author: @aestranger
Reading time: 6 minutes
The question of narrative and how to use has been a long-standing one in the gaming and gamification or gameful design community. I’ve covered it myself a few times on my blog, and it is indeed a favorite topic of mine, of how we create narratives, experience them, remember them, and weave them with others.
When I was recently reviewing and discussing the book I’ve co-authored on marketing and gamification, I started thinking about how collaboration and narratives work, together. As I’m also an avid online and offline gamer myself, this idea started me down a road of how we weave narratives together in fictional worlds and whether these shared experiences and memories are as potent as those we weave in a real world, or is there even a difference?
I may not be able to come up with an answer in this short piece, but I’d like to think that this is the start of a discourse of discovery how narratives work in small groups. As there are more and more people currently working and playing virtually together than ever before. Either through web/video chats, multiplayer games and even virtual tabletop simulators. Each using some sort of voice communication software and/or webcams.
The preferred method is no longer the face-to-face meeting of various individuals. Possibly in the not too distant future, VR and AR may allow a virtual simulacrum of what a face-to-face experience would normally be. But we will have to wait and see what shape that takes.
All of these variations though offer us more opportunities to create shared experience and memories around the narratives we create with each other. And I believe that these shared narratives strengthen our engagement and deepen our learning and understanding.
What does it mean then to create a narrative memory with others versus creating one on your own? Does this experience mean less or more when you are alone or with others? Well, an experience and memory will always have a very personal meaning, regardless of the number of people that took part it, at least from an emotional value standpoint. It will always be down to how you feel about it. But the question is more in terms of an abstract one of deep or long lasting is the memory.
According to a study discusses in Psychology Today, individuals are able to remember facts and aspects of experience far better if they did it alone than if they did it in a group. As the study states, apparently, groups will be far more engaged in the discussion of the information, than the recall of the information. It does however also mention that when working together in a group, the memories created are similar for everyone in that group. The collective recall essentially strengthens and embeds the memory more due to its shared nature.
The social activity of forming a bond and strengthening those through a group experience can then arguably be extended to the formation of shared memories. Not everything may not be remembered, but that which is important to the group and for the continuation of the group is remembered with a greater depth and longevity.
An argument that often crops up when discussing shared narratives, emergent narratives and fictional versus real narratives is whether the fictional is really a real experience or not? As gaming culture has come up in the last two decades, some question whether a shared memory of a group of people in a game, in a fictional world, really has the same weight as a shared memory of a group of people hiking a mountain together for example.
This question I feel also then extends to whether the memory of the individual versus the group, has as much weight when it is fictional, virtual or real. The answer may be worth a research case study in its own right, but from personal experience, as someone who has created memories alone and, in a group, both online, offline and in fictional or real worlds, my belief is that the answer lies somewhere in the weight of the emotion that is connected to the experience, not it’s “location”.
As we established, a memory is strengthened by sharing it with a group. Therefore, whether it is fictional, virtual or real, the experience of a shared narrative is very real in our minds.
The one aspect of this that does need to be teased out, is the difference between following a shared narrative versus creating an emergent narrative. Watching a film together and following the narrative has a bonding aspect to it because you shared the experience. But it is a very different experience when you enter into an interactive narrative, where perhaps the game has laid the basis but everything else is down to your interactions and how you and your group create another layer of narrative on top of that basis.
There is enough anecdotal evidence from large multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and EVE Online, where the base narrative of the world exists, but what the players experience with each other as they create an emergent narrative together, is a very powerful and engaging experience, and a long-lasting memory. Even in offline worlds, such as the Forgotten Realms from Dungeons & Dragons, the shared narrative has equally effective results among groups of players.
The emergent group narrative, therefore, is a more personalized one, and because the shared memory of it strengthens social bonds.
What this does prove is that both extraordinary experiences and ordinary experiences in a fictional world, create worthwhile memories that everyone in the group enjoys and cherishes. As opposed to what certain studies may have shown when experiencing ordinary versus extraordinary occurrences in the real world.
One thing to note and remember is that these are voluntary, emerging fictional shared narratives and that these at times allow for stronger social bonds. Whereas a repetitive spoon-fed shared narrative that eventually leads to distraction, such as perhaps watching TV, does not really strengthen social bonds or promote engagement.
What we know then is that the memory of a shared experience may be less accurate than if it were a solitary experience. But those memories will remain longer thanks to the communal recall and discourse that a group offers.
Virtual fictional narratives that are woven together by individuals in a group are simply a product of the modern digital age and happen to be more prevalent at the moment. But any narrative woven together is meaningful. Though this piece focused on online gaming and virtual encounters when in a work environment with face-to-face interactions, weaving an emerging narrative together is incredibly formidable experience and tool to use. Team-building events or team-learning exercises strengthen team cohesion and learning retention thanks to the emerging manifestation of a shared narrative.
At times perhaps, a fictional world allows us to step out of the mundaneness of everyday life, and whether it is virtual or in the real world, experiencing that fictional world and creating memories in it with someone else, offers us all a sense of magic and the extraordinary. Perhaps that is why games such as Warcraft, EVE Online, and Dungeons & Dragons still remain popular after so many years.
I hope that this piece has given you some food for thought and helped improve your own methods or at least offered a different viewpoint to consider.
Please do check out the other posts on æStranger.com, and please do leave a comment or contact us if you have some ideas of your own that you wish to discuss or if you would like to see other topics discussed.
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æStranger officially started in 2018, but has been around in some form for a few years. It is a platform to promote a mission to engage people through adventure and storytelling, to better learn and understand from each other.
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