[Introduction]

Have you ever met time loops in a game? Have you ever considered why the game uses such kind of narratives? It's actually narrativeized repetition in games, and this episode will talk about it with you!

Host: Aiqi Xu, the student journalist of university of Melbourne
Guest: Dr. Cass Barkman, senior tutor at the University of Melbourne in Media & Communications, specializing in the role narrative complexity plays in contemporary digital narratives.

[Transcript]

Aiqi Xu: Welcome to the level up, where you can pick up new knowledge about games and level up as a gamer. And here is Aiqi Xu. Today we are going to talk about the repetition in video game narrative. I'm excited to have Cass Barkman here. She is a doctor specializing in complex and passionate narratives. Welcome, Cass!  

Cass Barkman : Thank you very much. I applaud as well!  

Aiqi Xu: Today we're going to talk about the repetition in the video game narrative. The first time I came across a repetitive narrative was in "NieR: Automata," which is quite popular in China. It has quite complex story background; you will need to play through the whole game, going through the same mission, the same storyline with a pair of human-crafted and android partner. And the difference is, in the second time you play, you are controlling the one who with hacking function, which means you can have the ability to know more about the choose and the information of the story. So is this a narrativeized repetition right? 

Cass Barkman : Yeah, I think so. I haven't played NieR: Automata myself so I can't speak to that exact experience. But I've seen it discussed a lot in video game context. It is a really interesting game in the way that it uses these repetitions and kind of narrativeizes right, like the active playing through the game is really really important to the narrative experience, you have to play it through it. Is it like eight or nine times to reach the true ending or something like that?  

Aiqi Xu: Yeah. So the narrativeized repetition is really used flexibly and creatively in the game. So I'm curious about which game starts your interest in researching this kind of narrativeity?  

Cass Barkman : Yeah, so the game I was initially introduced to this trend, I guess you can call it a narrativeized repetition in games, is this game that came out, I believe it was in 2019, called "Outer Wilds." I discussed it quite a bit in my thesis, and I am working on a publication on it right now as well. It's a game where basically you play as this lone astronaut in this solar system with all of these planets kind of rolling around the Sun. And the solar system is trapped in a time loop. So every single time after 22 minutes in game time passes, the Sun goes supernova, basically destroys the entire solar system, and you start again at the very beginning of the loop. So the experience of playing in the game is this really explicit form of repetition, where you essentially play it in 22-minute segments, going to different parts of the galaxy in each playthrough, building on your overall knowledge and understanding of what happens in the game world. So you're trying to uncover what happened to the previous alien species that was in the solar system, why the Sun is going supernova, how you can fix it, how you can break the time loop, so on and so forth. I found it a really meaningful and interesting game narrative experience in how it embodies this thing that is inherent in video games more generally. Like, repetition is a very normal thing, really mundane almost, in video games. Where we’re really used to it in the way that you might—oh, pardon me—where we’re really used to it in the way that you might save and reload saves to kind of play through the same sections over and over again, or when you die, you might replay through sections. So repetitions are really a normal part of the experience. But "Outer Wilds" takes that part of the experience and acknowledges it within the story world itself and makes it a key mechanic, which I thought was a really interesting sort of innovation. And it's an innovation that's been reflected in a lot of other video games that have come out, either both before it and since as well.  

Aiqi Xu: Yeah, I have watched that game before, and the time loops sparked your curiosity since you don’t know what is happening for the first time you died and then you wake again. And the story is also about exploring the universe; it's full of physical things. So the time loops didn’t seem so weird; it integrates into the narrative. How do you think of the role of narrativeized repetition in video games?  

Cass Barkman : Yeah, I think narrativeized repetitions play a really interesting role in video game narratives more generally because they've essentially narrativeized something that is already inherent to the medium. Like I said before, repetitions are a really normal part of video game experiences. And also, mainly what these games are doing—like "Outer Wilds," "NieR: Automata," and tons of other games—is acknowledging a way of playing the game within the story world itself. So that's essentially narrativeizing and sort of like almost meta-textually engaging with how video game stories function through this repetition, but making it a key part of the medium form. So I think, in many ways, they're almost like a really interesting intrinsic part of game narratives in that they are narrativeizing something that was already there in video games, but it just wasn't necessarily acknowledged in the story itself.  

Aiqi Xu: So we can see that narrativeized repetition has quite a significant function in video games. I think that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And thank you, Case, for coming and sharing your insights.Thank you so much!  

Cass Barkman : Thank you very much for having me!
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[Background music]:
8-Bit Music On. Created by moodmode. CC-BY. 
[Cover image]:
Create by Aiqi Xu.