Event-Sequences, Plots and Narration in Computer Games

Opening with the debate between ludologists and narratologists this essay tries to show that there is a narrative aspect in computer games that has nothing to do with background stories and cut scenes. A closer analysis of two sequences, taken from the MMORPG Everquest II and the adventure game Black Mirror, is the basis for a distinction between three aspects of this kind of narrative in computer games: the sequence of activities of the player, the sequence of events as it is determined by the mechanics of the game and the sequence of events understood as a plot, that is as a sequence of (chronologically) ordered and causally linked events. This kind of narrative is quite remote from the proto- typical narrative serving as a source for most narratological considerations. All media and not only computer games therefore actually need their own narratology.

 Source: author's abstract