[Air-L] Plot retention rates in AAA titles

[David Jones]

The complications that Rob offered are good ones, and I would add a couple
more. To some degree, it's easy to assume that plot is a structure entirely
contained within a text. To my mind, this is a difficult assertion to
sustain, particularly with games. Torben Grodal's book _Embodied Visions:
Emotion, Evolution, Culture and Film_ looks at narrative as a cognitive
phenomenon tied to the biology of brain. His model for understanding this is
extremely similar to many of the cognitive theories of perception and
understanding that form a lot of HCI and interaction design work.

To this end, I've always considered games to have plots (plural), even FPS
games. Even if players aren't paying attention to the scripted moments that
are supposed to drive the logic of the game's action, they're still
experiencing some sort of cohesive thread that connects events. These will
vary to some degree, if only slightly. I've never done it because it's
outside my research focus, but I've been tempted to ask players to write
narrative descriptions of the in-game events they experience, and then do a
discourse analysis that codes for similarities and differences in the
narratives that compares those reports to the in-game events themselves. For
me, it would be a matter of looking at how different technologies impact
player experiences. PC vs console. Keyboard/mouse vs light gun vs
controller. How those experiences are embodied during play and afterward.
But, I can see this as a way to start to tackle the issue of narrative/plot
perception during gameplay.

-- 
Dave Jones
PhD Student
Professional Writing and New Media
Old Dominion University
Chair, SIGDOC ODU
djone111 at odu.edu




Message: 8
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:16:38 -0500
From: Jordan Lynn <jordanl at uga.edu>
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: [Air-L] Plot retention rates in AAA titles
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       <AANLkTikh7_7XENWgCKz4wA7twZSLVL_giL0gxnSY2i5O at mail.gmail.com>
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Good afternoon, everyone!

I have a question, and this group seems like the place to ask. What
level of plot retention would you consider to be average in a First or
Third-Person Shooter? Studying AAA titles for plot retention is
difficult, since there are several subsets of gamers that ignore
plotlines as a matter of course, and shooters aren't usually noted for
narrative depth. My primary issue is figuring out what percentage of
gamers are ignoring the plot, and what percentage are not getting it
because the game is not delivering it effectively. Also, there is some
difference between total narrative comprehension and getting "the
gist" of the game's plot- what percentages of players would you expect
to fully understand the narrative, and what percentage understand the
basics of the story?

Thoughts?
-Jordan


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Message: 9
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:38:52 -0500
From: Rob Baron <baro0033 at umn.edu>
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Plot retention rates in AAA titles
Message-ID: <4CC5B29C.4040400 at umn.edu>
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Jordan,

That's an interesting question, especially when you consider that the
single-player (more plot driven) portion of many FPS is a small part of
the overall game-playing experience.

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of the retention of a game's
plot, or ignoring the plot of a game, but rather how much players engage
with that plot as part of their overall gaming experience.  For example
/Call of Duty: Modern Warfare/ has a much bigger presence as a
multiplayer community than as as a single player game.  I would argue
that this multiplayer portion has more to do with pure ludic experience
rather than a narrative experience of the single player campaign.

I think the question has more to do with the number of player that want
to engage with a FPS's plot as opposed to the effectiveness of that
plots presentation, especially considering that some of the earliest
examples of this genre only used plot as a way to set up the "shooty
parts" of the game.

You could look at the extent to which players engage in single-player
portions of a FPS to try to assess this.

I'd also be careful of lumping all FPS games together.  I know that
there are a number of games that put a premium on plot and totally
eschew multiplayer gameplay (like /Bioshock/).  You may want to specify
the kinds of FPSs that you're looking at.

--
Rob Baron
PhD Candidate and Graduate Instructor
Rhetoric, Scientific and Technical Communication
Department of Writing Studies
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities