Narrative in Star Control II

Contents

Abstract..... Introduction and history.... 2 1.1 Short Description of Star Control II.... 3 1.2 Research field and research question... 4 1.3 Hypothesis..... 5 1.4 Theoretical basis.... Analysis...... 5 2.1 The Narrative Elements of Star Control II.... 5 2.1.1 The World of the Game.... 6 2.1.2 The Objects of the Game.... 8 2.1.3 The Agents of the Game.... 9 2.1.4 The Events of the Game..... 13 2.2 The Humor of the Game.... Conclusion..... References..... 22

Abstract

This paper analyses the game Star Control II for narrative elements in an attempt to explain its success as an adventure game with an uncommonly high level of re-playability for the genre. The game has been analyzed using Esben Aarseth method for narrative analysis of games, combined with Ted Friedmans theory of geographic narrative and the notion of narrative jamming as presented by H. Porter Abbott. Besides that literary theory on humor has also been used in the analysis. Also the adventure/strategy/melee battle hybrid nature of the game is explored as a possible reason for the success of the game, and indeed the paper concludes that the mixed nature and the narrative affordances it provides are the major reasons for its success.
Kasper Allan Pedersen Storytelling in Games

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1 Introduction and history
In 1992 the developers Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III under the company name Toys for Bob released the game Star Control II The Ur-Quan Masters. It was the successor to the 1990 game, Star Control, by the same company. Both games were released on Accolade, who financed the production, release and advertizing of the games thus functioning as a vehicle for the creativity of Toys for Bob, who were left with the job of creating the game itself. Star Controls commercial success as a space battle game in the tradition of Spacewar, made Accolade ask Ford and Reiche to make a sequel (Soon 2002, 2-3), which they gladly agreed to, thus Star Control II was born. As with all contract-based work Ford and Reiche were promised a fixed amount of money in advance as payment for their game, and they in turn had to develop the game with a deadline in May 1992. Came May the game was not yet finished, and Accolade decided to cease with any further payments, as a means of persuading Toys for Bob to complete the game as fast as possible (Soon 2002, 3 & Hu 2001, 3). Luckily Ford and Reiche chose to ignore the persuasion and continued to work on the game for another half year without pay, so that they could write the elaborate story and create the characters, music and some of the finer graphic details that earned the game its good reviews. This extra time spent on creating the narrative elements of the game is by many considered to be the main reason for the success of Star Control II (Soon 2002, 4 & 9). The very same narrative elements are the reason why I have chosen to write this paper on such an old game instead on a more resent one of the kind. I believe that game developers in the 90s created much more interesting games than most of what comes out today, maybe because it was about the time when the PC made it into the homes of ordinary families around the western world. The commercial market was booming and everybody wanted a piece of the cake. This desire to gain a foothold in a new and promising business I believe is the main reason for the many innovative and interesting games that came out in that decade. So despite its almost twenty years I believe that Star Control II is still worth analyzing for a field such as Storytelling in Games, since it is in my point of view a far better narrative game than what is released today. I stress the word game, because I believe that some of the narrative games of today do have good narratives, but they are not good games, seen as they do not offer the player with much real agency in the narrative progression of the game or with many different kinds of ludic experiences. Page 2
1.1 Short Description of Star Control II
In short Star Control II consists of three different parts: a strategic part (fig. 1 and 2), an adventure part (fig. 3) and a real-time melee-spaceship-battle part (fig. 4). Together the three parts make Star Control II a game with a very broad appeal. Most players will find at least one of the three elements to their liking. The strategic part of the game consists mainly of mineral gathering and building the strength of your flagship by purchasing upgrades and the strength of your fleet by spreading your influence and making allies, whose ships will subsequently be available at your star base. The adventure part comes to play when you are trying to make allies, since the only way that can be done is by quite extensive dialogue with the other star-faring races. Often this dialogue results in the commencement or conclusion of a quest. The Space battle part is very similar to the main part of the first game, and takes place whenever diplomacy fails, and the dialogue from the adventure part turns bad, then you address your opponent on the battlefield of (almost) empty space.

