This talk presents an examination of hockey as it exists in early 21st century North America, paying particular attention to how narrative both emerges from, and is embedded within, the situations produced by the sport. Like all sports, hockey offers opportunities for individuals to take part in dramatic situations that would not otherwise occur. As players, teams, and fans actively engage with these situations, they produce various kinds of public and private narrative. These narratives in turn shape subsequent situations both within and beyond the formal boundaries of the sport. Through a series of examples from professional, amateur, and videogame versions of hockey, this talk examines how narrative emerges in, around, and among various contexts of hockey gameplay; how this narrative accrues and impacts both ludic and paraludic situations; and how it can become encoded in the formal structures of the game itself.

1. JEFF WATSON
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND GAMES
USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
@REMOTEDEVICE

8. COMPLETELY UNSCIENTIFIC
CHARTS COMPARING GOOGLE
SEARCHES FOR THE KEYWORD
“HOCKEY” WITH OTHER
KEYWORD SEARCHES

9. 0
5
10
15
20
hockey
(18M)
"video
game"
(69k)
videogame
(20k)
# of news search results
# of news search
results (in
millions)
Google.com. 28 July 2014.

10. 0
2
4
6
8
10
12
hockey
(109M)
"video
game"
(70M)
videogame
(12M)
# of web search results
# of web search
results (in tens of
millions)
Google.com. 28 July 2014.

11. 0
100
200
300
400
500
# of web search results
# of web search results
(in tens of millions)
Google.com. 28 July 2014.

17. GAMES AND NARRATIVE

23. NARRATIVE IS JUST AS CENTRAL
TO HOCKEY AS IT IS TO THESE
GAMES.

24. SPORTS LIKE HOCKEY SET THE
HIGH WATERMARK FOR
PROCEDURAL CONTENT
GENERATION.

25. SPORTS MAKE NARRATIVE –
AND THEY ARE MADE OF
NARRATIVE.

26. DEFINITIONS:
SPORT
SITUATION
DRAMA

27. DEFINITIONS:
SPORT
SITUATION
DRAMA

28. SPORT

29. A SPORT IS A COMPETITIVE ACTIVITY,
USUALLY BUT NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVING
SOME KIND OF ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE,
WHEREIN THE SKILL OF ONE PLAYER OR TEAM
OF PLAYERS IS TESTED, THROUGH INDIVIDUAL
CONTESTS OR SETS OF LINKED CONTESTS,
AGAINST THE SKILL OF ONE OR MORE OTHER
PLAYERS OR TEAMS OF PLAYERS*

30. A SPORT IS A COMPETITIVE ACTIVITY,
USUALLY BUT NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVING
SOME KIND OF ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE,
WHEREIN THE SKILL OF ONE PLAYER OR TEAM
OF PLAYERS IS TESTED, THROUGH INDIVIDUAL
CONTESTS OR SETS OF LINKED CONTESTS,
AGAINST THE SKILL OF ONE OR MORE OTHER
PLAYERS OR TEAMS OF PLAYERS*

31. A SPORT IS A COMPETITIVE ACTIVITY,
USUALLY BUT NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVING
SOME KIND OF ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE,
WHEREIN THE SKILL OF ONE PLAYER OR TEAM
OF PLAYERS IS TESTED, THROUGH INDIVIDUAL
CONTESTS OR SETS OF LINKED CONTESTS,
AGAINST THE SKILL OF ONE OR MORE OTHER
PLAYERS OR TEAMS OF PLAYERS*
*except when it isn’t

32. A SET OF RULES,
PROCEDURES, LIMITS, AND
TRADITIONS THAT GIVES
RISE TO DRAMATIC
SITUATIONS

33. A SET OF RULES,
PROCEDURES, LIMITS, AND
TRADITIONS THAT GIVES
RISE TO DRAMATIC
SITUATIONS

34. DEFINITIONS:
SPORT
SITUATION
DRAMA

35. SITUATION

37. AN OPPORTUNITY TO ACT

38. The writer is in a situation in their
epoch.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Editorial in Les Temps Modernes,
Issue 1 (1945)

39. AN OPPORTUNITY TO AFFIRM OR
BREAK WITH EXPECTATIONS (or
“SCRIPTS”)

40. “We’ve got ourselves a situation…”

42. “CHARACTER IS DESTINY”
Heraclitus

43. “[There] is freedom only in a situation, and there is a
situation only through freedom . . . There can be a free
for-itself only as engaged in a resisting world. Outside
of this engagement the notions of freedom, of
determination, of necessity lose all meaning.”
Sartre 1956, 621

