简介

本篇文章的主旨在于，我们并未完全发挥电子游戏的叙述能力。我认为我们未能考虑创造出强大艺术创造性的核心元素，因此便错失了电子游戏这一媒介的真正优势。而为了掌握这些优势的核心，我首先会着眼于其它媒体（特别是电影和文学），然后探索哪些教训可以用于电子游戏中。最终我们将发现电影和文学体验所使用的基本元素与这些都不同。

我们很容易着眼于其它媒体形式，观看它们在哪方面做得好，然后尝试着去复制它们的做法。我认为这对于电子游戏来说是个巨大的问题。无论何时当专注于叙述导 向型体验游戏被创造出来，我们便能够立即将其与其它媒体做比较，并根据它们的优势做出判断。例如我们常常会赞美电子游戏像电影一样，或批评它们的情节结 构。显然，我并不认为这是一种合适的方法。相反地，我认为我们需要退后一步，并考虑其它媒体是如何做到让它们有效运行的。我们必须探索如何将这些理念作用 于电子游戏中（如果它们可以做到这点的话！）。

Siren（from blogspot)

我对于“魔法本质”的建议是空余区域，我会在本篇文章中列出这一内容。它将要求观众参与其中，并发挥想象力。基本上来看这是要求我们作为人类的艺术环节。

想象的力量

首先让我们着眼于文学。我将以Edgar Allen Poe的《厄舍府的没落》为例：

“我并不了解它——但是当第一次看到该建筑时，一种难以忍受的忧郁感侵蚀着我的灵魂。我所说的难以忍受是指这种感受未因为任何乐趣而有所减轻。我看着眼前的这一场景—-我看着房子，这是最简单的景观，我看到了黯淡的墙壁，我看到了犹如空洞的眼睛般的窗户，我看到了繁茂的莎草，我看到了一些枯萎的树木，一种前所未有的沮丧感不断涌现出来，并痛苦地陷入我的每日生活中——这里有一颗冰冷，且不断堕落的心—-带着未履行的凄凉想法而不断折磨着任何崇高的事物。”

这一摘录是关于作者描述他靠近厄舍府的想法。尽管他说了很多，但是关于这幢屋子的外观他却未提供足够的信息。他将侧重点更多地放在感受和主角的行动中。文本告诉我们叙述过程会带来想象，而该想象将推动着我们去创造属于有关场景的精神意象。这便是典型的文学。因为描述通常都很浅薄，所以作家们通常都会使用情感和事件为读者绘制场景。更多的责任落在了观众肩上，而作者也不会失去任何艺术上的控制。

接下来让我们想想电影。通常情况下人们会认为电影总是能够直接地描述故事，就好似现实交替的窗户。但是经过一些分析后我发现这并不是事实。电影要求我们创造续集间非同寻常的联系，并邀请我们去解读演员的想法。Kuleshov 效应便明确了这一要点。

当我们在视频中看到一个角色时，我们便会开始想象这个人会有什么想法。不管视频何时终止，我们都会与并列事件维系一种休闲的关系。

我们将通过某种方法去理解意象的这种杂音，不断链接片段，并编织着我们脑子里连贯的叙述。这与书籍要求读者填补场景的同感，电影要求观看者想象情感和随机关系一样。不管是文学还是电影都很大程度地依赖于观众的意象理解，而如果背离了这种理解，它们便会失去影响力。我甚至认为这种想象力的缺口越大，我们就有更大的空间进行阐述，最终作品也会变得更加强大且更具有艺术性。我并不是说艺术越模糊就越好。相反地，如果一件作品能够在不破坏理解性和意义的前提下留给观众更多空间进行填补，这便会是一部优秀的艺术品。

填补缺口

尽管一开始书籍和电影所要求的观众参与并不明显，但是当你真正意识到这一点时也不会觉得唐突。当我们在阅读书籍的时候，我们总是会在脑子中组建着相关的世界，或者在观看电影时也会通过想象力去构造一个流畅的故事。但如果是从首次遭遇这种情况的人的角度来看，这种想象并不明显。依靠观众在自己的脑子中绘制整个场景真的很奇怪。这是纯粹基于情感描述内容。文学中的对话便是典型的例子，即口语便是用于传达所涉及角色的外观，行动甚至是情感等等。我们需要使用很多背景知识去做到这些，而教会计算机这些技巧却是非常困难的事。