Figure 1-2: The starting point of the game-play: exploration of Sol star system and upgrading the flagship at the star-base.
Figure 3-4: Talking to the star base commander at Earth and fighting the enemy in space combat.

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The story of the game is based on the first Star Control, where the Alliance of the Free Stars were attempting to repel the aggressive forces of the Ur-Quan Armada. In Star Control II twenty years have passed and the player enters the story as the human hero who captains an alien spacecraft, constructed from blueprints found on a research colony on the frontiers of human influenced space. The colony has been without contact with Earth for twenty years and no-one there knows of the outcome of the war. So you are assigned to the mission of returning to earth to find out what has happened, to send help to the colony and to join the war against the Ur-Quan if it is still ongoing. The actual game-play starts on the edge of our solar system, where you quickly establish contact with the space-station orbiting Earth, just to learn that the war is lost and most of the members of The Alliance of Free Stars are now either enslaved or employed by the UrQuan as battle thralls. From there on the game unfolds as you build your strength and slowly manages to travel further and further away from Earth in your quest for finding allies and uncovering information that will make you capable of casting off the oppression of the Ur-Quan. Throughout your search for allies and knowledge you play out many lesser important quests, and you gather enormous amounts of knowledge on everything from the different races of your galaxy to ancient history, not all of which is relevant for completing the game or even the quests.
1.2 Research field and research question
When browsing through the discussion forum of the Star Control II fan page: The Pages of Now and Forever, one thing that strikes you, is the vast number of very dedicated fans, and their love for the nearly twenty year old game (Soon 2002, 13). It seems like most of the fans play the game on a regularly basis despite its dependency on quests as a driving force in the game-play. I use the word despite here since according to Tronstads paradox a quest is only a driving force in a game until it has been solved, after which it becomes history and loses any potential for narrative drive. It seems that either the quests in Star Control II are of some strange narrative nature that causes them to evade Tronstads paradox or else the game must have some other elements besides the quests which make it worth to play over and over again 1.
Of course there is a third opportunity: that Tronstads paradox is flawed, in which case quests do not lose their narrative drive after being solved.

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Figur 5-8: The changes of the map over time. Notice the annihilation of the Ilwrath and the Thraddash (top left corner 7-8), the migration of the Pkunk (bottom left corner) and the decimation of the Mycon race (lower center 7-8). The white sphere centered on the cross-string marks how far it is possible to fly without refuelling.
Ted Friedman also writes about the game world as an agent for narrative drive. He looks at the geography of a simulation/strategy-game (civilization 2) and the spatial story the player gets from it. He says: a simulation doesn't have characters or a plot in the conventional sense. Instead, its primary narrative agent is geography. Simulation games tell a story few other media can: the drama of a map changing over time. (Friedman 1995, 4) What Friedman describes here is just one of the enticing sides to Star Control II. As the player travels further and further away from Sol and visits more and more star systems the map is slowly populated with alien races, some of which perishes in interstellar genocides, some of which remain until the end of the game (fig 5-8). Alliances are made, races revived from near extinction, a new dimension discovered: all elements which changes the geography of the game and the players experience of it, thus adding to the positive experience of playing the game. As Friedman says: This process of exploration and discovery is one of the fundamental pleasures of [the game]. It's what gives the game a sense of narrative momentum (Friedman 1995, 5). Friedman also brings the notion of a distinction between maps and tours into play, this notion he borrows from Henry Jenkins and Mary Fuller, whom in turn have borrowed it from Michel de Certeau, but for the sake of keeping it simple I will only be quoting Friedman in this paper. In short a map is the abstract depiction of an area/a world, a tour is the experienced movement through what the map depicts (Friedman 1995, 5). Friedman argues contrary to Jenkins and Fuller that narrative can be experienced in both cases, and in simulation games it happens through the changes the player inflicts on the map. Jenkins and Fuller believe Page 7
that narrative only emerges when the player submerges himself into the individual subjective experience of moving through the geography: Geography itself is not the protagonist; rather, the protagonist's experience of geography structures the narrative. Maps, according to Friedman, tell their stories in the abstract, without ever bringing it to the level of individual experience (Friedman 1995, 6). Star Control II makes use of both kinds of narrative. On one hand the player takes great pleasure from the strategic parts of the game, from observing how the map changes due to his actions. On the other hand an even greater deal of pleasure is derived through actually playing the parts which causes the changes to happen. I would never go as far as calling Star Control II a simulation, but it does have elements similar to those of strategic simulation games like Civilization and Master of Orion. These elements are most prominently manifested in the evolution of the map, as the player explores the galaxy in the hunt for minerals and allies, and so Friedmans theory of geographic narrative seems quite in place in this analysis. 2.1.2 The Objects of the Game According to Aarseth objects can belong to five different categories according to how well they support player agency. He argues that the more agency the player has, the weaker the narrative control becomes (Aarseth 2010, 8-9). For the most part I believe this to be true, but as Star Control II is evidence of, this is not always the case. Here you have many different classes of objects, most of which you have full agency with, to some extent you even have more than full agency, since there are many actions that are allowed to you as player but not for the NPCs like for example mineral gathering. As mentioned above the game world is fully ludic, and the player has full agency of all objects in the game world, from the static usable/destructible objects of minerals and biological data, to the user-created objects of the flagship (fig. 2) and certain unique objects/devices like the Ultron 2. Despite this high level of player agency the game still has a very strong narrative control. The reason this is possible has to do partly with the notion of geographic narrative mentioned above, and partly with some aspects of the game I will address shortly, namely the humor of the game and the events, characters and story of is as well. The geographic narrative mentioned earlier only gets a chance to be played out if the player decides to interact with certain objects (mainly devices, NPCs and information), if minerals are the only objects he interacts with, the geographic narrative

