April 25th, 2008 asgoodwin
Yet another from me…
In an essay by the blog Re-Imagineering, they discuss the difference between Story and Plot in themed rides. I don’t entirely agree with all their points (I generally don’t), but I thought it was an interesting thing to look at in the context of Emergent and Progressive play. Emergent play has story – an interesting environment, and an interesting world, but not necessarily an A to B plot. For example in It’s a Small World, where there’s no actual plot, just the story of a world where all the children of the world realize they are alike and come together to sing. There is no beginning, middle, and end. There is no protagonist or antagonist.
On the other hand, there are a lot of rides with progressive plots, like Splash Mountain, where Brer Rabbit decides to leave home, is caught by Brer Fox and Brer Bear, tricks them into throwing him into the Briar Patch, and finally realizes home is where he is meant to be.
Many of the rides fall somewhere in between. The plot isn’t explicitly mentioned, but it is there. In Big Thunder Mountain, you’re on a mine car, in an abandoned mine town, which has gone out of control. In the Matterhorn Bobsleds, you are sledding through the mountains and have a run-in with the Yeti, barely escaping.
One story which has shifted from story to plot is Pirates of the Caribbean. The old version of Pirates of the Caribbean, with pirates ransacking a town, looking for treasure, and generally acting piratey, is a similar world. There are mini stories throughout, like the “wench” auction, or the pirates in jail trying to tempt the dog holding the key, but nothing holds it together. In (2005?) Disney Imagineering reworked the story to have a plot in it, of Jack Sparrow. The opening scene with the pirates attacking the town, they are looking for Jack. In the town, the man dunked in the well is being asked where Jack is. The drunk with the map is trying to hide it from Jack, who is peering over his shoulder instead of a random other pirate, and finally we leave seeing Jack in the treasure den. A lot of people strongly objected to the addition of these scenes, because it took away from the emergent story and added a linear storyline. They felt this took away from a primary joy of the story.
Ultimately most people concede that it makes the ride more familiar to younger riders, and it makes the ride “make sense” to more people. Both forms have strengths, and there are people who really prefer one over the other.
Looking at these examples really made the issue of the two types of play make more sense to me, so I thought I would share it with all of you.
Entry Filed under: Game Log
1 Comment
1. Professor Sample | May 14th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
This is really interesting to hear the Disney people’s distinction between plot and story, because the two words have a different meaning in literary studies. The Russian Formalists most famously argued for the distinction between the two, in which story is the chronological series of events of any happening (what Boris Tomashevsky calls "the action itself), while plot is the order in which the reader (or viewer) learns about each event. Flashbacks, for example, jumble the story by presenting it "out of order." What’s intriguing is that there is a tension between how events occur and how the reader is told about these events, and the greater the discrepancy between plot and story, the greater the tension in the narrative work. I wonder how this version of "plot" and "story" applies to videogames…
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