Aarseth Espen

Net/Play/Theory: Narrative As social Control

Abstract

This paper examines the strategies of multiplayer-game (MPG) designers, in using stories and storylines for governing player behavior. Multiplayer games (Everquest, Anarchy Online, Lineage, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, among others) are relatively rich, complex simulations, involving up to millions of active players (Lineage), where cultural fictions (medieval fantasies, WW2, science fiction) are used as scenery and inspiration for roleplaying games (including roleplaying in first-person shooters). However, as many game theorists have noted, combining stories and games is problematic, even in a singleuser game. In multiplayer games, where players face intelligent, autonomous opponents, the storyline is reduced to a backstory, and replaced by quests, leveling (improving your character), etc. Is it still possible to use narrative and narratology to describe how actions and events are produced and controlled in MPGs, or must we look for other, more collective structures to explain what goes on? The difference between traditional games and computer games seems to be that the computer affords a richer cultural texture, more world detail, and a simulated environment. These elements has made make it easier to ³produce² storylike, somewhat flexible event chains than in prvious games, but is that the future of gaming, now that networks and multiplaying start to dominate the genre? The paper will analyse a few MPGs and outline a theoretical model for how rules, gameplay and gameworld in these games produce meaningful, collective action, and discuss what role (if any) narrative plays in these games.