Chapter 34

1984
Sherry Turkle

• video games become hugely popular in the 1980's
• wrote The Second Self, which explained how different age groups worked with computers
• approached computer technology from a basis in psychoanalysis (human-computer interaction)
• understood the beginning of the "avatar"
• in her second book Life on the Screen, she explores how our interactions with computers can affect how we see ourselves and the world around us
• considered Dungeons and Dragons to be an important antecedant to many computer adventure games
• discovered that as much as designers would like, gamers are not as concerned with narrative and story-telling in their game-play

I'm sure it may be true for many gamers that the narrative is unimportant, but I feel otherwise. After listening to Noah Wardrip-Fruin talk about video game narrative, I feel like there is still hope. There seem to be many ways to improve the stories and dialogues in a game, and personally, I really enjoy video games with great stories. (This may, in part, be due to the fact that as a child I much preferred to watch my brother play video games, than to play them, so games like Final Fantasy were my favorites.) I'm much more likely to pick up a game with an interesting story line than the hundreds of games that all have the same narrative where you are given a weapon and must kill everyone you can find and steal their belongings, honestly I've had enough of those.