The Ultron is an important device that the player constructs from different parts he collects throughout the game.

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does not unfold and the game looses its drive. For example the hostile Thraddash race is halved because you convince them to attack your enemy. Afterwards you destroy between 20 and 30 of their ships in battle to impress them with your fighting skills due to which they make you their leader, now you are allowed to visit their home-world where you steal an artifact from them that you will need to befriend another stronger race later in the game. After you have retrieved the artifact from the Thraddash they break the alliance and will hereafter attack you on sight (which is not really a problem since they are easily dealt with). Since you have no more use for them after this you use a device (the Umgah Caster) to convince a very sinister and evil race, the Ilwrath, to fly to the Thraddash sphere of influence and start a war against them (fig. 7-8). In that war both races are completely annihilated. Needless to say the movement and subsequently the annihilation of two complete races affects the geographic narrative, but none of it would have happened had the player not interacted with the objects of three different races, two different devices and between 20 and 30 enemy ships. So the high level of player agency in Star Control II does not impair a strong narrative, quite the contrary it seems to support the narrative of the game. 2.1.3 The Agents of the Game The agents or characters of a game Aarseth places into five groups: bots, static avatars, customizable bots and avatars, shallow characters and deep characters (Aarseth 2010, 9). Characters ranges just below game universe/world in importance according to Aarseth, which is one reason why I will deal with them in detail in this analysis, another is that the characters are often listed together with the story as the best feature of Star Control II by its many fans. As Hu puts it: This is perhaps the strongest aspect of the game: the personalities Reiche and Ford created are incredibly fun to interact with (Hu 2001, 3). Also Soon supports this view in his paper: What made Star Control 2 exceptional for most players, apart from its novel science-fiction role-playing hybrid nature, were its narrative aspects the background story, conversations with characters in the game, and the development of the storyline, of which the player was made to feel as truly a part of. (Soon 2002, 6) One reason for the characters and the story to be considered to be of such great importance to the success of the game might have to do with Reiche and Ford spending half a year on making them deep and believable. To the designers the narrative elements of the game were obviously very important, since they insisted on Page 9

