Interfaces and Fictional Worlds

The final chapter returns to the relationship between rules and interfaces to consider the design of the player interaction with the game. It discusses Jesper Juul’s Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, which provides a theoretical framework for thinking about the relationship between game rules and the fictional worlds they project. The chapter depends heavily on an analysis of the game Control, which draws our attention to the way that games help to sort the difference between fictional worlds and the principles of interactions that players must internalize. Where the Inform system directly links rules and interface–the player moves around the world and picks up objects via text commands build into the programming language–Control gets its narrative energy from drawing attention to the way that our understanding of the fictional world embodied in the game can change over time. This chapter uses this insight to revisit some of the key theoretical claims about fictional worlds, arguing for a greater attention to the way that they can emerge over time.