{"id":204,"date":"2026-02-24T17:13:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T22:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/?p=204"},"modified":"2026-02-24T17:13:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T22:13:28","slug":"i-read-marie-laure-ryans-beyond-myth-and-metaphor-the-case-of-narrative-in-digital-media-about-a-week-after-finishing-playing-immortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/i-read-marie-laure-ryans-beyond-myth-and-metaphor-the-case-of-narrative-in-digital-media-about-a-week-after-finishing-playing-immortality\/","title":{"rendered":"I read Marie-Laure Ryan&#8217;s Beyond Myth and Metaphor &#8211; The Case of Narrative in Digital Media about a week after finishing playing Immortality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamestudies.org\/0101\/ryan\">https:\/\/www.<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamestudies.org\/0101\/ryan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">gamestudies<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamestudies.org\/0101\/ryan\">.org\/0101\/ryan<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Beyond Myth and Metaphor*\n-The Case of Narrative in Digital Media<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">by Marie-Laure Ryan<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Games Studies Issue 01 Volume 01<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Immortality, the game by Half-Mermaid<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I read this piece after reading Aarseth, Juul, and Frasca&#8217;s contributions to this initial issue of the Games Studies journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">It is gutsy and important, I think, to have included this article in the first issue in what is self-consciously presented as part of the work of establishing a new discipline, to have someone take down the founding myths and write closely about what already is. Also, to compare how a scholar of narratology discusses narrative to how the other pieces in the issue present it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">It also illustrates the benefit of, when comparing across disciplines, having someone from the compared-to discipline present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>These myths, which present an idealized representation of the genre they describe, serve the useful purpose of energizing the imagination of the public, but they may also stand for impossible or ill-conceived goals that raise false expectations.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">When they&#8217;re trying to establish that games are Something Different, the argument often rests on the notion that the thing they are different from (narrative, cinema, literature) is a fully solved thing, possibly ossified. I would guess most scholars of narrative, cinema, and literature would balk at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>Like many authors before them-Proust, Mallarm\u00e9, James Joyce-the pioneers of hypertext dreamed their brainchild as the ultimate literary work, the sum of all possible narratives, the only text the reader will ever need because its meaning cannot be exhausted.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The dream of the doomscroll was always already here!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mark Isham &amp; Marianne Faithfull - The Hawk El Gavilan\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dujGswostXQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>If we take literally the claim that every traversal of the database determines a different story, a reader who encounters three segments in the order &#8220;A&#8221; then &#8220;B&#8221; then &#8220;C&#8221; will construct a different story than a reader who encounters the same segments in the order &#8220;B&#8221; then &#8220;A&#8221; then &#8220;C.&#8221; It is only if sequence plays a crucial role in determining meaning that hypertext can be viewed as an Aleph that contains potentially a large number of different stories. If the reader could place the information given by each lexia wherever she wanted in a developing narrative pattern, it would not matter in which order she encounters the lexia themselves. This emphasis on the meaningfulness of sequence hits however a serious logical obstacle. Textual fragments are like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle; some fit easily together, and some others do not because of their intrinsic shape, or narrative content. It is simply not possible to construct a coherent story out of every permutation of a set of textual fragments, because fragments are implicitly ordered by relations of logical presupposition, material causality and temporal sequence.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>What we have, instead, is something much closer to the narrative equivalent of a jig-saw puzzle: the reader tries to construct a narrative image from fragments that come to her in a more or less random order, by fitting each lexia into a global pattern that slowly takes shape in the mind. Just as we can work for a time on a puzzle, leave it, and come back to it later, readers of hypertext do not start a new story from scratch every time they open the program, but rather construe a mental representation over many sessions, completing or amending the picture put together so far.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Yes! What if the idea that we can get a different narrative by traversing the hypertext-database-game in different ways is a holdover from linear narrative, not an escape from it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I like explicit database structures that acknowledge the chunking of the story (be those databases, different scenes in <em>Immortality<\/em>, or story-based games with branching timelines that you can jump around in), I think because they don&#8217;t pretend that all the meaning is in the single path&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>But even if the hardware and software problems could be resolved, an important question remains. What kind of gratification will the experiencer receive from becoming a character in a story ? It is important to remember at this point that even though the interactor is an agent, and in this sense a co-producer of the plot, he or she is above all the beneficiary of the performance. As is the case in games or sports, the interactor participates in the production for her own pleasure, and becoming a character should be a self-rewarding activity. The entertainment value of the experience depends on how the interactor relates to her avatar: will she be like an actor playing a role, innerly distanciated from her character and simulating emotions she does not really have, or will she experience her character in the first-person mode, actually feeling the love, hate, fears, and hopes that motivate the character&#8217;s behavior, or the exhilaration, triumph, pride, melancholy, guilt, or despair that may result from her actions?