Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft & Transit
The first compares and contrasts spatial narrative in theme parks to that of MMOGs such as WOW. Although I agreed with the author that Disneyland does not spawn of sense of community because visitations are generally infrequent for any one person, i disagree that it’s more controlled than a video game. The opposite is true. At a theme park you can interact with everything: a person, a cup, garbage, the leaves, a water fountain, the rides, characters, etc. but in a game you’re limited to whatever the author had in mind to code and had time to finish. And even if you could interact with every little aspect in the game, the responses are also limited by the same parameters. This isn’t the case with real life. Disney also works very hard to integrate their guests into their space. Their motto revolves around touching one’s imagination so again to say that Disney makes their visitors feel like “guests” is another statement i disagreed with. The piece did briefly discuss a sense of community and how to achieve it but she didn’t really go into how it contributes to the narrative. I’m interested in whether a strong sense of community helps with the narrative of a story if it matters at all (Does being a “citizen” of a story rather than a spectator make the story better?)
In Transit the author states that speed – moving through an environment too quickly – destroys the space and that 3D games provide a slow enough pace that it restores it. In games most of the story’s plot is mapped to the physical traversal of it so you are forced to make your way around it. This is true for theme parks like Disneyland as well. You are forced to walk around your environment and more ground coverage tells you more about the story. The only difference is that there are more stories to partake in.