我之所以提到这点是想要传达，尽管所有的这些内容是我们现今日常生活的一部分，但却并非自明的真理。举个例子来说吧，当一部电影能够真正被观众所理解前，导演需要对此进行适当的剪辑。也就是说不管存在哪些内容去理解电子游戏，我们都不该期待能在第一次遇到时便绝对的清楚。

关于提及这点的另外一大原因便是为了呈现所有的这些缺口填补的追溯效力。例如在链接电影中的片段时，整体的意义便会在之后一起呈现出来。而对于我们来说，这就像是一种持续体验，并且在某种程度上我们将注入想象事件的虚假记忆。动画便是如此运行的，我们在某一位置上第一次见到一个对象，然后在另一个位置上再次见到该对象，并且在那时候我们的大脑才能完全理解移动是否真正发生了。然而我们从未体验过类似的情况；我们只是将其当成一个对象从一个点到另一个点的移动，而未注意到这需要脑力劳动。

这在文学中更明显，即对象的描述会在其第一次出现很久之后才出现。尽管这看起来很矛盾，但却未造成任何问题，我们还可以将这些元素与早前描述的内容结合在一起。举个例子来说吧，如果我们在通读某一内容的过程中心理表象仍记得之前故事中发生的某些内容，并伴随着更详细的角色形象的出现，那么它们便不再是一些未知的实体。

这便告诉我们应该勇敢地提供给观众一些不完整的信息和体验。“一些内容的删除”不仅不会出现任何问题，同时还能创造出更强大的体验。这就好似当我们被迫独自完成某些内容时出现了“奇迹”。

空间的探索

现在是时候进一步着眼于游戏并探索文学和电影中所发现的“填补缺口”的等价物。比起横冲直撞，我认为我们必须讨论什么才是游戏中真正独特且具有描述性的内容。我认为它们是：

世界的细节。游戏不仅明确地呈现了场景的外观，它们还必须这些场景具有探险性，并且能够仔细检查游戏世界的各个部分。这在3D游戏中更加重要，即玩家可以通过任何角度去审视目标。

行动的流动性和连贯性。当玩家直接控制着主角时，它们便不会怀疑哪些事件正在上演。考虑到电子游戏的交互性，它们往往都要求即时的行动和结果反馈循环，这便要求事件必须即时发生。电子游戏都是关于此时此刻的内容。

上述要点意味着如果我们想要在游戏中留给想象力足够的空间，我们便不能沿用文学中的场景创造或电影中的事件连接等方法。基于游戏世界所提供的细节层次，已经没有足够的空间能够留给想象力了。流畅的事件也要求不能留给玩家足够的时间进行思考。所以他们该如何填补其它缺口？为了明确这点，我们需要着眼于电子游戏的核心功能：互动性。

互动性到底包含了什么？我喜欢Chris Crawford的定义：

“这是两个以上的有效代理的循环过程，每个代理将交替地听，思考与说话。”

我之所以喜欢这一定义是因为它明确了互动性并不是完全关于用户提供输入内容。它同时也涉及了考虑并反馈这一输入，并且这同样也作用于彼此（游戏邦注：即人类和计算机）。当它谈到为添加想象力缺口寻找机遇时，这便是面向人类这面。同时它也明确了缺口出现在任何步骤：听，思考或讲话。记住这些内容，我将尝试着寻找一些缺口。

所以在这样的互动循环中是否存在想象力空间？最显著的位置便是“听”这一环节（代表任何输入）。尽管我们清楚这个世界是长什么样的，当仍然有许多元素需要我们去动用脑子。已经有许多游戏以“基于环境传达故事”的方式落实了行动。通过探索，玩家可以从世界中获得更多信息，并基于过去的事件收集相关细节，然后想象这个世界的情感状态。《生活奇兵》便是一个典型的例子，即玩家可以通过在环境中不断探索而找到没落之城的历史等内容。

