Shapeshifting Stories: Reading Video Game Stories through Paratexts

Will it ever be possible to ‘read’ games as the previous chapter seems to suggest? How does one read a text that keeps changing and indeed, what is the text of a video game that is being played again and again by many players? In Literary Gaming, Astrid Ensslin, writing as recently as 2014, takes on the analysis of what she calls ‘hybrid literary-ludic artefacts’ (Ensslin, 2014, p. 38). In her conclusion, she points to possible projects, one of which is ‘to examine literary gaming from the user’s perspective, applying methods of empirical reader-response, audience, and player’ and also to look at ‘the creators of literary-ludic artefacts and studying their creative agendas and processes.’ As seen in the previous chapter, the analysis of storytelling in video games needs to reflect the originary supplementarity between the literary and the ludic; as such this book extends its scope beyond any specific category that can be called ‘hybrid literary-ludic artefacts’. Ensslin’s conclusion, however, points at some key interventions that are necessary in the field. The story that unfolds in the experience of playing a video game varies from player to player, of course depending on the game itself. This is the challenge that The Stanley Parable throws at its players/readers and the Prince of Persia in The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time reiterates in his attempt to negate the player’s death, ‘No no no, that’s not how it happened — do you want to hear my story?’ The complex multitelic experience described here will be addressed in the following chapter; this one will attempt to understand whether the ephemeral text, which the player plays out and changes with each gameplay, can be analysed at all.