First off, a bit of background. What is Ludology and what is Narratology?

According to Wiktionary, ludology “is the study of games and other forms of play” and narratology is “the study of narrative structure.” While both these definitions are right they don’t explain what we mean when we talk about ludology and narratology within the study of games. Games themselves haven’t really had a huge amount of study. Initially, game studies existed only to historians and anthropologists, studying ancient games to gain an insight into dead societies. With the birth of video games in the 1980s, study of games has branched out to several other fields of study. Study of games has always overlapped into other fields of study such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, arts and humanities etc.
Anyway, there are two major approaches to ludology: games as narratives(Narratology) and games as mechanics(Ludology). I think it comes down to “what makes a game?” If you strip a game down, one aspect at a time, how far do you get before it is no longer a game?
Let’s take a game with a lot of going on: Mass Effect.
Mass effect has:
- Art
- Sound
- Music
- Moral Choices
- Tactical combat
- Narrative
- Interactivity
- Mechanics/rules
For this example, take one scene out of Mass Effect. Commander Shepard is talking to a Krogan bounty hunter on the planet Illium. The hunter is going to kill Shepard if he doesn’t do it first. And let’s assume there’s a moral choice in there somewhere.
If you take the colour, the textures and art out, are you left with a game? Sure, plenty of games don’t have art in them. Look at ZORK, nothing but text yet it’s still a game. What about the sound? No more gun fire from the Krogan’s Striker Assault Rifle. Do you still have a game? You do, plenty of games are silent. Look at most Windows 3 games. Take out the music? You still have a game. Now, lets take out those moral choices that affect the narrative, those choices that made Mass Effect famous; Now, the narrative has only two options, either Shepard beats the Krogan or vice versa. We still have a game. There are still hundreds of games without a moral choice system. Remove the tactical combat, reduce it to either the Krogan guns down Shepard or vice versa; you still have a game. Now let’s take a look at what we have. We have an interactive game with narrative and rules.
First, let’s take out the narrative. You no longer have Commander Shepard, you have the player’s avatar. And it isn’t having a shootout with a pissed off Krogan, it’s killing an enemy. In fact it’s technically not even killing, as killing would imply the enemy is a living being; it could be a living being but without the narrative to tell us that, it isn’t. Now, between the player avatar and the enemy, the mechanics and rules state that one is going to stay and one will disappear(or die/be destroyed), and it’s up to the player’s skill to decide which of the two parties that is. We still have a game but it’s not a very interesting one; whether the game is interesting is irrelevant right now though. Now you might think “we have a game here, with mechanics and interactivity but not story, therefore, games are not defined by narrative.” But is the game really without narrative? The absolute basic definition of a narrative is “a sequence of events” and here we have a sequence of events. You start of with one state, two parties, and then you change to a new state, one party. Whichever party that is is up to the interaction of the player. Even if we take the story and context out of the narrative, we still have narrative because a narrative is inherently born from interaction.
Now let’s take out the interactivity. We no longer have a player avatar, instead it is merely party “A” and now party A is nothing more than the enemy to the enemy. So now, “enemy” is a bit of a misnomer so instead we’ll call it party “B”. So now we have nothing but rules and a stripped narrative. B will destroy A unless A destroys B first. A has no way to destroy B(no interference on the player’s part) so B destroys A. Would you consider that a game? I wouldn’t, it’s more like a simulation of the exact same variables over and over again.
So let’s go back a bit to our basic narrative with rules and interactivity. Let’s try taking out the rules. The enemy will no longer destroy the player if the player doesn’t beat them to it. So if we have interactivity, we have a narrative by default because the player’s actions create a narrative. But much like the stripped down narrative, I don’t think we can realistically remove the rules; there are always rules, laws and limits. If there is interactivity, there has to be rules on how the interactivity works.
So we’ve established that in a game, the narrative(in its absolute basic form, no story or context etc.) comes about from the interaction of the player because if there is no interaction it is a simulation, not a game. So in terms of games, narrative is dependant on interactivity. We also established that interactivity is naturally on rules and mechanics; therefore, the narrative of games in its most basic form is dependant on the games rules and mechanics. So to put it in layman’s terms: “what happens in a game depends on that game’s rules and mechanics.”
If this is the conclusion I have come to, then I guess I’m a Ludologist.
However, I’m not satisfied. Look at what we’ve been left with after stripping it all away. We do still have a game but do we still have Mass Effect? I say: absolutely not. When did it stop being Mass Effect? When did it change from one game to another? Let’s work backwards from where we are. We start with a game which has interactivity, a basic narrative (that is, a sequence of actions), and rules and mechanics to govern them. Let’s start by adding the story and context back to the narrative; do we have Mass Effect? We have Commander Shepard, the Krogan bounty hunter and Illium but is that Mass Effect? Some would say yes, we have the story and the story is what gives Mass Effect its identity; I disagree, I don’t think we’ve gotten there yet. So let’s add on the tactical combat now; once again, there are a multitude of ways for Shepard to kill the Krogan. I still don’t think we have Mass Effect. So let’s add the moral choices back in; maybe now Shepard can talk his way out of it. Now, a lot of people will say that we have Mass Effect; the choices that made Mass Effect famous are what makes it Mass Effect. I disagree, we still don’t have it. So let’s add the music back in; once again, the player can feel the tension of the situation, they are more engrossed. I want to keep going, so we’ll add the sound effects back in and I still don’t think this game that we have is Mass Effect. So I’ll add the last piece back, the art. Fully rendered 3d models, coloured textures, the whole thing. I think we are finally left with Mass Effect again. So does this mean the art makes the game? No, that’s not what I think; if I took the sound first, nothing would have changed that drastically.
I think that what makes a game unique, what makes this game be this exact game is the narrative. Here I’m talking about the full narrative, not the stripped down one that we worked with for so long. Now if that’s how I feel, why was I not satisfied when I gave it back the story and context? Because that’s not all there is to narrative. The art and sound is part of the narrative and the narrative should be shown through the gameplay and bleed frrm every art asset and sound; the colour of Shepard’s armour, the sound of his rifle are all part of the narrative they give this game its identity.
So here’s what I’ve come up with: the mechanics and rules are what makes a game or simulation, the interactivity is what makes it a game and the narrative is what makes it special, what makes it unique.
It looks like I’m a ludologist but I do not deny the value of narratology. Mechanics are what give us the game, narrative is what gives it meaning.