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Communal Ritual Play: Repetition and Interpretation of Game Narratives Across Communities

  • Conference paper
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Interactive Storytelling (ICIDS 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14383))

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Abstract

Storytelling has always been a communal activity and video games are no different, yet, work on designing story experiences that emphasize the communal elements of storytelling have typically focused on the creation of stories, not communal interpretation of existing ones. This paper draws on communal storytelling rituals from theater and mythology to explore how games and interactive narrative can utilize narrative through communal interactions. From this, several design patterns can be extrapolated from existing games that create communal storytelling rituals. We use Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XIV, and Elden Ring as primary examples to discuss three narrative design patterns for online communal ritual storytelling. These three design patterns are 1) giving players incomplete information, encouraging repetition, 2) not helping players, encouraging community, and 3) building for player expression, encouraging player-stories. All three patterns utilize aspects of rituals and theater to encourage storytelling of their respective games, through encouraging repetition and communal aspects. Games are often repetitive in nature, and harnessing community to strengthen the narrative through this repetition can be a powerful tool to create engaging narratives for players while still relying on repetitive gameplay loops. Designing for communal ritual play is thus a strong way to utilize the advantages of repetitive games and communal narrative.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Sect. 2.1 and [44].

  2. 2.

    Alternate Reality Games, see [39].

  3. 3.

    Another infamous example from the same developer is how Dark Souls [30] hides a secret area behind two consecutive illusory walls.

  4. 4.

    Small alterations have been made, some superfluous quests have been removed and one optional questline has been made mandatory, but it is structurally almost identical. See https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Main_Scenario_Revisions.

  5. 5.

    Completing an activity meant for a group alone.

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  1. University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

    Bjarke Alexander Larsen, Nic Junius & Elin Carstensdottir

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  1. Bjarke Alexander Larsen
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Correspondence to Bjarke Alexander Larsen .

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  1. University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden

    Lissa Holloway-Attaway

  2. University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    John T. Murray

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Larsen, B.A., Junius, N., Carstensdottir, E. (2023). Communal Ritual Play: Repetition and Interpretation of Game Narratives Across Communities. In: Holloway-Attaway, L., Murray, J.T. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14383. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47655-6_29

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