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DING!
By Corvus | February 5, 2007
I leveled up on Friday.
No, not Paigho my Draenei Shaman, or Traziera my Blood Elf Rogue, or even Brecht, my Gnomish Rogue*, but me. I can still hear the words that rang through my ears as I was surrounded by the glowing yellow light and heard that triumphant clash of music…
Call character levels “titles” and quests “paperwork” (or “busy work”) and it sounds
an awful lot like Corporate America™.Coincidence?
That’s when it hit me. Hard. Right between the eyes. Something I’ve been dancing around, but haven’t come out and said. It’s the one thing that integrates all that talk about the importance of metaphor to all that other talk about the importance of story to all of that other other talk about how narrative isn’t story, but games are narrative, and narrative contains story, but not just one story, two stories, the author’s and the audience’s, and how good games allow the audience more opportunities to tell their own stories.
**htaerb peed**
Okay. I’m going to quickly re-cover some old ground for those of you who haven’t read the older stuff or, like me, need it repeated in a slightly different fashion every once in a while.
Plot is the outline which marks events and the order in which they ought to occur. Plot is the plan, the blueprint. Plot is the What.
Narrative is the crafted and/or artistic** medium, whether that be a novel, movie, radio program, play, comic book, or game. Narrative is the vessel, the structure. Narrative is the How.
Story is the emotional (and possibly intellectual) participation with the narrative, both the author’s and the audience’s. Anything not expressly coded into the engine, anything not expressly stated in the text, anything not expressly painted on the canvas, is the Story. Story is the content, the life, the spirit. Story is the Why.
Now I’ll add a new definition to the mix. I have discussed metaphor extensively in the past. I have talked about how metaphor is a compressed simplification of an elaborate system which occurs over time. I have discussed the importance of metaphor in building our own personal mythologies.
What I have not done, not to my satisfaction anyway, is explain where metaphor fits into my definitions of plot, narrative, and story. So here goes:
Metaphor is a narrative tool used to communicate Story.
Sadly, all novelists, screen writers, directors, and game designers are not Storytellers. Those that are, however, intentionally place metaphors within their narratives, seeking to communicate something a little deeper, a little richer, a little more important.
There are metaphoric narratives which elevate us, show us something better, something pure. But there are also a great many metaphoric narratives which reflect our lives back to us. Sometimes they do so through a lens of their own agenda like Michael Moore (documentary director), or harshly and uncomfortably (almost cruelly), like Keri Hulme (novelist), or compassionately and uncomfortably, like Peter Carey (novelist) or P.T. Anderson (director). Still others reflect it back with sarcasm and irony, like (as much as I hate to give him credit for it) Jerry Seinfeld (sitcom producer).
A masterful Storyteller is well versed in a wide variety of metaphor, from Sumerian mythology to German existentialism. From the Greek Gods to the Christian God. From pantheistic tribal shamanism to Russellian urban agnosticism. So deep within the Storyteller’s thought processes do these mythologies run that metaphor leaps, unbidden by conscious thought, into their narratives. These individuals become rich wellsprings of Story, enriching the world views and quenching the thirst for meaning of all those around them. I hope, before I die, to achieve some small measure of this role.
Without metaphor, a narrative is just a narrative, inert and lifeless. However, the audience may find parallels to their own life experiences within the narrative and provide their own metaphor, imbuing the narrative with life, and spirit, and most importantly, with story. And that cannot be ruled out when contemplating the success of games, television shows, movie, or books.
World of Warcraft, as a metaphor for our consumer focused society with its daily grind of work as a process by which we acquire more stuff, the inane chatter of the general channel representing the soul numbing small talk we overhear at the office, the grouping into small self sufficient groups to allay the mind numbing tedium and present a unified front to the hostile landscape. Do I think the game’s designers included these metaphors intentionally? No, I do not. But we, the audience, happily provide our own metaphor structure to its lifeless narrative and give it a meaning and importance greater than they anticipated.
And, that is the power of metaphor and Story.
*All of which can be found on Earthen Ring, incidentally.
**The post about art vs. craft is one of the most frequent stops of my one-off Google guests. That post… and the picture of the old man from my first hosted carnival. Odd.
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