Terra Metaphora: How Game Mechanics Communicate Narrative Information to Players

This thesis seeks to explore some of the ways game mediate representative and narrative information to players via their game mechanics, suggesting that game mechanics embody games’ unique form of narrative discourse. Previous attempts to reconcile and model the storytelling function of narrative games have taken disparate approaches that are not compatible with “classical” narratological models traditionally developed for the analysis of other narrative media, such as film and written prose. This research identifies some of the problems with “exceptional” treatment of games as narrative objects and proposes a model of narrativity for games more in line with other narrative texts. This “classical” model is then used as the basis for several “post-classical” narratological analyses to identify specific game mechanics and describe how games uniquely work to construct audience understanding of key narrative elements such as character, time, space, and plot. This is done through close textual analyses of several games, particularly role-playing games. These are identified here to be excellent sites of both narrative and ludic (game-like) content, and which employ both in concert in intricate ways to narrative effect. In addition to a written thesis, this research takes the form of PhD-by-practice, incorporating a custom-built video game designed to demonstrate, elaborate on, and inform the written material. The game, Terra Metaphora, is built to manipulate its own textual fabric to draw attention to the clandestine ways video game rules, systems, and procedures help craft story.