然而环境是无生命的实体，尽管它们能够传达行动的后果，它们却不能带给我们任何代理感。这便大大降低了基于想象力的缺口填补的影响力与多样性。为了将这种方法带向一个新的层次，我们模拟有意识的生命。如此我们便能够建造基于精神的“心理理论”，从而提高表达的可能性。而现在所面对的问题在于，基于当前的技术我们还做不到这点，除非是基于基本层面。尽管我们关于处理脸部表达的技术正在不断增强（游戏邦注：《黑色洛城》便是个典型的例子），但这只能用于预先录制中。当提到基于表达作用的角色的实时程序创造时，我们还处于非常低的级别。所以我相信在未来这将会是一个非常有趣的探索环节，但是现在我们却不能使用该方法。

所以我们还能做些什么？因为实时游戏中基于表达的角色并非一种选择，所以我们必须将专注点转向行动本身。就像之前所提到的，电子游戏中的事件并未留下足够的解释空间。但在此却仍有足够的想象力空间。

有限的角色扮演

对于想象怎样的行动听起来较为奇怪以及为什么，我们需要做出一定的解释。当玩家在电子游戏中控制着一个角色时，它们可以自由地做任何事，但前提是必须符合游戏世界的规则。这种自由就像是某种缺口，能够用于模仿文学和电影中的“魔法”。但与行动通常的执行方式不同：非常明确，一点都不含糊。我之所以这么说是因为这一方法存在着两个主要问题。

第一个问题便是，技术不允许玩家基于任何情境访问任何可能的行动空间。这便意味着玩家始终都能够想到某些事件，但却不能执行这些事件。这将限制角色扮演能力，并导致一些最直观且最合理的行动变得不可行，从而打破了流动过程和存在感。第二个问题便是，当添加更多事件去辅助角色扮演时，艺术控制将变得更加困难，并且会将体验整合到开放世界模拟中。

关于解决这一问题，我的建议是设置有限的行动，并且诱导玩家将实际的行动想象成自己想要做的事。《太空迷航记》和《Windowsill》等游戏便有效地做到了这点，即玩家事先并不清楚点击鼠标会出现怎样的结果，而当行动发生时他们会觉得这是有意的。这种想象动机不会如此低级，并且会包含游戏更大的环节。《The Path》便是一个典型的例子，即玩家被置于陌生的环境中，并要求去寻找出现在那里的原因。通常这都需要花费较长时间，并逐渐形成你对于整个过程的想法。我并不是说这些游戏是基于正确的方法做到这些，只是它们整合了我所说的理念的基本版本，因此能够暗示玩家该从哪里真正开始游戏。

我敢打赌许多人会觉得这是在骗人。我们怎么能利用适当的设计选择去欺骗玩家？如果整体的互动体验是一种幻想，它又带有什么意义？我认为在其它媒体上也是如此。在电影中你以为会发生的事件也是幻觉。它们不仅仅不只是包含了演戏和后期制作效果，同时我们感受到的许多行动甚至不是基于拍摄。它们有可能只是我们通过诠释某种听觉和视觉效果而幻想出来的。在文学中也是如此，我们在文本中找不到许多心理表象。但尽管如此，我们也不能将这些媒体所赋予的体验描述成一种无意义的技巧。

为什么“动机想象力”听起来与互动性毫无关系。当我们在看电影或读书时，如果数据只是单纯地输入，那这便是一种被动的体验。但是在互动循环中，我们却能成为创造输出数据的一部分。所以当我们为这类型艺术作品创造了想象力缺口时，我们便不能将其当成单向的信息流，而必须将自己也包含于其中。除了能够解决角色扮演问题，这一切的好处还包括符合同样类型的理念，即文学和电影所依赖的缺口中。首先，它包含了一个追溯元素，玩家将需要这一元素去消化之前所获得的一些数据。这也将推动着我们去编造心灵理论，这么做并不是为了虚构的角色所编造，而是为了我们自己。

基于这一假设我并不是在说服人们去创造极端线性化且只需要单一输入的游戏。我仍然相信我们可以拥有更广泛的互动选择，但是我们也许无需过分针对应该出现的具体行动。这与玩家–角色–共存关系理念息息相关。我也不认为这会带走体验中的任何内容，反而只会不断加强游戏体验，就像其它媒体中所出现的那样。

结论

这还不是一个完整的理论，并不只有“环境故事叙述”和“想象力动机”能够作为用于游戏中的想象缺口。正因为如此我才更喜欢接收反馈并听取别人的看法。

我也必须指出所有的这些观点都未曾经过真正的测试。看到一些像Kuleshov般的实验以及最终得出的结果真的很有趣。有可能这种假设根本就不可能发挥作用，或者这将引导着我们产生一种奇特且美妙的看法。