completing them without getting payed for the time they spent on it. Star Control II contains 22 different races translating into 26 different windows for dialogue, and with so many races and so much dialogue it is not surprising that the game contains more than one of Aarseth character classes. Most races belong to the class Deep characters, but only if their race is seen as a character, since it is only in very rare cases that you actually know the name of the person viewed on your screen. Each race seems well-rounded and has a rich and extensive history. Most races are funny and possess unique traits of behavior and language, and often the possibilities for dialogue are quite extensive. Ironically one race 3 which is not a deep character is the Slylandro Probes: you can rarely ask them more than one question before they attack you, and you never get any new choices of dialogue when re-encountering them. The irony is that every time you meet them, they introduce themselves by name (serial number), they are in other words one of the few races where you get individual character names, but they are also nothing more than bots since you have no real way to communicate with them beyond the initial contact. The game contains no true avatars, unless if you count the ships you control as a kind of avatar, in which case the avatar is customizable. The only time you get to see yourself is in the video after you have completed the game, so that can hardly count as an avatar, since you have no control of it. Neither does the game contains any shallow characters, except if you count the third hand characters of the star base personnel and the crew of your planet lander as true characters, and even these show personality on occasion. As can probably be deduced from the above sentence the reason why I do not believe the game to contain any shallow characters is that all the races you interact with have a lot of personality (Aarseth 2010, 9). It is in the meeting with the different characters that most of the traditional (as opposed to geographic) narrative occur, it is here the dialogue can be analyzed and it is here that events/quests start and end, and thus it is here that the story unfolds. The lack of an avatar (and the level of user control that often comes with it) benefits according to Aarseth the authorial affordances of the game (Aarseth 2010, 9). The closest you get as player to user control is in the dialogue, but even here you are choosing between options, however extensive, made available by the designers (as is the case in most games). The choices you make

The quotation marks are due to the fact that the probes are not a race on their own, they are the star faring probes for the Slylandro race, but they appear and behave very differently than their masters who reside on a gas giant from which they cannot leave.

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while communicating with other races can in some cases however determine the outcome of the game; for example: if you say the wrong thing to the Orz you will not be able to pick up the Taalo mental shield at Orz playground and so you will never finish the game. This is evidence of some degree of player control. 2.1.3.1 Narrative Jamming In the game one of the largest sources for narrative drive is that caused by narrative jamming. Narrative jamming is a concept introduced by H. Porter Abbott in his book The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Abbott describes his concept as: the way it arouses and then refuses to satisfy our narrative perceptions (Abbott 2009, 10). The it he mentions here is a complicated surreal painting called Dr. Syn. which leaves a lot to the imagination; so the it is in other words just a narrative that is not easily explained from its apparent contents and therefore becomes interesting through the lack of answers to the questions experiencing it brings to mind. In the game narrative jamming is as mentioned a primary source of narrative drive. It springs from most of the characters and their respective histories, but is probably strongest with the two inter-dimensional races the Orz and the Arilou Laleelay (Arilou) (fig 9-11). Soon writes about them in his paper: the Orz and Arilou races, [seem] harmless and peace-loving upon first contact. However, through prolonged contact (and warnings from other alien races), the player [begins] to feel wary about these and maintain a sense of caution in his or her dealings with them. (Soon 2002, 10) The wariness appears for different reasons, both the Orz and the Arilou are friendly on the surface, and stroked the right way they remain so for the duration of the game. But ask too many questions of the Orz about what they have done to the Androsynth 4 and they are your enemies forever. The Arilou too will fight you, but only if you attack first. At any time they will prefer a peaceful solution even after you have engaged them: Human. You flail at the wind. Cease your violence. Would you hurt your pet? Your child? Your beast? Please. rethink your posture. The paradox about the two races is, that it seems that the Arilou might have modified humans to protect them from creatures like the Orz. When you in angrily excited tones demand that they explain their reasons for modifying humans, they say:

The Androsynth used to live in the area of space that is now inhabited by the Orz; of their civilization remains only ruins.

