Abstract:

Since the renowned debate between ludology and narratology, the rules and narratives of games, as well as their interrelationship, have been recurrent themes in games studies. Today, games have emerged as one of the most influential digital cultural products. Many game developers, while striving to enhance the playability of games, are also consciously pursuing exceptional narratives. In this context, the most critical question is no longer whether video games are fundamentally about rules or narratives, but rather what the relationship between rules and narratives in games is and how they can be better integrated. By incorporating Alfred Gell and other post-humanist, re-examining the relationship between rules and narratives from the perspective of things in games can deepen our understanding of this is sue. Things in video games can be categorized into different types; some are fictional, akin to those in traditional media such as novels and films, while others follow certain rules and are simulated or real. Rules endow the latter type of things with stronger agency, providing the possibility for creating a new form of interactive narrative and offering a path worth exploring for other digital cultural products that also emphasize interactivity. At the same time, it can be seen that the designer of a digital text has more and more specific means of planning the behavior of the readers (players) than the author of a traditional books, and that the person who reads the hypertext or plays the game is never freer than the person who reads traditional books.

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