Comments on: Are you a Narrative or a non-Narrative?

By: jesperjuul

jesperjuul — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 19:50:19 +0000

@Stuart Yes, the art critic angle is interesting.

By: Stuart E.W. Smith

Stuart E.W. Smith — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 02:50:26 +0000

I have to applaud raising this question. As a game designer embedded in the theatre, I developed as an artist with the idea that humans build narrative in all circumstances, even in, or rather, especially in, the absence of overt narrative from the individual or group which produces those circumstances. Hence the need for mid-20th century art critics to impose narrative meaning on abstract expressionists like Pollock.

That said, ludic studies reminds us constantly that all game activities vacillate between structural imperatives and the need for unrestrained playful response. My first response to what you have here is that you are finding one category of game and play which shows this same dichotomy: narrative-driven lives are impelled by paidea, non-narrative lives by ludus.

I don’t know if this advances the thought much or merely reframes it, but it makes the idea stronger for me, at least.

By: jesperjuul

jesperjuul — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 19:17:05 +0000

@ Robert That too. The question is how much of a story we make, how much we believe in it, and to what extent we want to believe in such a story.

By: Robert H. Dylan

Robert H. Dylan — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 16:11:14 +0000

Hello, Mr. Juul. Brother Zizek tells us that the innermost story / narrative we tell ourselves about ourselves is simply complete B.S. (I’ve often considered life a particularly cheesy dime store existential cyberpunk survival horror novel, composed in a public toilet on a heavily modified ZX Spectrum 48k by a pseudo-cynical romantic and chronic airplane masturbator on heavy nootropics called Geoff.)