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Our motives are multiple, our desires complex. Part of what we do on Earth is for your own protection. There are parasites. Creatures who dwell Beyond. They have names, but you do not know them. They would like to find you but they are blind to your presence. unless you show yourselves. The Androsynth showed themselves, and something noticed them. There are no more Androsynth now. Only Orz. [] In a way, ignorance is your armor, your best protection. They cannot see you now. They cannot smell you. Much of our work with your people involved making you invisible. changing your smell. If I tell you more, you will look where you could never look before and while you are looking you can and will be seen. You do not want to be seen. (http://www.sa-matra.net/quotes/arilou/) The mysteries at which the Arilou is hinting here are a great source for narrative jamming, especially after you meet the Orz, and realize that they very often describe their way of sensing the world as smelling it. The Orz themselves say about their relationship to the Arilou that: We are from *outside* 5. Also the Arilou *quick babies* are from *outside*. It is the same, but not. Orz are from *below*, Arilou are from *above*. Orz does not like Arilou. Arilou are too much trouble. We can not have parties when Arilou always *jumping in front*. It makes Orz *frumple* so much. (http://www.sa-matra.net/quotes/orz/) The clear animosity between the two races versus the unclear motivations of them is the source of strong narrative jamming. One cannot help wondering about why they dislike each other, if their different dimensions of origin are the reason, or if it is maybe humans that are the object of their conflict. And furthermore much curiosity concentrates on what the evils that the Arilou is protecting us from are. This last part of the narrative jamming is strongly enhanced when the player lands on what used to be the Androsynth homeworld, and the first reports from the surface reaches the flagship, it is disturbing news indeed. I will not quote it all here since it is a very long piece of text, but it can be read in full by following the link below or by playing the game. In short the landing party discovers that the Androsynth were wiped out in a global war, with no space invaders meddling in. There are however no corpses anywhere, the Androsynth are simply gone leaving the ruins of their culture behind. More disturbing is the knowledge found in the ruin cities computer mainframes of dimensional fatigue research and the discoveries made in that department. While looking through the results, the leader of the landing party turns insane and destroys the information to protect humanity from the dangers of the Androsynth research. The insanity however seems to be justified,

2.2 The Humor of the Game
When I asked the question: What is it about Star Control II that make you play it again and again? on the Star Control Discussion Board, almost all the people who answered mentioned the dialogue and the characters as some of their reasons, the others being the size and playability of the game world and the
I posed the question: What is it about the game that make you play it again and again? on the internet discussion board, and whenever I refer to that site, it is to the answers to that question I point.

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story. 7 Some of them stressed that the thing about the characters and the dialogue that made the game especially good is the humor conveyed through them, like Draxas: Brilliantly written dialog and story, especially the humor (which considerably livens up what would be an otherwise fairly oppressive atmosphere.)(http://www.star-control.com/community/). Also Hu comments on the humor of the game: Each race has its own quirks and modes of talking, and there were plenty of little jokes sprinkled throughout, many of which were self-consciously poking good-natured fun at the game itself. (Hu 2001, 3). I will only use a couple of examples for this paper, but I feel compelled to stress that there are many more than the few I mention throughout the game, actually the only races who are completely un-humorous are the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah and the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za. The Mycon are not too funny by themselves either, but becomes so as the player enters into dialogue with them, since all their answers are close to unintelligible and often seems to be completely off topic. The Illwrath (fig. 13) are pure evil, but since the justification to their evil is a divine bidding they are picking up on their hyper-wave casters (radios), their cause becomes comedic, and even more so when you realize that it is actually another alien race that is playing the role of their gods. The comedy is completed when the player gets hold of his own hyper-wave caster and tells the Illwrath to leave their prey, the good-natured Pkunk, alone and seek new prey, after which they find their annihilation at the guns of the new prey, the Thraddash (fig. 12). Another comedic aspect about them is their evil dialogue, it is so exaggerated that it is hard to take it seriously. For example they reply to your exclamation: Your greed for lives seals your doom! with: You Amuse Us With Your Nonsensical Ramblings. We Look Forward To The Careful Exploration Of Your Structure. First, We Will Peel Back The Curious Follicle-Infested Outer Layer Followed By The Greasy Blankets Of Yellow Lard. Such A Confusing Hodge-Podge Of Parts Can Entertain For Hours! Hu-Man, Prepare Yourself For The Festivities! (http://www.sa-matra.net/quotes/ilwrath/)

I asked this question when I were two thirds through writing the paper, and thus my problem field, research question and hypothesis have not been shaped by the answers I got, but from my own personal experiences with playing Star control II.

