“The last few pages you have read are not what happened” – Premature and Multiple Endings in Games and Literature
In many aspects, the narrative structures and representational strategies of digital games are strikingly different from that of the classical narrative medium of written literature. But what about the ending, which has been emphasized as an essential part of any narrative artefact ever since Aristotle’s Poetics? A quick look at non-narrative and narrative digital games proves that the latter also heed “the primordial narrative desire” of “to know how it ends” (Ryan 2001: 257), which bestows the ending with its traditional significance. Yet, there is a wide variety of ways for both literature and games to provide closure, or to evoke in the reader, or player “the sense of an ending” (Kermode 1966). Even similar representational strategies can have considerably different effects due to medial affordances and conventions. To illustrate the possible scope of these effects, this session will focus on the peculiarity of multiple and ‘premature’ endings in games and (non-ergodic) literature, ranging from postmodern literary experiments to ‘ordinary’ game over sequences. References:
– Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending. Studies in the Theory of Fiction. 1966. New Edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press 2000.
– Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative as Virtual Reality. Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2001.
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