我也想要添加基于这些理念的体验。在文学和电影中亦是如此，即有些作品如果留给观众过多空间反而不利。我立刻想到了非虚构小说。然而这并不是我们不去尝试这种做法的借口。当我们去尝试电子游戏媒体所提供的所有选择前，我们并不知道最终会出现什么。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Finding videogame’s true voice

Introduction

The main gist of this post is that we are not using the full narrative capability of video games. I believe we fail to take into account certain aspects that lie at the core of making artistic creations powerful and thus miss out on crucial strengths of the video game medium. To get to the core of these strengths, I will first have a look at other media (specifically film and literature), and then explore what lessons that can be applied to video games. What I end up with is a way of thinking that use basic elements of the film and literature experience, yet is quite different from these.

It is very easy to look at other form of media, see what they do well, and then try and copy this. I think this is a big problem for video games. Whenever a game focusing on a narrative-oriented experience is made, it is instantly compared to other media and judged according to their strengths. For instance it is very common praise to call video games cinematic, or to concentrate critique on their plot structure. Obviously, I do not think this is the right approach. Instead I think we need to take a step back, and consider what it is really in these other media that makes them work. We must then explore in what ways these concepts can (and if they can!) be applied to video games.

My suggestion for this “magical essence”, which I will outline in this article, are empty spaces. The bits that require the audience’s participation and imagination. Basically, the part of art that require us to be human.

The power of imagination

First of all let us take a look at literature. For this “The fall of the house of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe will be used as an example:

“I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. ”

This is an excerpt of a quite lengthy passage where the narrator describes the House of Usher as he approaches it. Even though it says a lot, it gives us very scarce information of how the house actually looked like. The focus is instead on the feelings and actions of the protagonist. The text tells us the response that the imagery evokes in the narrator and based on that it urges us to make up our own mental image of the scene. This is typical for literature. Descriptions are usually sparse and instead emotions and events are used as to paint a scene for the reader. A lot of responsibility is shouldered on the audience, certain knowledge is assumed and this (which I think is especially important to highlight) without the author losing any artistic control.

Next, let us consider movies. Normally one would think of movies as being very exact in their portrayal of a story, almost like a window to an alternate reality. However upon a bit of analysis it is clear that this is not the case. Film requires us to make non-trivial connections between sequences and invites us to read the minds of the actors. The Kuleshov Effect makes a clear case for this. Just watch the following video yourself and consider how your interpretation of the face changes depending on the context in which it is shown:

As we see a character on screen, we are meant to start imagining what that person might be feeling. Whenever a cut is made, it forces us to make up a casual relationship between the juxtaposed events. This can easily become quite complex as this short clip from the famous Odessa stairs sequence show:

Somehow we are able to make sense of this cacophony of imagery, constantly making connections between clips, weaving our own coherent narrative inside our minds. Just as books require readers to fill in the sensory details of a scene, a film forces the viewer to imagine the emotions and casual relationships portrayed. Both literature and film heavily depend upon the audience’s imaginative interpretation and will lose its impact without it. I would even say that the greater this gap of imagination is, the more room for interpretation, the more powerful and artful the work becomes. By this I do not mean that the more obscure art is, the better it becomes. Rather, the ability to leave plenty of gaps for the audience to fill, without making the work incomprehensible and meaningless, is what makes great artists and great works of art.

Filling a gap

Even though this audience participation required in books and movies might not be obvious at first, it does not feel that strange once you realize it. It is quite easy to see that we make up worlds in our head when reading or that we construct a fluent narrative from edited imagery when watching movies. But viewed from the perspective of somebody who encounters this for the first time, I would say that is far from evident. It is really quite weird that we can count on the audience to build up whole scenes in their heads. This based on almost purely emotionally descriptive content. Dialog in literature is a great example of this, where the spoken words are alone at conveying the look, actions and sometimes even emotions of the characters involved. There are tons of background knowledge required to makes sense of this, and it would be extremely hard to teach computers the same tricks.

I bring this up mainly because I want to show that, even though all of this is now part of our everyday life, it is far from self-evident truths. For instance, film editing took a while before it was properly figured out, and its complex usages even longer. This should hint us that whatever there is left to figure out about the videogame media, we should not expect it to be self-evident or even seem like it would work when first encountered.