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Figur 12-13: The stupid Thraddash and the Evil Illwrath, that dies in an inter-galactic genocide on each other. The Illwrath with one of their friendly greetings (the reason for the dance is the ensuing death and mauling of the human protagonist).
Exaggeration and surprise is what makes the Illwrath a source of humor in the game, their prey the Pkunk are also funny but for different reasons. First there is their comically cartoonish looks (fig. 14) and high effeminate/androgynous voices 8, second there is their friendly almost nave new-age-spirituality-inspired personality and the situations this causes, the third reason I will address at the end of this chapter since it is common for more races than the Pkunk. The example below is one both showing the humor of their naivety, and the writers use of surprise as a comic relief, from all the spiritual talk: The stars are in auspicious alignment, the various significant moons are in the correct houses, and ambient psychic energies are in balance. All is well, and the universe is at peace. Well, actually 2/3 of our civilization has been decimated by the Ilwrath, but besides that all is well. It is good to see you again. (http://www.sa-matra.net/quotes/ pkunk/) Much of the fun about the dialogue with the Pkunk, comes from a mixture of language attitudes and collocational violations (Pedersen 2007, 40-56). We all have ideas about the different social layers that people we interact with comes from, and often we base these ideas on their dialects and accents, even when we try not to do this it happens and we generalize about our fellow sentient being. The same is the case when playing Star Control II. The Orz sound a bit ridiculous and creepy because of their garbled translations, the Yehat sounds proud and honorable because of their Scottish accent and the Pkunk sound a bit like friendly religious fanatics. The collocational violations come into the equation when the aliens break out of their role, when the stream of dialogue takes an unexpected turn, and in most such cases the outcome

The original version of the game did not have voices, only written text, however the version I have been analyzing, released in 2002, does have, and so I use voices in my analysis. Besides the voices the remaining game is the basically the same as in the 1992 version.

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is humorous, like the one below. There the Pkunk listens to one of their spirits to find out how to aid the player in his quest, and decides to not give him any of the things that he wants the most, but instead a seemingly useless artifact. Every turndown is a violation and as such funny, and the final sentence with its conspiratorial implications is a gross jump out of the language attitude established for the Pkunk, again with a humorous effect: Wait! A spirit voice rings within my soul! It tells me that I must give you something. What, spirit? What must we give this young creature? Mineral resources?. no. Important secrets?. no. Starships?. no. Then what IS it spirit, spit it out! What?!. that thing? Are you sure? Okay. Here you go, alien. Take this Clear Spindle. It is an ancient and powerful device built by the Precursors hundreds of thousands of years ago. What does it do, you ask? I haven't the slightest idea. Now, alien, it is important that we continue our conversation as though this exchange never happened. The Pkunk are good for one last example of the humor and wholesomeness of the game. When the Pkunk explains about the genocidal Illwrath, they mention that the Illwrath is a very old race which was once creatures of pure light and goodness, until they one day became just that little bit better which plummeted them down into evil and darkness. As a consequence of this discovery the Pkunk who is a very kind and good race, decide to do a little bad once in a while to avoid becoming perfect and consequently evil. While engaging their little butterfly-shaped (in itself a source of amusement) ships in battle (fig. 15), you quickly notice that the way they recharge their batteries is by throwing insults at you, and the more insults the bigger the chance they have of the whole ship being reborn after its first demise. This can happen many times in a battle and instead of killing the three ships you saw when engaging them, you might need to kill 30 of them, and frankly you get a bit desperate and tired of hearing the joyous Hallelujah a la Hndel whenever a ship is reborn. When asked why they transmit insults during battle they answer: Unlike certain other species, we Pkunk are an inherently peaceful and loving people. Combat does not come easily to us. In order to be at all effective, we find it necessary to whip ourselves into an emotional frenzy.

