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Playing The System. On Modelling Creative Agency In Metagames

As with every artform, there exists a tendency in narrative computer games to test their genre limits: What remains of agency and freedom of decision in a scripted – or unscripted – environment? And is it possible to make these limits visible, or even playable? Creating ludonarratives, and playing them, may be considered as a way of modelling the games’ emplotment and their action pace, but also their respective source of authorship and space of possible interpretations. Thus, ‘to play the system’ has a double meaning: playing to perfection (both in coding and decoding, organizing and controlling) and transcending (deconstructing and remodelling) a storyworld. My lecture will refer to an emerging gaming genre that elaborates this field of tension by converting it into a quest. The Metagame, a system of the second order, questions ‘playability’ by turning it into its plot.

Literature:

Enyo Stoyanov, Severina Stankeva, Robert Matthias Erdbeer, Nikolai Genov, Dimiter Danailov, Miglena Nikolchina, Videoigrite. Opasnata Musa [Videogames. The Dangerous Muse], Sofia: Zeugma 2023.