Can Video Games Tell Good Stories?

A new episode of Klavans on the Culture

Friends,

By popular demand, on the latest episode of Klavans on the Culture we take up a controversial set of questions from one of our previous discussions: what is a story? What is a plot? And can video games do either thing well?

We had a really intriguing exchange of views on the subject. You can watch the whole thing here, and read one of the spicier excerpts below. And if you like the show, spread the word to keep it going!

Andrew: One of the most stupid things that feminists have done to us is take the hero male out of stories, because that’s how young men learn to be one kind of man with women instead of another kind.

Spencer: Well, they imagine that there’s some third, secret third thing.

Andrew: So, Braid is a work of genius, but the story itself is still that stupid story, girl gets captured by dragon, guy goes after and gets her. And so by having the video game structure, that simple story, which as you say, is a mythic story, the mythic story becomes bigger in our imaginations without our really having to say, well, “then this happened and thathappened.” Because if you follow the plot, the actual plot of Expedition 33, it’s pretty stupid.

Spencer: Okay well, let’s bracket that for a second because I definitely disagree with that. But I think what you’re saying about the mythic elemental aura of these stories is a key to their power, no doubt. And in much the same way as Greek tragedy has its origins in the choral song of the Dithyramb, video games—bear with me here on this comparison!

Andrew: You know, if he were here today.

Spencer: I’m going to channel him. I’m going to actually summon up my AristotleGPT and say, video games have their origins—especially role-playing games, which is what Exposition 33 is—have their origins in the tabletop game, in Dungeons and Dragons, which is precisely where that heroic male impulse went as feminism began to chase it underground. It’s in the 70s and 80s, and I think that’s second wave feminism, which really is what you’re talking about. This like, “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” kind of critique. As boys lose their access to that narrative in the mainstream culture, they start to get it from nerd culture. They start to put it onto these tabletop games. And they do enter into it in this way that you can’t do in a movie, because a movie is just beamed at you and it tells whatever story it tells. And this is where these things come from. This is like, part of their historical trajectory. And again, they’ve been refined since into something, I think, more elevated and, at their height, more artistic. And that’s kind of what you’re looking at when you’re looking at something like Expedition 33 or indeed even Braid, which I agree has a slightly more subversive story. But you could take also Ico, probably my favorite video game.

Andrew: Great video game.

Spencer: And I would pair it with actually Megaman X, which is an older series, both of which—Ico and Megaman X—have this quality that they operate through suggestion. They kind of open a universe for you to insert your own experience into. But I do think that that’s not in itself disqualifying them from becoming [plot-driven art].

Andrew: Well, I don’t want to speak in absolutes because I’m not an absolutist about anything. But there was a TV show that came over from somewhere in Scandinavia called The Killing. And it starred that absolutely beautiful woman, Mireille Enos. She was in World War Z, and she’s just lovely. And it had that Joel Kinnaman, who became briefly a kind of minor star, really good acting. It was an old-fashioned whodunit mystery. Female cop goes out, interviews suspects, finds whodunit. But because it was in the TV medium, because it was told through television story, it was really long. It was maybe like 10 episodes, 12 episodes. And in order to sustain that, she had to keep catching the wrong guy.

Spencer: She became incompetent by virtue of the structure!

Andrew: Exactly. The second season I went, this woman is the worst! We should not allow women to become detectives! This is ridiculous. And that was just the structure. The structure was pulling against the genre of the mystery story, which really unfolds in, tops, three episodes. I think you get a really tight whodunit, just whodunit specifically. You get a tight mystery and it’s over and you guess the guy and that’s the end of the story. So in the same way, I think the video game, first of all, is so huge. Video games are so long, they go on for hours.... And going back to this other thing is, the emotional moments really are fighting. That’s what you’re trying to do. I mean, I’ve screamed at the TV during Expedition 33, when the monster kept killing me. Not when some dramatic event occurred.

Spencer: I mean, I could name a few [video game] moments, I think that for at least most people, maybe not you, are like that....

Watch the rest here!