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Figur 14-15: Encounter with the Pkunk and a battle between Pkunk and Illwrath the Pkunk is loosing (and this time it was not resurrected).
I use the Pkunk as an example here, but most races presents the player with similarly complete experiences. Another example is the Druuge who are willing to sell any artifact to you for 100 of your crew members, who will then serve on a Druuge space ship. The Druuge space ship can during battle boost its very slow battery recharge rate by sacrificing crew members. So instead of normal service the crew you sell them will literally be cannon fodder. Even the names are often significant in both the humor and the overall experience of each race and subsequently the game as a whole. Pkunk is very close to punk, and a punk does have a talent for insulting, plus their appearance supports it with their tiny mohawk haircut. Also the Thraddash suffers from having a pun played on their name, pronounced quickly it becomes Thrash, and as a race they are at some point in the game thrashed in the double genocide of them and the Illwrath. Illwrath obviously have a pun played on their name, since it is very close to being a pleonasm. Wrath is not a strong enough word to describe them and their evil nature, so they became ill wrath.

4 Conclusion

After having analyzed Star Control II for narrative and humorous components I have come to the conclusion that my initial hypothesis was right. The success of the game is largely based on its good narrative qualities such as its geographic narrative and the well-defined deep characters combined with its wholesome strategyadventure-action hybrid-nature. I found through using Esben Aarseths model for narrative analysis of games that Star Control II supports both the ontological as well as the narrative parts of the analysis through its extensive level of Page 18
player agency. The ontological parts are supported through the large almost fully ludic game-world and the high level of agency that the player has with the objects in the game. The narrative parts are supported as mentioned above through the extensive game-world and the deep characters, but also through the large amount of dialogue in the game and the good story it supports. Yinjie Soon supports this viewpoint in his paper when he writes that: the strongest and most critically acclaimed points of Star Control 2, [are] plot, conversation and depth (Soon 2002, 13). He also supports the importance of the game-world in explaining the success of the game: The game featured a rich, multi-layered and complex world and offered hours of engrossing game-play; these were among the factors that helped the game garner many positive reviews from critics. (Soon 2002, 4) I believed the humorous dialogue to play a large part in the success of the game as well. This I based largely on my own experience of why I play the game on a regular basis. I analyzed parts of the dialogue and different characters using literary theory and found that they indeed supported my hypothesis about humor being a defining element of why the game is worth playing many times over. When I addressed the Star Control Discussion Board about the game, asking the members there the following question: What is it about Star Control II that make you play it again and again? the answers I got all supported my hypothesis and the results I found through my own analysis of the game. Besides the narrative elements, the large ludic game-world and the humor, also the hybrid-nature of the game is mentioned on the forum: the game is very simple to learn the basics of and has very simple controls. It's easy to jump into, but the strategy takes time to understand. Not even the best of players can sweep the fighting without an assortment of different ships, each one has their strengths and weaknesses that have to be observed. Also, even after several playthroughs, the space is too big to remember everything you have to do without re-exploring the game. The game has amazing replay value because of that. (Gihren) Add to that the exploration aspect of the game and the occasional melee and you have game that is appealing to multiple audiences, as each of the gaming aspects (story/exploration/fighting/humour/.) is good enough for you to continue playing so that "uninteresting" aspects are not really in the way. (Alvarin) As it is put by Alvarin in the last quotation, the hybrid nature of the game appeals to different kinds of audiences. Besides appealing to different people it will also give those different people a very varied

