Ludonarrative Dissonance
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In the world of video game development, there’s a term of art, “ludonarrative dissonance,” that refers to a conflict between the story being told through a game’s storytelling elements and the story being told by how the game is played by the user.
This term was coined by a gaming-world creative director named Clint Hocking in reference to BioShock: a game that, in his estimation, promotes an almost Ayn Randian flavor of self-interest, while the gameplay, in direct contrast, incentivizes selflessness.
It makes sense that a first-person shooting game would have similarities to most other first-person shooter games, both in terms of how a player actually engages with the in-game world, and in terms of how bonuses are granted, behaviors are rewarded, and so on.
More or less since the beginning of complex video game development, the “put yourself in harm’s way to save everyone” meta-narrative has shaped many video game storylines. Even if a different philosophy is referenced by the game’s landscape, characters, audio and visual work, then, those elements can sometimes be more like a layer of paint over a familiar architectural style than an entirely new way of building.
The opposite of ludonarrative dissonance is ludonarrative consistency, and games like Dead Space have been celebrated for carrying the vibe of the storyline into the way the game is played: one feels more immersed in such games, it’s been argued, because there aren’t any seams between one’s aesthetic experience and one’s practical experience.
Works that are consistent in this fashion feel like they’re a holistic unit, rather than something cobbled together from different pieces—a discord that can pull the person playing the game out of the narrative in a jarring, distracting, or annoying way.
In our real, non-video game lives, we have stories we tell ourselves about how we’re meant to live and how we’re living: what we care about, what we’re doing it all for, who we are as individuals.
But then there are the realities of how we “play the game”: our daily, lived experiences, the case-by-case actions we take over the span of our waking lives.
When these two aspects of who we are come together, it’s possible for them to blend seamlessly. But it’s also possible that they form two distinct shapes that—although they’re both part of us—don’t cleanly fit together; there’s dissonance.
When it comes to gameplay, this sort of dissonance can pull us from the narrative in which we’re meant to be immersed.
When it comes to real life, dissonance between perceived-self and actual-self—if we allow ourselves to recognize and acknowledge it—can likewise pull us from our real-life narrative.
This is at the root of cognitive dissonance, which essentially means we hold contradictory beliefs and either ignore this fact, and/or experience psychological stress as a result of it.
Believing that all human beings are deserving of respect but then treating another human being with disrespect when they annoy you is a fairly low-key and common example of our ideal-selves clashing with our actual-selves. And this dissonance can cause internal conflict, even if not consciously, and even if not for reasons we can necessarily identify.
The collection of narratives we grow up with, and in which we indulge throughout our lives, can make this even more difficult. We believe we should behave in certain ways in certain circumstances based on the books we read, films and shows we watch, and historical figures we romanticize.
In this way, just as a traditional first-person shooter narrative can cause dissonance in an otherwise very different, narrative game, so too can the caricatures of protagonists, and traditional hero’s journey story arcs, make carving our own, us-shaped paths more difficult.
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