Nowadays scholars of games studies argue that narrative theory is no longer appropriate to cope with the forms and formats of new media. Whatever kind of “textuality” new media might bring, it was certainly bound to be different from narrative-as-we-knew-it (see Landow, 1994). In the late 1980s and early 1990s hypertext theoreticians claimed that interactive, computer based media would bring “a textual medium of a new order…, the fourth great technique of writing that will take its place beside the ancient papyrus roll, the medieval codex, and the printed book” (Bolter, 1991). This predominance of narrative in the humanities is no longer uncontested. The “linguistic turn” (Rorty 1992) in the humanities was a narrative turn as well. Narrative became generally considered as the core pattern for cognition, comprehension and explanation and as the most important tool for construing identities and histories. As Roland Barthes wrote, “narrative is international, trans-historical, trans-cultural: it is simply there, like life itself” (Barthes, 1977). Whereas in earlier centuries the world was thought of as a stage, in the last quarter of the twentieth century it was conceived as a text woven by the narrative threads human beings read in it in their efforts to make sense of their perceptions and experiences. Narrative, Games, and Theory by Jan Simons What Ball to Play?ĭuring the last quarter of a century, narrativity has been a key concept in the humanities.
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