The Historical Simulation of Narrative Fiction
The Lord of the Rings on-line game
What is interesting about this new game is that it not only exists as a detailed field, or forum of interactive avatars (e.g. World of Warcraft, Second Life), but it also follows, over "real-time," the narrative of the Rings trilogy - in other words, the story told in J.R.R. Tolkein's books becomes the historical, social, grand narrative of the simulacrum.
I'd say that this is the dawn of a new age of - here, epic - storytelling. It's basically the interactive film that people have been expecting (and, for some reason - probably economic - hoping for) for so long. Yet can we even call this a story anymore, now that it takes place within the simulacrum? Is this no longer merely a story, but rather a simulated history? It is easy to see in the case of this specific game how the overarching story is fictional, as it has been wholly adapted from an earlier work of epic fiction, and thus we already know the storyline and ending (the pleasure of the game, as is alluded to in the article I've linked here, rests in the illusion that each individual player is somehow helping to push that grand narrative along). [In this vein, I'd love to play a well-done online game version of the Iliad.] But what happens when the intertextuality is removed from this structure? The universal character of all narrative fiction is that, no matter what tense it is written in, it has already happened - as it was written in the past. Yet this new interactive narrative "video game" (remember the etymology? - video, "I see" + ga+mann," joy/collective-person") - this new game writes its "fictional" narrative in the present, at the present, in "real-time."
And so now we must ask the question, Who will be the Storyteller of the Future?
What is interesting about this new game is that it not only exists as a detailed field, or forum of interactive avatars (e.g. World of Warcraft, Second Life), but it also follows, over "real-time," the narrative of the Rings trilogy - in other words, the story told in J.R.R. Tolkein's books becomes the historical, social, grand narrative of the simulacrum.
I'd say that this is the dawn of a new age of - here, epic - storytelling. It's basically the interactive film that people have been expecting (and, for some reason - probably economic - hoping for) for so long. Yet can we even call this a story anymore, now that it takes place within the simulacrum? Is this no longer merely a story, but rather a simulated history? It is easy to see in the case of this specific game how the overarching story is fictional, as it has been wholly adapted from an earlier work of epic fiction, and thus we already know the storyline and ending (the pleasure of the game, as is alluded to in the article I've linked here, rests in the illusion that each individual player is somehow helping to push that grand narrative along). [In this vein, I'd love to play a well-done online game version of the Iliad.] But what happens when the intertextuality is removed from this structure? The universal character of all narrative fiction is that, no matter what tense it is written in, it has already happened - as it was written in the past. Yet this new interactive narrative "video game" (remember the etymology? - video, "I see" + ga+mann," joy/collective-person") - this new game writes its "fictional" narrative in the present, at the present, in "real-time."
And so now we must ask the question, Who will be the Storyteller of the Future?
posted by Sturgeon General at 2:52 PM
9 Comments:
Its so fucking cool! I love tha future.
I like what you've written here, but one thing strikes me - all writing, all narrative making, takes place in the present. What are you asking here? Are you asking what the difference is between a story taking shape as it passes between generations and a story written by as many hands as can hold a mouse?
I've always liked the Benjamin essay on the Storyteller. But I'm not convinced he's right. I'm also not convinced by the postmodernists who say there was never a storyteller to begin with; stories have ever been unoriginal, that is, origin-less.
I suppose I see what you mean when you say that narrative fiction "has already happened," and that what is happening in video game narratives is different. A question: can we really say that video games are a type of writing? Might they be a completely different category of _-sciption, or _-graphy (I don't know what prefixes you'd want, but it seems you want to say video games are akin to writing). Video games are interactive; stories aren't. Sure, a storyteller improvises, his apprentice storyteller will tell the story differently; but it's not like he puts out a piece of paper and says to his crowd "Write it yourself!"
I suppose what I'm ultimately objecting to is this idea that video games can be grouped under the categories of 'writing' or 'storytelling.' In the simulacrum, does any real writing take place? Writing is simulation already. Isn't there just one sort of simulation, simulation of the real? Simulation of simulation is still simulation, even if it's 'within' the simulacrum. Shall we say all simulation is writing? All simulation is story telling? Simulation=narrative? Where does this get us? (I ask that question both of you and of myself, aderolriddled as this response has become).
[note: I kind of wrote this comment in spurts, so I apologize that it is a little repetitive. Also, I almost lost the whole thing to "scheduled maintenance" - somebody vomited on the homepage I guess - I recommend always copying your post to the clipboard before pressing any buttons that might make it disappear.]
TTL, I think we're speaking about different things here - and also about different orders of simulacrum, which I think is a confusion between Plato and Baudrillard: the Platonic simulacrum is linked to the real - the order I'm talking about need not be.
