Materially Random Stories: Randomness and Narrative as Material Structures in Digital Games

Janik's paper, presented at DiGRA 2023, argues that randomness in digital games should be understood as a material-discursive practice rather than merely a design mechanic for generating uncertainty. Drawing on Karen Barad's agential realism and her concept of the apparatus, the author contends that randomness actively shapes both the materiality of play and the meaning of narrative. Where prior scholarship on randomness has concentrated on loot boxes, gambling-like mechanics, curiosity, and players' ability to predict outcomes, this work shifts attention toward how chance structures storytelling and produces a sense of narrative uniqueness.

The central claim is that randomness functions as an apparatus: out of many possible outcomes, a mechanism determines one particular result, and discursive practices embedded in that mechanism give the result its meaning. The paper frames the player-game relation as an intra-active process in which boundaries and qualities of phenomena are co-produced, which in turn requires rethinking agency and the production of meaning in gameplay. Narrative uncertainty, in this account, is not simply anticipation of events but a material process through which fiction emerges, and the liminal character of unrealized alternatives heightens the player's sense that their story is singular.

The argument is developed through three case studies. Disco Elysium uses dice rolls to determine the success of dialogue options and character actions; Returnal uses procedurally generated space and objects to make a linear narrative feel unique for each player; and Inscryption employs cards as the vehicle for narrative progression. These examples are presented as illustrations of randomness's capacity to build narrative experience and of the multiplicity of fiction in games. The paper is a theoretical and conceptual contribution, drawing on a range of game studies and posthumanist literature rather than on empirical data, surveys, or sampled player studies.