What Makes Video Game Stories Special? - Director's Cut (Patreon)

Hello, hello! it’s time for another installment of the Director’s Cut, this time for my video about what makes video game stories special.

Now, in a shocking twist, I didn’t actually have that much I needed to cut once I’d finally got the idea established, but there was one thing I wanted to squeeze in but couldn’t, and that’s how games as a Verisimilitudinous (Is that still a word? Who knows? ) artform that is dependant on someone experiencing them have been around for longer than digital tech, and one of the earliest examples of this can be seen in detective fiction.

See, detective stories are unique, because unlike most genres of literature they’ve got an ever expanding series of hidden rules and restrictions authors have to pay attention to in order to make the “who/why dunnit?” mystery entertaining. This is stuff like not being able to say “the unnamed butler I never mentioned before did it” or needing to imply a motive without giving the game away.

The end result is a form of game, with the author coming up with stories in the knowledge that the reader knows all the rules and tricks and is trying to outwit them and solve the case before the reveal.  In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, we learn that not every case ends with a confession from a murderer. In fact, it’s revealed that Irene Adler, a suspected blackmailer, is actually not only totally innocent, but she also manages to outwit Sherlock Holmes himself.

This clues in readers to the possibility of the resolution to a case being that there was no crime at all - a fact they’ll have to keep in mind as they read and try to suss out other books, written by people who now know this is an option.

There’s no better example of an author and a reader matching wits though, than Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Akroyd. In this book, there are very few conclusive ways to figure out how the murder went down, and all the main characters seem like they’re either way too obvious, or have satisfying motives- it’s almost as if the book is hiding information to throw you off the scent and that’s because it is!

The real killer is the narrator, Dr Sheppard, who fills the Watson role to inspector Poirot’s Holmes. It’s genius the way Agatha Christie does this, because Sheppard’s account never actually lies to the reader, he just omits key details which are really obvious in retrospect.

“I did what little had to be done”, writes the Doctor, talking about what he was doing when the murder happened, implying he did nothing of interest when really he’s covering up his part in the murder. We never suspect him though, because we assume our narrator is reliable- not any more. This instance opened the floodgates and now when reading detective novels, you can no longer trust the narrator if you want to solve the case - adding an additional layer to the ever evolving game of figuring out pretend crimes. 

Now, if that sounds rambly and like it wouldn’t fit in the video, then we’re on the same wavelength, I really love detective fiction but I couldn’t find a spot for it in the vid, maybe some other time!