Oldal 57 [57]
56 | Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
sounds. In addition to immersion, the player’s attentional functions are also
activated during gameplay as he or she is put into continuous problem¬
solving situations, all of which together lead to a flow experience (Tamas
Polya, 2019). In real-time online multiplayer gaming, the gaming experience
is complemented by social interactions and joint problem-solving.
Separate types of video games are single-player video games based on story
reconstruction that have been on the market since the second half of the
2010s. Elements of film language and non-diegetic background music help
the player to interpret the plot. In storytelling video games, Hollywood mass
cinema genre conventions are mixed with complex, puzzle-like scenarios.
Game designers adapt the frame narrative and predictable episodic elements
to the narrative clichés of their chosen genre, but they also have to include
unexpected events and surprise twists into the plot to enhance the gaming
experience.
Video games with storytelling can be divided into two groups: those in
which the player actively interacts with the storyworld from the internal,
subjective point of view of one of the characters or those in which the player
acts as an external voyeur in the unfolding of events. In the first case, the
narrative is in the first person, while in the second case it is in the third person.
The basic concept of the fictional crime games entitled Her Story’? (2015)
and telling Iles (2019) created by writer and director Sam Barlow is that the
player, as a detective, searches databases in any order and builds a murder story
from the fragments. The player is a complete outsider, and the fragments are
video fragments in which the protagonist’s dialogue is only audible through
the dialogue partners’ texts, so that only the reactions of the other party
develop the character of the man and the story itself. The player becomes
immersed through the research process and story reconstruction, and the
navigation through the story is completely free of any linearity, as the player
can search the virtual database at will. However, the reconstruction of the
causality and chronology of the narrative is only seemingly random, since the
story elements that follow later in the story are not accessible at the beginning
of the game. The database can be searched by keywords, but the number of
results is limited and not all keywords are available.
Epistemic, story-related mysteries are the basis for many first-person
adventure, thriller or horror games. In Tell Me Why (2020), locked doors in
a house must be opened to reveal the full story of a murder 10 years earlier.
The player’s reconstruction of the story is aided by the opening of doors in
a specific order and by the protagonist’s memory flashbacks. One function
of these memories is to help the player reconstruct the story, but they also
provide key information for the next door to be opened - which is ultimately
needed to reconstruct the story from the past.
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