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DiGRA
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Distilling the key insights…
Dominic Arsenault's paper, presented as an extended version of a 2005 DiGRA conference talk, proposes the "dynamic range" as an analytical tool for examining how game systems grant players freedom, and uses that tool to explore the relationship between game design and narrative. The central thesis is that a game's design plays an active role in shaping its narrative content, and that the two can only work together successfully when the openness of the game system matches the designer's narrative intentions. Arsenault frames openness as a matter of degree rather than a binary, and defines dynamic range as the extent to which a player can manipulate a game's internal dynamics, drawing on the MDA framework of mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics, to meet a particular challenge.
The paper illustrates the concept through comparative case studies. Charts of a level-22 Warrior in Diablo and Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell show that Diablo's resource-driven system offers wide internal manipulation, while Splinter Cell relies on external player skill and therefore offers a narrow range. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II is presented as an example of discrepancy, where an emergent, wide-ranging system is paired with a pre-written progression narrative, producing a jarring mismatch when the player's character is far stronger than the story assumes. Diablo and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind are then cited as examples of consistency, with Diablo's progression-based structure supporting its linear story and Morrowind's open world allowing the player's dynamic range to cover much of its space of possibility.
The analysis is qualitative and rests on the author's personal play experiences and close reading of selected titles, supported by a bibliography drawing on Jenkins, Juul, Murray, and Salen and Zimmerman. No survey or quantitative sample is involved. The paper's scope is theoretical and limited to digital games, primarily from the early 2000s, and the author acknowledges that the tool is situational and not yet fully developed.
DiGRA · 2011
