Video Game Narratives and Motivation

This week's texts centered on the motivational factor in game-based learning. It's a very broad area and we have already discussed some aspects related to it in the previous readings, which shows that motivation is a key factor for advocating for the use of video games in classrooms. I would like, however, to focus on a topic of personal interest that relates directly to my game idea: video game narratives and motivation.

In his book A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games (2012), Dylan Holmes demonstrates how video game stories have evolved over time. In the beginning, the story was just an "excuse", a background for the action that unfolded on the screen; however, as the complexity of games evolved, in terms such as graphics and play mechanics, a need for better stories also arose. Nowadays, there are as many kinds of stories as there are games, and these narratives present characteristics that connect to different audiences and trigger distinct reactions. The narrative in Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (or MMORPGs), for instance, "provides choice, control, collaboration, and achievement, yet also provides scaffolding for problem-solving" (Dickey, 2007, p. 265), and these aspects may change if we take into account other narrative styles. Life is Strange, one of my favorite narrative-based games, for example, focus on choices, but no collaboration is necessary, since it is a single player game only.

This growing complexity of video games demanded for a variety of professionals from areas such as graphic design, animation, and programming. One can say, thus, that the game-making field is interdisciplinary (Squire, 2008). Instructional Designers, however, are rarely part of the equation, and this can be explained by the focus: educators focus on the learning outcome, whereas game designers prioritize the user and his/her experience. Experience which includes narrative as a driving factor, a strategy to present information, in context, that is valuable for progressing in the adventure.

Malone and Lepper (1987) present another characteristic that is vital for story-driven games: choice. The feeling of being in control and the ability to make choices to decide on the outcome of the narrative increases motivation in gameplay. The authors argue that "even the illusion of control may often produce powerful effects" (p. 239). That said, choice is an important component of my idea for the Iracema game, and one of my biggest challenges so far has been deciding exactly how much freedom of choice I can offer to the player: would allowing multiple possible outcomes take away from the pedagogical characteristic of the game, since Iracema is a literary classic, and one of my instructional goals is to acquaint students with its narrative and historical characteristics? The more I read, the more questions I have - I should interpret them as quests that need to be solved in my game-making journey.