<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"THE BUOYS  &quot;Timothy&quot;  HQ\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AXn0uIF60iU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>But in the Star Trek Holodeck, which is of course a fictional construct, the interactor experience emotions in the first person mode. Kathryn Janeway, the commander of the starship Enterprise, actually falls in love with Lord Burley, a computer-created character. This love prevents her from fulfilling her duties in the real world, and she ends up telling the computer to delete her virtual lover.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">RIP janeway&#8217;s AI waifu<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And then the TYPOLOGY starts, and I think: what can I get from this classification system??<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>In the internal mode, the user projects himself as a member of the fictional world, either by identifying with an avatar, or by apprehending the virtual world from a first person perspective. In the external mode, the reader situates himself outside the virtual world. He either plays the role of a god who controls the fictional world from above, or he conceptualizes his activity as navigating a database.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Well, I can feel profoundly seen. I was just saying the other day that when my brain is in database-searching mode, I don&#8217;t notice things like quality of writing or acting. This is what happened to me while playing <em>Immortality<\/em> &#8211; the engagement came from trying to find the most efficient way to unlock things, with the plan to go back later and appreciate the clips-in-themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">I eventually made a conscious choice to watch each clip from start to finish before beginning to investigate it &#8211; unfortunately, I did this for about five clips before the credits-ending triggered and then I just haven&#8217;t gone back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u30a8\u30df\u30fc\u30eb\/\u72a0\u7272\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vuRaSC_0wsY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>In the exploratory mode, the user is free to move around the database, but this activity does not make history nor does it alter the plot; the user has no impact on the destiny of the virtual world. In the ontological mode, by contrast, the decisions of the user send the history of the virtual world on different forking paths.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Tag urself I&#8217;m External Exploratory (aka a real <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@brianmtaylor\/first-person-nebber-457f08048898\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">nebshit<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>The only way to preserve narrative coherence under such conditions is to regard the text as a scrambled story which the reader puts back together, one lexia at a time. This type of interactivity is external, because the text does not cast the reader as a member of the fictional world. The reader regards the text less as a world in which to immerse himself than as a database to be searched. If we conceptualize the text as a puzzle, interactivity is exploratory, because the reader&#8217;s path of navigation affects not the narrative events themselves, but only the way in which the global narrative pattern (if there is one at all) emerges in the mind. Similarly, with a jig-saw puzzle the dynamics of the discovery differ for every player, but they do not affect the structure that is put together. Moreover, just as the jig-saw puzzle subordinates the image to the construction process, external\/exploratory interactivity de-emphasizes the narrative itself in favor of the game of its discovery. The external\/exploratory mode is therefore better suited for self-referential fiction than for narrative worlds that hold us under their spell for the sake of what happens in them. It promotes a metafictional stance, at the expense of immersion in the fictional world. This explains why so many literary hypertexts offer a collage of literary theory and narrative fragments.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>Yet if narrativity were totally irrelevant to the enjoyment of games, why would designers put so much effort into the creation of a narrative interface ? Why would graphics be so sophisticated ? Why would the task of the player be presented as fighting terrorists or saving the earth from invasion by evil creatures from outer space rather than as &#8220;gathering points by hitting moving targets with a cursor controlled by a joystick&#8221; ? The narrativity of action games functions as what Kendall Walton would call a &#8220;prop in a game of make-believe.&#8221;<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>Moreover, the player wants his actions to have an immediate effect. (Nothing is more irritating in a game than clicking and seeing nothing happen.)<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">And this is a productive space to push back in, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"\">\n        <em>The inability of literary narratology to account for the experience of games does not mean that we should throw away the concept of narrative in ludology; it rather means that we need to expand the catalog of narrative modalities beyond the diegetic and the dramatic, by adding a phenomenological category tailor-made for games.<\/em>\n      <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The answer was right there in her conclusion, and it doesn&#8217;t even use a &#8220;war&#8221; or &#8220;colonization&#8221; metaphor!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The inclusion of a Bill Clinton Impeachment Trial reference in the conclusion sure is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Shout out to citing Gibson and not Norman re: affordances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">goodnight!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/www.gamestudies.org\/0101\/ryan Beyond Myth and Metaphor* -The Case of Narrative in Digital Media by Marie-Laure Ryan Games Studies Issue 01 Volume 01 and Immortality, the game by Half-Mermaid I read this piece after reading Aarseth, Juul, and Frasca&#8217;s contributions to this initial issue of the Games Studies journal. It is gutsy and important, I think, to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,18],"tags":[56,55,54],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-words","tag-games-studies","tag-immortality","tag-marie-laure-ryan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}