This is an interresting article on narrative elements in computer games, written by Jonas Carlquist, a senior lecturer and researcher in Nordic languages at Umeå University in Sweden. It deals with whether a story exists or not in games, and if so, how is it presented. It's fairly long, scholarly in nature and contains some spoilers to games like, BG 1&2, Max Payne, Deus Ex, Planescape Torment, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Diablo 2 amongst other but is an interresting read nonetheless.

Here it is (.pdf file)

Any opinions on it?

Good article, but I think it should have mentioned the "choose-your-own-adventure" books as an example of how you can have interaction and branching story in written literature and still have an actual narrative story. Still gets the point across, though. You can't use traditional definitions of story and narrative in literature when considering games due to the interactivity. It would hurt the game if you took away critical choices from the player.

When I was reading the article, I remembered a RPG that I played back on the Sega Genesis, called Shadowrun. I loved the game; for its time it was an awesome game. The story was decent, and allowed you lots of flexibility in your actions. However, I absolutely despised the ending; I would play up to the point where you would face the main bad guy, then erase and start over with a different character. Why? Because you would face the main bad guy, knock him down to almost dead, then a creature you saved in a previous encounter showed up and told you how to finish the fight. What was wrong with that? After it told you how to defeat the bad guy, the game ended! It just showed a movie of you defeating the bad guy. That was a prime example of how NOT to use cutscenes and narrative in a game.

I was amazed that there are so many scientists actually researching computer games. It has become an established form of entertainment.

Definitely. The gaming industry has been booming for years; now you have entire generation(s) that have been raised on video games. And as the population gets more computer literate (i.e. the Internet continues to grow in influence, computer classes become even more prevalent in schools, etc.) the industry will only continue to grow. This debate about story and narrative in games is actually long overdue; this study should have come out 5 - 10 years ago (original BG1, etc.).

The results of the research about this by J. Carlquist was presented 3 years ago and was probably the fruits of years of research, this article was just the first and only English text made by him. It's really just an update of the original. I agree that it's long overdue, but computer and video games haven't really been regarded as 'cultivated' enough to make it a subject of research for many scientists. The industry has indeed been booming the past couple of years, something that have made it a waking call for the scientific establishment.