Evocative Spaces:
- Feels like your playing in a familiar environment, whether that be because the player recoginses from a existing franchise or something similar to one. For example, playing a movie based game the player will more likely get more enjoyment out of the game from reenacting beloved scenes from the film. Whereas playing a game like Red Dead Redemption (a cowboy game) may put the player in familiar territory seen in cowboy movies such as the scenario of pistols at dawn.
- Above also relates to theme park rides as visitors love to 'step in' into a visual representation of a story they may know and love.
- Using Evocative space could also be useful if a game's company decided to retell a known story of a existing franchise e.g. creating a darker version of the children's book Alice in Wonderland with the video game known as American McGee's Alice.
- Overall, the use of evocative space is very useful as people often prefer to start with something familiar with which they feel secure in, before they move on to something different. If the environment is totally unconnected to anything they know or have experience off then the player will feel no emotional or sentimental attraction to it and they may reject the game all together.
Enacting Stories:
- The key features of these stories is the environments and not the plot.
- Instead of relying more on a story, games that use enacting stories are basically games that rely on the player exploring for every hidden thing rather than a narrative e.g. Sonic and Hedgehog.
- The player's satisfaction comes from finishing both a level and the game itself rather than working through an in depth narrative.
- Sometimes the narrative is told through the background e.g. trails of blood and burning buildings. In these stories there is a strong sense of a journey.
Embedded Narratives:
- The Mises-en-Scene contains the story.
- Often this can also mean when multiple stories are mixed in with one another, thus making the player correct the narratives order. e.g. One story could be chronological and the other out of sequence, in short polysemic which means having multiple meanings and interpretations as seen in Indigo Prophecy.
Emergent Narrative:
- The player is able to interpret or re-imagine the story of a game in any way they want as there is no built in narrative within the game and the player is therefore able to construct their own narrative within the confines of the environments they are given. E.g. The Sims in which you create a family and make them live their lives the way you want them to. You may also make them look familiar to people you know so they have relevance to the player's situation in real life. For example, the player might chose to play as a character they would secretly like to be in real life and one that lives they live in a way they want to but can't. Modding games also works as you can replace character models with anyone imaginable and therefore come up with the scenarios for why these characters are in the game's world.
- In short, the story is constructed by the player.
Harvard Referencing:
- Banks, R. (2010) 'Sims 3' screen shot [Online image]. Available at: http://www.brashgames.co.uk/2010/11/03/the-sims-3-xbox-360-review/ (Accessed: 24/10/2012).
- Ron. (2010) 'Sonic the Hedgehog' screen shot [Online image]. Available at: http://www.retrogameoftheday.com/2010/01/retro-game-of-day-sonic-hedgehog.html (Accessed: 24/10/2012).
- Unknown. (2011) 'Red Dead Redemption' screen shot [Online image]. Available at: http://www.ireddead.com/guide/reddeadredemption/duels/ (Accessed: 24/10/2012).
- Unknown. (Unknown)Indigo Prophecy screen shot [Online image]. Available at: http://www.adventurelantern.com/reviews/indigoProphecy/indigoProphecy.htm (Accessed: 24/10/2012).
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