The Parallels between Television and Video Game Narrative
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This chapter is a critique of current entertainment game narrative. The current trend in narrative is to use movie structure and format for creating the narrative for a game. The problem is the plot for a two hour movie does not translate well to a twenty hour game experience. The plot ends up being too thin to create an emotional depth that sustains itself over a longer game experience. The new strategy that is proposed here is for games to mimic television shows for narrative structure and duration. There is a strong correlation between the time required to complete a game or to watch a television season. This timing relationship also extends to an individual quest or episode and the length of a full game or television show franchise. This parallel also applies to the plot relationship of a TV series across episodes, seasons, and a series as it relates to a quest, game, or franchise. The chapter also addresses the changing way that people consume media. Television shows have better adapted to the changing viewer behaviors, compared to film, making them worthy of note and comparison. The primary television example used will be from USA Network’s Burn Notice. The structure of its plot centric episodes, character and plot centric seasons, and character arcs of the series distributes emotional engagement in the same way a video game often tries to. The positive audience response of the Burn Notice franchise, currently in its sixth season of development, is the result of its formulaic structure which the narrative is built around. By using this structure games will be able to create better crafted stories that better adapt to how players progress through a large entertainment game. The metaphor of video games mimicking movies should be replaced with the metaphor of video games mimicking television shows narratively to allow for a richer narrative experience.