Week 11 - Eskelenin vs Jenkins

Markku Eskelinen, an independent scholar and self-professed "ludologist", in his response to Jenkins' paper "Game Design as Narrative Architecture", says:

According to the well-known phrase of David Bordwell, narration is "the process whereby the film's sjuzet and style interact in the course of cueing and constraining the spectator's construction of the fabula." In games there are other kinds of dominant cues and constraints: rules, goals, the necessary manipulation of equipment, and the effect of possible other players for starters. This means that information is distributed differently (invested in formal rules, for example), it is to be obtained differently (by manipulating the equipment) and it is to be used differently (in moving towards the goal).

By systematically ignoring and downplaying the importance of these and other formal differences between games and narratives as well as the resulting cognitive differences, Jenkins runs the risk of reducing his comparative media studies into repetitive media studies: seeing, seeking, and finding stories, and nothing but stories, everywhere. Such pannarrativism could hardly serve any useful ludological or narratological purpose.

Do you agree with Eskelinen's dismissal of Jenkins' approach? Why/why not?

After switching allegiance left and right for the last 2 days, I finally decided that I cannot completely agree with Eskelinen’s dismissal of Jenkins’ article, though I cannot sympathize with Jenkins. However, his introduction of spatiality as a middle ground is rather interesting.

Eskelinen’s dismissal of Jenkins’ approach can be justified in that firstly, their definitions of “ludologist” are very different. Gonzala Frasca wrote an article titled “Ludologists love stories too: notes from a debate that never took place”, in which he tried to clarify the misunderstandings between ludologists and narratologists. The common misconception was that ludologists are radical in focusing on game mechanics and rejecting analyzing games as narratives. He claimed that “ludology” is a misnomer, in its current interpretation. He initially proposed the word as the study of games in general. Game study to the exclusion of narratology was never his intention, nor any ludologists’, Eskelinen included. Frasca stated that his main goal was “to show how basic concepts of ludology could be used along with narratology to better understand videogames”. Not favouring narratology as the preferred tool for understanding games is a far cry from discarding it altogether. As Jenkins was basing his article on the blood feud between the two, it does discredit him to an extent.

Also, Jenkins focused primarily on games with narrative elements, yet neither saying aye to narratology nor nay to “ludology”. While he did agreed that not all games tell stories and tried to classify games according to their narrative architecture, he side-stepped the differences and that frustrated Eskelinen no end. He claimed middle ground, but I felt his paper was too skewed towards narratologists.

What Eskelinen said about spatiality as promoting architecture, choreography, sculpture and orienteering over narrativism is not entirely true, however. Spatial design seems to be a sort of middle ground between narratology and radical ludology. What is spatial design anyway? Is it game mechanics or narrativism? I feel that it is an overlap of the two, depending on the game environment that the designer is hoping to create. Spatiality encompasses all types of games, from emergence to progressive. All games are preoccupied with design of space as Jenkins mentioned. In my last blog response, I suggested that games are moving towards emergence and that game designers should concerned themselves most with creating a good game. I think the right recipe for a good game can be more easily accomplished with spatiality as a starting point, as opposed to focusing narrowly on ludology or narratology.