Example of games of each type (these are all games I used to play when I was younger):
Evocative Space: Hannah Montana: Spotlight World Tour for Wii. This was one of my favorite games to play on the Wii growing up. You get to play Hannah Montana as she rehearses her tour, tries on beautiful fashion, and performs on stage in various foreign countries. It builds upon the players understanding of the Hannah Montana television show and her double identity as Miley Stewart. Similar to other evocative games, this game spins off from the source material. While the show and movie rarely focused on Hannah Montana’s actual performances this entire game is focused on the prep and experience of going on tour as Hannah Montana.
Enacting Stories: Super Mario Sunshine enacted the story through a series of small challenges and micro-narratives surrounding Mario cleaning the town of Isle Delfino and attempting to clear his name. He was a bunch of smaller motivations that motivate the player, clearing Mario’s name of all charge, rescuing Princess Peach, and discovering the culprit of all of the vandalism.
Embedded Narratives: Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When it’Outside involved the main protagonist becoming a superhero to attempt to capture/banish the darkness from his room. I honestly forgot this game existed but had vague memories of the art style and the different dark environments in the game. I played this game a lot when I was younger. This was a point and click game in which the protagonist “Pajama Sam” ventures through many different dark landscapes and has to find different items and clues to learn about the darkness and how to defeat it. Throughout the game Pajama Sam also has to complete minigames in order to win the challenge at the current location.
Emergent Narratives: Animal Crossing, Nintendogs were both games I used to play on my Nintendo DS. They both functioned as basically open spaces where users could build their own “lives” and have free reign to do what they please, within a preset of actions that the game allows them to do. In Nintendogs specifically, users adopt dogs and then they have a choice of what do with their dogs. They can groom and feed the dog, they can take it one walks to the park and interact with other users and their dogs, and they can train the dog to compete in different competitions to win prizes and money. Their is a sense of advancement in the games as your dog learns new tricks and advances through different levels of expertise in the competitions.
