Review:

Computerspiele erzählen Geschichten? Klaus Walters "Grenzen spielerischen Erzählens. Spiel-und Erzählstrukturen in graphischen Adventure Games"

The debate on narrative sequences in digital games is often focused on interactivity vs. spectatorship which is falsely related to passiveness by some authors. However, narrative sequences require a certain degree of commitment from the player and therefore the interactive and dynamic process of interpretation. This interactivity differs in quality from that of gameplay. Narrative sequences (mostly presented as cut scenes) and gameplay seem to be distinct and debated as two different forms integrated into digital games. The way these can be interrelated and therefore turning cut scenes into an integrative part of a digital game and not just into some additional gift-wrapping has to be debated. However, it is not so easy to generalize about this particular feature of digital games. The discussion has to take the game’s genre into account as well. This is one of the goals of Klaus Walter’s “Grenzen spielerischen Erzählens” (“Limits of playful narration”), a Ph.D. thesis which focuses on the genre of Adventure Games.