraled into a pit of drinking and gambling in an attempt to try and forget the horrors he had committed, and in his squalor he committed the single gravest mistake of his life: giving away his daughter.
That decision is what led him on his mission to recover Elizabeth: "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt" was how his broken mind reassembled the fact the Luteces brought him through to an alternate reality, after he chased them down and tried to stock them from taking his daughter to Comstock.
The reveal of who Comstock really is, an alternate-reality Booker who went through with his baptism to religiously absolve himself of his sins, isn't really so important because "omg Booker is Comstock," but more showing the inevitability of Booker's violent fate. In Booker's reality, he rejected the baptism and instead tried to drown his regrets with vices, and in doing so lost literally everything in his life. In Comstock's reality, he accepted the baptism - but instead of absolving himself of violence, he became a tyrant whose violence knows no bounds, in the literal sense that not even reality itself could stop him, as he extended his reach beyond his own reality and into alternate realities.
The conclusion of the game only further reinforces this point. As Elizabeth explains, there is no reality where Booker does not become a violent tyrant in some form or another. So long as there are Bookers, there will be Comstocks. As such, the only solution is for Booker to be drowned at the baptism, stopping the branches of Booker and Comstock from ever forming.
All throughout the game, Booker tries to justify his violence. When Elizabeth calls him a monster, he tries to talk her down and justify it as defense, as "this is just how the world is." Elizabeth doesn't buy it, and I don't think Booker buys it either, but they put that aside and continue to work together to resolve their mission. When Slate reveals to Booker the atrocities he committed during the war, it almost breaks Booker again - a clear sign that Booker wants to forget what he had done. But the universe just won't let him.
This is only further reinforced by the fact that, at every step of the way, Booker is met with resistance, and he responds the only way he knows how: through extreme violence. Even in the wake of scrubbing violence from his memory, and being tormented at its return to his conscience recollection.
Bioshock: Infinite is a game about violence. But the way I interpreted it, it is an allegory for how violence is the root of all (personal) suffering, and that it is impossible to escape a history of violence. Booker's case is an extreme example, but then, most allegories are.
That being said, I suppose that Bioshock: Infinite isn't really a great source of ludonarrative dissonance (as I described it) in retrospect. I will admit that. If anything, it's more a demonstration of a failure to marry the ideas of combat and narrative discovery. The story just starts and stops to allow combat segments in, with the narrative mostly ignoring the details of the combat. Violence that occurs in cutscenes is considered, but the violence committed by the player is largely ignored, sans a few specific instances.
I would assert that you can remove 90% of the fights from Bioshock Infinite, and the story wouldn't really change. That's not really ludonarrative dissonance, though, I agree. That's more just bad writing.
Maybe I'm just weird but I don't agree with that original criticism of Bioshock at all. I felt the whole point that was that no matter how free you think you are, you're under the boot of someone else. It's what happens to people who aren't on the top who fall in with Ayn Rand style philosophies, they may think themselves free - but they're doing someone else's bidding.
Man I remember someone linking this on /v/ years ago and proceeding to binge Matt's videos afterward. He's still one of my favorite youtubers.
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