Carving Out a Theoretical Framework: DF, RPGs, Archival Theory and Games as Archives, Narrativization

Historical Consciousness Emerging through Primary Documents and Filling in the Blanks

September 23, 2015

Last week, my first blog post was concluded with the plan to explore lore in videogames as a type of historical consciousness and way of doing good history for gamers. Tertiary lore within a gameworld acts as primary documents which draw players in through its qualities of mysteriousness and narrative construction: specifically, players must fill in the blanks of the histories of these games and in doing so, construct good narrative history that they then share with their communities via wikis and forums. Dr. Graham was very into this idea when I presented it to him in our meeting on the 14th, and thus my goal this week was to narrow down focus even moreso.

From that point, I tried to look for games that would be good material to analyze for lore and historical consciousness emerging from that. From discussion from Dr. Graham, working with Dwarf Fortress, the procedurally generated ASCII-based simulation game, was a must. Working with procedurally generated lore and the historical consciousnesses that emerge with players from that was just too cool to not work with. However, considering our desire for an emphasis on Dwarf Fortress (referred to in this post at times as DF), fitting other games into my analysis proved challenging. I am still trying to wrap my head around how to involve games like Skyrim, Fallout, etc., which have fantastic engagement with historical consciousness through the rich worlds they come with, created through development and not procedurally. I have a plethora of sources and inspirations for working with these sources via playthepast.org, Andrew Reinhart's work on archaeogaming.com, and Emily Johnson's thesis on ethnography within Skyrim and first-person RPGs. The issue that stands, however, is resolving the conflicting directions these static gameworlds and game lores take me, and the direction that working with procedurally generated lore and historical consciousness takes me. This is an issue that I have to resolve quickly lest my efforts become divided between two possibilities for this project that end up contradictory and are unable to fit into one argument.

When considering a theoretical framework, or starting point for this project, I knew that I want to work with DF with its procedurally generated histories. In a note I uploaded earlier this week entitled 'theoretical framework sept 21', I consider several ways to address the differences between these games that might prove challenging. Engaging with both DF and first person RPGs such as Fallout 3 or games in the Elder Scrolls series allows for, obviously, the analysis of the lore shown. Lore that is dynamically created by algorithms versus written and curated by developers allows for a variety of TYPES of lore, therefore different types of historical consciousness may emerge. These lore also act as archival history, and allow for players to narrativize the games through "filling in the blanks." Indeed, with the somewhat-disconnected primary documents from RPGs that have an overarching thread between them, and the randomized 'annals' of DF history (discussed within Stephanie Bolux and Partick Lemieux's piece on Dwarven Epitaphs which I will discuss later), gamers need to fill in missing pieces of narrative through their own agency and experiences, and often do this in public online spaces such as informational wikis.

These wikis resonate with ideas of archival history and the curation/creation of history and historical consciousness, and represent good history being done in both RPGs and DF by players. Ideas emerged for me regarding archives and videogames both on viewing the videogame itself as an archive (primary documents put inside the game, curated by designers/algorithms), and viewing the game's wiki as an archive (primary documents from game found, analyzed, and categorized/archived by many different players). I'm pretty sure that Dr. Graham said "videogames as archive" as an off-the-cuff remark, but he told me to write it down as a cool idea and I really like it now as a reference point for lore in these videogames and the historical consciousness/good history it engenders. What's more is that the idea applies to both RPGs and DF in radically different ways! This is great for the idea of combining these two categories of lore-based games, but horrible for me having to choose between them down the line and therefore throwing away ideas of working with RPGs. Woe is me.

At any rate, the preceding paragraphs, drawn from my note from the 21st, outline a sort of theoretical framework (unless I am misuing that term... a starting point and a place to come back to as well in this thesis) that I am happy to work within, regardless of whether or not I include first person RPGs into the thesis (though I am leaning towards doing it). In short, lore in videogames becomes a point of interest for many players due to its inscrutable qualities and ability to explain gameworld, and becomes comparable to archives with primary source material for deciphering. In wikis/outside of the game world, this metaphor of the archive reappears with the curation of this lore in dedicated spaces, with discussion and narrativization occuring to "fill in the blanks" of these documents. These player-created narratives become the historical consciousness of the players, and represent the negotiation they do between their sources, their own experiences, and other gamers within their community - in short, good history.

Okay! So this is nothing but a good thing for the beginning stages of this project. There is a ton left to explore. Books like Synthetic Worlds and Gamer Theory that explain applicability of videogames to the real world; both wiki theory and archival theory, which I suspect are similar in ways but different in many others; ideas about historical consciousness in general and what it means; and more things which I'm sure I'm forgetting. At any rate, analyzing Dwarf Fortress and RPGs for their lore and historical consciousness is only one small part.

Over the next several days until my next meeting with Dr. Graham, hopefully I will work with DF some more and get some solid experience of how the game works. Today I played a little bit and got drawn into the gameplay, though did not discover anything revolutionary in my look at lore, though the ideas of prcedural history as non-human-centred annals from Stephanie Boluk's piece resonated for me (you can find my notes on that article within my notes file). I want to be able to do several things: create enough of a successful fort that I can branch it out and discover the history of the world it exists within, and start an adventure mode that is akin to the RPGs I want to analyze and see how history and lore can be discovered through that. If my suspicions about the adventure mode are correct, historical consciousness will be able to develop on a very different level than it does through Legends mode or through the city simulation that is Fortress mode. Experiencing the procedurally generated world through the eyes of one character will allow for a very different type of historical consciousness to emerge, one that I don't believe has been explored at length yet. If I succeed in discovering some interesting things, this may permanently turn my project into analyzing DF exclusively.

Otherwise, I would like to get a start on examining lore within other, more static videogames such as Fallout and Skyrim. I have already read and drawn some things from Trevor Owen's brief article on playthepast.org about Fallout 3's archival history and the good history that is done by players engaging with it - indeed, it was my inspiration for looking at primary document-esque lore in videogames in the first place. I now intend to read Emily Johnson's thesis on Skyrim and engagement with the past by gamers, in the hopes that it will give me ideas to connect to my analysis of DF.

More reading needs to be done on procedurally generated games in general as well. I have a note that is rife with material to look at concerning that, including an entire reddit with posts about lots of different procedurally generated material and an online textbook dealing with all elements of procedurally generated games! Additionally, looking into other procedurally generated games, such as the MMO Love, Ultima Ratio Regum, and No Man's Sky, is essential. I may not analyze them formally within my project as much as I am with DF, but they will be essential examples of prceudrally generated games that may act in some important capacity down the road.

I also need to get working on my ethics proposal so I can formally use forum material and general online discussion about the games I wish to analyze, such as in the wikis of games. As engaging with historical consciousnesses that are emerging from games with lore is the point of this project, it is essential to get on that right away.

Ugh, so much to do! At any rate, this blog post has droned on for long enough. If one desired, I would appreciate feedback and ideas from anyone on the material I'm working on - I have gotten several ideas from people on Twitter up to now, and it is vastly appreciated! Anyone can reach me at my Twitter, @rapickering, and I will Tweet back as soon as I can. Thank you for reading this - hopefully my future pieces will have a bit more coherency and form to them, but it feels good to be able to get this material out in the sort of freeform that it's taking now.

Thank you, and goodnight!