Perhaps also I didn't explain the gameplay quite properly. I think you may be confusing the avatars (the players of the game) with the designers of the game, who are what I meant to refer to as the Storyteller in that last line. It is the designer who chooses ("writes") the grand narrative (which in this case is Frodo's journey in the Lord of the Rings). Ultimately, the players of the game can do nothing to change that grand narrative themselves. The narrative merely unfolds over time, altering the specific realities of the simulation. It is therefore history rather than story. I mean that, in a sense, the designers of the game write from the future to the present, whereas normally writing takes place in the present, which then becomes the past of the reader. The grand narrative of the game, however, is written in "real-time": it is thus read immediately, or even in the past of the writing (due to lag). It is the same idea as watching live footage, which always carries a sense of reality. Except, in this case, the reality is simulated.
That said, the players don't necessarily "read" the grand narrative of the game, but they infer it from their experience of its repercussions, or it is mediated to them, like watching the news.
This specific Lord of the Rings game, however, already is linked to a written story, and therefore, the players have a textual reference. Thus the simulation of this game is still linked to the real, or at least a memory of it. The question I'm asking is what happens when that textual reference is removed? The "game" is designed or written in "real-time." It's not like a book which is written and then published in full, and therefore written before the reading. It's not even like a serial novel or serial TV-show, for the same reason. In other words, there is no gap to bookend the fiction. The designers of the game can respond to the actions of the players (just as a serial novelist or TV writer can respond to the reactions of the audience), but the difference here is that the designers do so without the distance of temporarily "breaking the fiction."
So when I said Who will be the Storyteller of the Future, I'm really trying to say: if we are really on the verge of full-on narrative simulacrum, who is going to be designing that "game"? - in other words, Who, in the future, is going to be writing the future?
Here's something else I just thought of:
Is it possible to link the three Lacanian orders - the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic - to the Present, Future, and Past, respectively? It seems to make a lot of sense. Where would Baudrillard's Simulacrum fit then? I've been thinking recently about how the Simulacrum makes time travel possible - is this true?
I also just wrote a paper about how photography is a conflation of the Real and the Imaginary, and my last line was that that leads to Simulation. should I post it?
Good stuff. I should probably read Baudrillard. I'm just weary of SIMULACRUM the same way I'm weary of IDEOLOGY. It's too big a word for me. Then again, I like how Deleuze uses the term Institution. I've been realizing lately, though, that this is probably just a matter of taste and disposition. I like Deleuze for whatever reason, Sturgeon seems to like Baudrillard, and Jed has his Althusser. It does bother me a little that they don't seem to overlap enough. So I'm happy with your transpositions onto Lacan. An MCM professor would probably kick you in the head for saying that Lacan's orders of the real could be mapped onto time (or maybe they wouldn't; maybe they'd conveniently siphon the idea into a paper and publish it without telling you), but either way, I think it's a helpful way to look at it.
I think that the fact that we find it hard to find common ground between our various theoretical vocabularies validates that it's not just obtuse mental masterbation, but rather that they are useful and real concepts. Where we run into trouble is the raw volume and density of the text we have to wade through to be able to communicate.
There's a chance that this videogame concept is a false evolution, though. I guess i would have to play the game to understand why it works, but I guess I don't understand where the autonomy of the players comes in; if they have to follow a set narrative, where does the gameplay come in? How would they design it?
the Storyteller of the Future is obviously The Firm.
I think the question of the autonomy of the gameplay comes in at the same level of the question we have of our own predestination - and furthermore, of the futility of our actions in the face of history. At the risk of pissing off Alex, or worse - pleasing him, I would contend stupidly that the vast majority of philosophy is a justification of this futility. The question that comes up in critical theory (as well as in philosophy) is, how is this applicable to my daily life? How can I use these ideas in order to change the things I am critiquing?
On the other hand, though, I think that things are changing all the time, and that critical theory (esp. Foucault!) allows us to witness this change and revel in its underbelly (Foucault reverts the status of stasis and change, whereas ideology inverts it). That's all put very idiotically and I haven't thought at all about what I've said, nor have I really addressed your question, Jed. Blah
I'm gonna finish posting this Deleuze. Maybe it'll help us move this discussion in a progressive direction. Tyler: philosophy is a justification for a lot of things. I wrote in an essay about Hegel that he was what every philosopher is: A man who wants to be convinced of the veracity of his convictions. We want to know why we believe things, why we do what we do, why we care about this or that cause. We create reasons. I'm pretty much pissed off with everything about philosophy lately, so what you say pleases me to the extent that it reinforces something I've thought before, and pisses me off because it reminds me how ridiculous and implosive my intellectual pursuits are proving to be.
Well, I don't know if this'll be a progressive commment, but I think the best philosphies or theories or whatever you want to call them which I've read are those that have proved to me (however gradually and subtly) how wrong I am - they are those which challenge the way I think about my life, the way I justify my own actions and so force me to see those actions as such rather than mere routine.
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