Another important reason for bringing this up is to show that all of these gap-filling has a retroactive aspect. For instance when connecting clips in a film, the whole meaning (ie the action that the clips portray) come together afterwards. Yet to us it seems like a continuous experience and in a way we actually inject false memories of an imagined event. This is basically how animation work, where we first see an object in one position, then in another, not until both event are experienced making our brain interpret the entirety as if motion occurred. However, we never experience it like that; we simple see it as a motion of an object from one point to another and do not notice the mental effort required.

This is even more evident in literature where descriptions of objects can come far after they were first introduced. Even though this may seem like a jarring discrepancy, it pose no problem to us and we can meld these new facts with the earlier event portrayed. For example, if we remember a tale the early happenings exist in our mental images with the detailed characters shaped during the full read-through. They are no longer the unknown entities they were when we read the passage for the first tine.

What this tells us is that we should not be afraid of giving the audience incomplete information or experiences. Not only does this “removal of facts” not pose a problem, but it actually seem essential in creating a powerful experience. It is actually as if something “magical” happens when we are forced to complete the work ourselves.

Side note:

Split-brain persons show a very extreme example of our human urge to, often unconsciously, fill these sort of gaps. For example, outlined here are some experiments where the subject effortlessly made up details from incomplete information without conscious knowledge about it. I think it clearly shows how the brain is hard-wired for this kind of behavior and that it is essential to what makes us human. This visual illusion found here also show how eager we are to create casual relationships, and how the context makes us change how these are made.

In search of the void

It is now time to take a deeper look into games and to search for an equivalent of the “gap filling” concepts found in literature and films. Instead of meeting this head on, I think it is important to discuss what it is that is especially distinct and descriptive (and thus not requiring the audience’s interpretation) in games. I would say these things are:

Details of the world. Not only are games extremely clear on what a scene looks like, they often allow it to be exploration and makes it possible to very closely examine the various parts of the world. This is something that is especially true for 3D games, where players can view objects from almost any angle they please.

The fluidity and coherence of actions. As players are in direct control of the protagonist, there is never any doubt of what events are taking place. Because of the interactive nature of video games, a constant feedback loop of actions and consequences are required, forcing the events taking place to be exact. Video games are all about right here and right now.

Side note: I am aware that the above might not be strictly true for all game types and is more fitting for real-time 3D games. Although this should not disqualify any further conclusions, it might be preferable to think of the following discussion as focus on 3d video games in particular.

The above points mean that if we want to leave room for imagination in games, it cannot be the scene building from literature nor the connecting of events in film. With the level of detail of the world provided, little is left to the imagination. And the fluent events demanded leave very little room for players to fill in their minds. So what other gaps are there to be filled? To find this out, we need to take a look at a core feature of video games: interactivity.

So what exactly does interactivity encompass? I like Chris Crawford’s definition (from this book):

“A cyclic process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listen, thinks and speaks.”

What I like about this wording is that it makes it clear that interaction is not all about a user providing input. It is also about considering and then reacting to this input, and that the same applies for both sides (meaning both the human and computer). When it comes to finding opportunities for adding gaps of imagination, these are all of course on the humans side. Also note that the gaps might take place at any of steps: listening, thinking or speaking. With this in mind, I will make an attempt at some gap finding.

So where in this interactive cycle does there exist room for the imagination? The most obvious place is of course the “listening” (meaning any input). Even though we get a clear view of how the world looks like, there are still things left for our us to craft in our minds. This is something that is already present in some games and comes in the form of “environmental storytelling”. Through exploration players can pull information from the world, gather details on past events and imagine emotional states of the world. Bioshock is a good example of this, where much of the attitudes and history of the sunken city can be found out purely by, the interactive process, of exploring the environment.

However, environments are lifeless entities, and while they can portray the aftermath of actions, they do not give us any feeling of agency. This greatly lessens the impact and diversity of imaginative gap-filling players can make. To take this to the next level, it is quite obvious that we need to included simulations of conscious beings. This allows us to construct mental “theories of mind”, something that greatly increases the possibilities of expression. The problem is that we simply cannot do this with current technology, except at a very rudimentary level. While our techniques for facial expression is constantly getting better and better (L.A. Noir is a good example), this is only meant for prerecorded usage. When it comes to real-time procedural generation of expressive characters, we are at an extremely primitive stage. Because of this I believe that this can be very interesting to explore in the future, but not something that can be used right now.