44. DEFINITIONS:
SPORT
SITUATION
DRAMA

45. DRAMA

47. an exciting, emotional, or
unexpected series of events or
set of circumstances.
DRAMA

48. “TROUBLE PROVIDES THE
ENGINE OF DRAMA.”
Bruner 1991, 16

49. HOCKEY IS A POWERFUL FORMULA
FOR TROUBLE

50. HOCKEY IS A POWERFUL FORMULA
FOR DRAMA

58. “[If] one were not told
beforehand that they
were playing, one
would certainly believe
that they were
fighting.”
(Conover 1997)

59. DANGER -> DRAMA

60. TROUBLE -> DRAMA

61. UNCERTAINTY -> DRAMA

62. Evan Torner

63. THE DRAMATIC SITUATIONS
PRODUCED BY HOCKEY RESOLVE
INTO VARIOUS FORMS OF PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE NARRATIVE.

64. POWER PLAY

68. TROUBLE

69. UNCERTAINTY

70. SCRIPTS

73. “[when] you see a guy go down like
that and the way he went down and
what he did . . . the guys are going
to want to rally around that.”
Bruins Coach Claude Julien,
following the incident

74. EACH SUCCESSIVE LAYER OF
NARRATIVE MODULATES THE
SITUATIONAL COMPLEXITY AND
HERMENEUTIC RICHNESS OF
GAMEPLAY.

75. “MOMENTUM”

76. “CHOKE”

77. “CLUTCH”

80. NARRATIVE FROM “OUTSIDE” THE
GAME CAN ALSO IMPACT
SITUATIONS OF PLAY

81. “. . . IN ADDITION TO, IN COMPETITION
WITH, OTHER RULES AND IN RELATION
TO MULTIPLE CONTEXTS, ACROSS
VARYING CULTURES, AND INTO
DIFFERENT GROUPS.”
(Consalvo 2009, 416)

82. IN SPORTS, THERE IS A VERY
TIGHT FEEDBACK RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN SITUATION AND
NARRATIVE

83. SITUATION

84. SITUATION NARRATIVE

85. SITUATION NARRATIVE

86. THIS FEEDBACK LOOP FUNCTIONS
IN MULTIPLE CONTEXTS,
REGISTERS, AND TIME-SCALES

92. NARRATIVE
ACCRUAL

93. Even our own homely accounts of
happenings in our own lives are
eventually converted into more
or less coherent
autobiographies.
Bruner 1991, 18

94. [The] principles of jurisprudence . . . guarantee a
tradition by assuring that once a "case" has been
interpreted in one way, future cases that are
"similar" shall be interpreted and decided
equivalently. Insofar as the law insists on such
accrual of cases as "precedents," and insofar as
"cases" are narratives, the legal system imposes
an orderly process of narrative accrual.
Bruner 1991, 18

95. NARRATIVE IS THE MEANS BY
WHICH A SPORT ITERATES,
EVOLVES, AND SPREADS.

96. SPORTS ARE NOT STATIC
SYSTEMS

98. THE RULES OF THE GAME CAN
BE SEEN AS A KIND OF
“LOSSY” NARRATIVE…

99. …A DISTILLATION OF
SUCCESSIVE ACTS OF
NARRATION…

100. …A KIND OF ENCODING OR
“ENCRYPTION”.

101. RULES

102. SITUATION
RULES

103. SITUATION NARRATIVE
RULES

104. SITUATION NARRATIVE
RULES

105. SITUATION NARRATIVE
RULES

106. EMERGENT EMBEDDED
ENCRYPTED

107. EMERGENT EMBEDDED
ENCRYPTED
Ludonarrative
Dynamo

108. THE MORE NARRATIVE A
SPORT GENERATES, THE MORE
WELL-PLAYED IT WILL BE.

118. IF WE THINK OF A SPORT AS A
SPECIES OF LIFE THAT “WANTS”
TO REPRODUCE AND SURVIVE,
THEN MAYBE WE CAN SAY…

119. NARRATIVE IS HOW HOCKEY GETS
WHAT HOCKEY WANTS

120. WHAT HOCKEY WANTS
JEFF WATSON
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND GAMES
USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
@REMOTEDEVICE
Thank you.

121. WHAT HOCKEY WANTS
JEFF WATSON
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND GAMES
USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
@REMOTEDEVICE