I've never made a thread here in all these years and this feels like a weird thing to start with, but this text came out of me today and I don't know where else to put it. Maybe it reads like a blog entry but I am actually really interested in whether these terms seem inaccurate to the rest of the gaming public too and whether we the people can find even better substitutes than what I came up with. Feel free to discuss that topic without necessarily reading everything I've written.
I: LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE
What does it mean?
A severe difference of tone between the content which a game narrates through its writing and the content which a game portrays in its gameplay. For some players, this may cause the narrative to feel insincere, and difficult to take seriously or relate to. Most frequently, accusations of ludonarrative dissonance target games whose narrative content is perceived as not fully acknowledging the violence perpetrated during gameplay. It is important to note that ludonarrative dissonance differs from plot holes in that it is subjective, a matter of dissonating tones rather than contradicting facts.
Why is it problematic?
Casual critics of the term often pronounce it ‘pretentious.’ The word pretentious is sometimes used unjustly as a cynical anti-intellectual sledgehammer, but perhaps this is a case where the designation is actually justified. The one motivation I can think of for inventing the ad hoc adjective ‘ludonarrative’ is that of making one’s argument sound more academic. However, with its needless complication of a relatively straightforward concept and its arbitrary use of Latin the term almost achieves the opposite: it makes game criticism seem pretentious, a juvenile pursuit with delusions of scientific grandeur.
Better term: NARRATIVE DISSONANCE
In my opinion, the problem stems from the ‘ludo-‘ part of the term. The wide use of Latin in science is primarily aimed at making terminology internationally comprehensible. Yet, to intuit what ludonarrative dissonance means one must know the Latin ‘ludo’ in addition to the English ‘narrative’ and ‘dissonance’ and requiring skills in two languages obviously makes the term less rather than more internationally viable.
Moreover, it is my experience that Latin is rarely used in contemporary philosophy and critical theory for new concepts, having clearly been dethroned by English as the international language of science.
I feel that an abbreviation to ‘narrative dissonance’ is preferable to a full English translation to ‘gameplay-narrative dissonance’ or similar, because where it is something other than the gameplay that dissonates with the narrative (e.g. sound design or art style) addressing the issue hardly requires a special vocabulary.
II: ROGUELIKE-LIKE
What does it mean?
A game that is similar to a roguelike in that it has elements of permadeath and randomly generated levels, yet seems too distinctive to be called a true roguelike. Roguelikes had a brief bubble of mainstream popularity in the early goings of this decade, and while the trend proved temporary it did pique the gaming mainstream’s interest in permadeath in combination with randomly generated levels.
Why is it problematic?
I feel I must point out that I have no particular affinity for or history with roguelikes, so I am not someone who feels entitled to ownership of the term. Nevertheless I think it’s pretty clear that the 1980-game Rogue is not a good reference point for describing the roguelike-likes of today. Permadeath and randomly generated levels are defining elements of roguelikes, but they are not the sole defining elements and in my opinion they are not the most important elements of a roguelike. The idiosyncratic simultaneous turn- and tile-based movement is the thing that really jumps out to me as something that roguelikes have and other games do not. This last point is crucial; other game-genres feature permadeath and random levels. Off the top of my head Snake is a game that has both. Does Spelunky really borrow more from Rogue than it does from Snake? (A little more maybe but you see my point I hope.)
Better term: PERMADEATH GAMES
The thing that all games in the category we are discussing have in common is that they are designed around permadeath. Permadeath is a loose term which can sometimes mean the complete loss of level progress but not of upgrades and bonuses, sometimes vice versa and sometimes the loss of both. Player death is expected and the game is designed to make this complete loss of progress as tolerable as possible while still being a source of tension and a threat that could be realized in any moment. Strategies used to make replay less frustrating include randomized levels, sub-objectives that grant permanent bonuses and a focus on predictable behaviours that allow players to benefit from trial and error. In this they differ from other game genres that feature permanent death (e. g. arcade games and many games with an alternate permadeath “hardcore mode”) which are often designed to make final death as infuriating as possible.
I think permadeath games is an expression that properly sums up the wide range of games this genre includes. Roguelikes sounds like a very narrow set of games and what roguelike-like adds in breadth it also adds in awkwardness and confusion.
And then there’s “roguelite.” Oh boy. I guess the idea is that it’s a game that’s like roguelike-likes – but with less Rogue? And more like-like? A simplified approximation of games in the likeness of games in the likeness of Rogue? When do we get a completely rogue-free rogue for all the rogue-vegans out there?
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I've found that this kind of lingo, regardless of how appalling it may be, will stick if you leave it too long, like chewing gum under a high school classroom table. I watched it happen with MMORPG (How the hell are we still calling them that?) and I pray we are not too late to change these two expressions, if not to something more precise then at least to something a little more catchy.
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