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selection of game-play ensuring that the game does not grow stale on the player. I believe from my own experience and the answers given on the forum, that the hybrid-nature of Star Control II plays a very important role in explaining the games success 9. Besides being a source of constantly changing game experiences while playing, it also supports the geographical narrative (the strategy and the adventure part of the game-play) and the humor of the game (the adventure and the melee battle part). And through supporting these important elements of the over-all narrative of the game, the hybrid-nature of the game must be said to play a fundamental role in the explaining the tremendous success of the game and its great potential for replayability. Friedman says in his article that the best games succeed by discovering new structures of interaction, inventing new genres. (friedman 1995, 1). I believe that if that sentence is true Star Control II (as well as the its predecessor) is among the best games ever made, and judging from its placement as number 17 on IGMs list of all times best games, I might be right. It managed to join the best from both the rapidly growing strategy game genre and the long proud tradition of adventure games, and even added in some of the fun from the arcade one-on-one games. And already a year after the release of Star Control II, another game came out that was based on the hybrid model: UFO: enemy unknown. Also Master of Orion (1993) did to some degree use the hybrid model, although this game also drew on the traditions of the simulation games Sim City (1989) and Civilization (1991). The most successful of the later games using the hybrid model was to be Heroes of Might and Magic (1995) a game-series still running, with its latest version out in 2007. As my analysis shows the quality of the story, the depth of characters and the humor of the dialogue also play important roles in explaining the potential for re-playability. Together they create a very strong and believable story and game-world, something that later games have copied with varied success. One of these games which is worth mentioning here is The Day of the Tentacle (1993). In that game the only
The game ranks as number seventeen on the IGMs top 100 of the best games of all time (http://top100.ign.com/2005/011-020.html), and on Gamespot it was listed as one of the ten best game-worlds in an online readers survey (soon 2002, 8).

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reason for replaying is a very well-composed narrative, the game possess close to none of the hybrid-gameplay of Star Control II, but plenty of its strong narrative qualities and humor. I have tried to show how the narrative qualities and the humor of Star Control II combine with the hybrid nature of the game-play in creating a unique game experience. And through analyzing the game I have found that this combination is what makes it so easily re-playable. There simply are so many actions to do and so much story and dialogue to experience, that the game will always be able to surprise, even after many playing sessions. This speaks against Friedman, when he says: Computer games are designed to be played until they are mastered. You succeed by learning how the software is put together. Unlike a book or film that is engaged only once or twice, a computer game is played over and over until every subtlety is exposed, every hidden choice obvious to the savvy player. The moment the game loses its interest is when all its secrets have been discovered, its boundaries revealed. That's when the game can no longer suck you in. No game feels fresh forever; eventually, you run up against the limits of its perspective, and move on to other games. (friedman 1995,8) According to the fans of the game, Star Control seems to be very enjoyable even after its secrets have been discovered and its boundaries revealed. It is in other words a game that can easily be played again and again as the quotation below so avidly shows. It is a response to the rumor that Toys for Bob (TFB), Ford and Reiche inclusive, is releasing a new and very creative game in the foreseeable future, and it is written by an obviously big fan of both TFB and Star Control II: [I] Used to frequent the [Star Control discussion] boards back in 04 and still check in on your guys every so often to see what's up. I play starcon 2 at least once a year, and check the TFB website frequently. Just want to say that upon reading this, I crapped my pants. I've got my fingers crossed guys! (http://www.star-control.com/community/ viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69)

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5 References
Aarseth, Esben (2010): A Narrative Theory of Games. Unpublished manuscript. Handed out in class, no link supplied. Abbott, H. Porter (2009): The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge University Press, New York. Derrenbacker, Chad: The Pages of Now and Forever. The Star Control Discussion Board: Why is Star Control such a great game? Tread posted April 22nd 2010: http://www.star-control.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=126 &sid=0e2f84bccd7cd2b6e4e9843165dedf35 Friedman, Ted (1995): Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space. Discovering Discs: Transforming Space and Genre on CD-ROM, Downloaded March 2010 from: http://www.duke.edu/~tlove/civ.htm Goldstein, Hilary: Top 100 Games of all time (2005). IGN entertainment. Visited April 2010: http://top100.ign.com/2005/011-020.html Hu, Yu-Ping; Case History: the Star Control Games - How They Got Game (2001). Downloadet March 2010 from: http://www.stanford.edu/group/htgg/cgi-bin/drupal/sites/default/files2/yphu_2001_2.pdf Pedersen, Kasper m.fl (2007): Humor in British Sit-coms. Unpublished manuscript. Download source: http://itu.dk/people/kape/blandet/bachelorassignment.doc Soon, Yinjie (2002). Case History: Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters. Downloaded March 2010 from: http://www.stanford.edu/group/htgg/cgi-bin/drupal/sites/default/files2/ysoon_2002_1.pdf Tsing: The Sa-Matra Star Control II Quotes. Visited April 2010: http://www.sa-matra.net/quotes/

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