There are, hidden between the lines of playful criticism, gods little monsters lurking for anyone who wants to treat the game as a serious mass media, concepts and themes that return regularly and are capable of polarizing the opinions of professionals.
One of these magical words is undoubtedly ludonarrative dissonance, and it is a concept coined by the developer Clint Cocking in 2007, when he gave substance to a burning observation: despite a very respectable, various games of the contemporary age (let's say old at most about a decade) present some "Conceptual discrepancies" between what the player has to do during the adventure and what the creators of the game wanted to tell through their work.
The game that has always been set as an example by critics is Bioshock at Ken Levine: according to the critics, although the whole work wants to talk about the concept of free will and the power of human actions, the basic reflection on the player's control of reality is flawed by the fact that there are different endings that go to morally judge the player's conduct, a fact that inevitably symbolizes a dissonance between the need for gameplay and the theme of the game.
It is an old, very old theme, brought back into vogue yesterday, quiet Thursday of September 2021, from a fascinating analysis by Destructoid which in closing states that unfortunately at the moment the narrative dissonance is nothing more than a congenital defect of the video game medium (you can find it here).
But is it really a "flaw"?
Ludonarrative dissonance: an increasingly topical feature
If the example of Bioshock appears somewhat archaic today to be taken seriously, as it is a very old game and structurally linked to a stage slightly earlier than the current one, it is however undeniable that in recent years the examples of games that present ludonarrative dissonance have increased exponentially and they have presented various variations of this problem.
A form of ludonarrative dissonance can be, for example, that presented in open-world games such as The Witcher 3-Wild Hunt o Ghost of Tsushima: in the face of an "urgent" and "vital" objective presented by the main quest of the game (to find Ciri in the masterpiece CD Projekt and free our uncle from the Mongols in the Sucker Punch game), the player is given the free will to explore a vast territory freely enough to ignore its main mission to finish every single side. An approach, however, motivated by an evergreen ploy: in the achievement of his mission, our hero is led to have to gather information and group allies in order to become stronger and achieve his goals.
If this typology can be explained or ignored, however, the discourse becomes different when we analyze some games by comparing their gameplay setting with their morale. For example, not a few critics have pointed out that what has been called one of the most successful "anti-violence" games of recent times, The Last of Us-Part II, is actually characterized by an obsessive attention to the detail of the killings and above all by a combat system so solid as to appear almost gratifying.
In short, the point is: "How do I feel guilty about my murders if killing NPCs is so much fun?".
It is a paradoxical point, because, if on the one hand the "game" nature of TLOU2 pushes us not to ask ourselves whether it is normal or right to kill people in such a spectacular way, on the other hand it actually leads to ask yourself if this approach is not a betrayal of the final reflection.
In theory, the whole reflection could be dismissed as a questioncina saying "It's an action-adventure game produced at a time when the spectacularization of combat is going enough, what did you expect?", but actually highlights an essential element of the video game's fame today, at the time of the love for big movie or television shows: we increasingly expect games to tell accomplished stories before challenges even play, leading ourselves to demand a basic organic coherence.
And this is where the problems arise.
Between game and storytelling
The truth is simple: if the problem of dissonance is always there, (all) present, it is it is also its (non) resolution.
The video game is a strange medium, or at least a medium that has broken down the boundaries of various media like no other through a completely interactive nature. Schematically, the video game has been able to combine the spectacularity of audiovisual entertainment (films and series) or, when we talk about textual adventures and the like, the beauty of reading, with the "play device", or rather the idea of giving the player the choice of being able to manipulate the entertainment experience through their controller. It is perhaps the medium that, together with the toy or sport, allows the person to have fun and have fun through an activity that responds to many of our "Mental needs": desire to relax, desire to discover new worlds, instinct to challenge, pure and simple fun of seeing what happens when we press a button ("Cool, with this you shoot!").
However, when the playful device is inserted within a narrative frame of great impact and above all with reflection objectives, what can happen is one component stepping on the other's feet and that the player, trying to "hold together" the two, you find yourself disappointed in one or the other (Do you remember the time when we complained about games too built on the plot and too little on the gameplay?).
How does it come out?
Simple, today, in 2021, we accept that there is a sort of unspoken compromise between the two components.
In the famous “Drake paradox”, for example, it is accepted without problem that the protagonist of Uncharted is at the same time a ferocious war machine capable of killing dozens of people and a kind boy who can spend his evenings playing Crash on the sofa.
Why?
For two reasons. The first, which we mentioned above: because basically 90% of the aim of the contemporary video game is to tackle a series of deadly challenges through violent conflict management, so we are almost naturally inclined to accept an underlying moral complication. Second, more subtle, because for our Western mindset, nourished by centuries of literature, cinema and then action video games, leads us to see the hero armed and responsible for sometimes atrocious killings as a positive figure regardless, because his goal is often "noble" or even just "socially acceptable".
At the same time, a different but similar mental process also comes out when, for example, we go to ride freely through the Velen with Geralt of Rivia., in which while knowing full well that, if in terms of history some actions make little sense, in playful terms they make us feel good and relax us, rresponding to a need (spending time wandering around the map).
But are you sure that the ludonarrative dissonance is valid only for the video game?
But sure that these compromises hold true just for the video game?
We reflect, in particular, on our ability to operate a sort of suspension of total disbelief in the face of certain works, in visual details.
If with novels or short stories linear narration necessarily needs coherence and storytelling skills, commercial cinema has often accustomed us to go towards the compromise set out abovea.
Take for example any 80s action movie, in which 90% of the time the hero of the situation is a bontempone who must save his family or avenge them against the bad guys on duty. In doing so, however, he ends up killing, blowing up planes, even making some jokes of dubious taste (yes, Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm talking about you!), but we don't give a damn, because in that moment what counts is the fun, standing in front of the screen and following a story that, however stupid, can entertain us.
Does this mean, then, that ludonarrative dissonance is an immutable and unalterable certainty also in the future of the medium?
There may be three answers (three, yes).
A) The easiest: yes, and it shouldn't bother us either because it is a trait that basically does not harm anyone or undermines the fun in too ferocious ways.
B) The optimistic one: it depends on the creatives and, even more, on the technologies they will have in hand. If creatives want to give players the opportunity to increasingly control their "playful narrative", they will have to think very carefully about the different features, and that would mean reworking the gameplay of the average action game in depth, giving the possibility, for example, to act stealth in order not to kill anyone and to meet an ending consistent with this choice. Feasible, partly already in place, but several times the result is not without flaws.
C) The realistic one: it simply depends on the market. If the public starts to show sensitivity to this detail, the market will give some interesting answers.
If the answer to the third point is negative, however, keep calm and ask yourself a question: dreally need to focus so much on ludonarrative dissonance?
At least as a player, in my opinion no.