So what else can be done? With expressive characters in real-time not an option, we must turn focus onto the actions themselves instead. As stated above, the events in video games do not leave any room for interpretation. But there still room for the imagination here though. What actions to make and why the are made.

Constrained role-playing

Imagination of the what and why of actions probably sounds a bit strange and needs some explanation. When players take control of an avatar in a video game, they are free to do what they please as long as it is accordance to the rules of the game world. This freedom might seem as the kind of gap that can be used to mimic the “magic” from literature and film. However not in the way actions are normally implemented: very specific and unambiguous. I reason so because there are two major problem with this approach.

The first is a technical one, namely is that it is pretty much impossible to give the player access the space of possible actions for any given situation. This means that there will always be events that the player can think of, but will be unable to carry then out. This limits the ability to role-play and might also leave, according to the player, the most intuitive and plausible action unavailable, breaking up flow and presence. The second problem is that the more events are added to aid role-playing, the harder it is to have artistic control, making the experience into an open-world simulation instead. As both of these problems work against one another, I think we have gotten pretty much as far as we can using this kind of design.

My suggestion for solving this problem is to have a limited number of actions available, but to lure players into imagining that the actual action performed was exactly the one they wanted to do. A very simple example of this can be found in games Samarost and Windowsill where the player can never in advance know what a mouse click will result in, yet when the action occurs it feels very intentional. This imagined motivation does not have to occur on a such low level though, and can include larger segments of the game. An example of this is The Path, where players are thrown into strange environment and forced to make up their own reasons for being there. Often this is something that is built up over a long time, yet greatly shapes how you view your entire session. I am not saying that these games are doing it the right way, only that they incorporate rudimentary versions of the ideas I am talking about, and hence can give one a basic hint of where to start from.

I bet that many will think of this concept as cheating. How can tricking the player be a proper design choice? If the whole interactive experience is an illusion, how can it carry any meaning? I argue that the same is true for other media. The events that you think happen on in film are in fact illusory too. Not only in the way that they merely consist of acting, set pieces and post production effects, but that many of the actions perceived was never filmed at all. They were instead conjured in the mind, by interpreting visual and auditory stimuli. The same is true for literature, were most of the mental images are never found in the text. Despite of this we do not describe the experiences these media give us as meaningless tricks.

Why “motivational imagination” sounds so strange has to do with the nature of interaction. When we watch a movie or read a book, this is passive experience where data only flow as input. But in the cycle of interaction, we are also part of creating output data. So when we create gaps of imagination for this kind of art work, we are unable to see it as a one-way stream of information, but have to include ourselves into it as well. The upside of it all, besides the solving the problem of role-playing, is that it fits neatly into same kind of concept that gaps in literature and film build upon. First of all, it contains a retroactive aspect to it, as players will need to digest a certain amount of data before settling on a certain motivation. It also forces us to make up a theory of mind, not for a fictional character, but for ourselves, inversely figuring out how we could come to a certain conclusion.

With this hypothesis I am not urging people to create games that are extremely linear and only require a single input. I still believe that we can have a wide palette of interaction choices, but that we might not want to be too specific about the exact actions that ought to occur. This is actually very closely related to the concept of player-avatar-symbiosis that have been discussed in an earlier post on this blog. I also do not believe that this takes away anything from the experience, but only adds to it, just like the same line of thinking does to other media.

End notes

This is far from a full theory at this point, and “environmental storytelling” and “imagined motivation” are most likely not the only imaginative gaps that can be used in games. Because of this I would be very interested in getting feedback and to hear your response on this work.

I would also like to point out that all of this awfully untested. It would be really interesting to see some Kuleshov-like experiments on the concept and see what kind of results can be made. It might be the case that this hypothesis does not work at all, or it might that it lead to wonderful and totally unexpected insights.

I also want to add that not all kind of experiences can be created like this. The same goes for literature and movies too, where leaving too much up to the audience simply does not work. Non-fictional books is one thing that comes to mind. Still, that is not a reason to not try this out. Before we try out all options that the video game medium provide, we will have no idea what can be accomplished with it.(source:blogspot)