Markup View

Author: Abnaxis

Sep 25th 2013 at 6:01:48 AM

Indeed.  I came here from the discussion on the forums, confident that there wasn't already a trope for Gameplay Dissonance

There are a few problems with "Ludonarrative Dissonance" that make it inappropriate for a title.  First, nobody can agree on what it means.  To some, it simply means the same thing as GameplayAndStorySegregation, where to others it goes farther than that, saying that the gameplay and story aren't simply separated, they're intrinsically at odds with one another.

Still another view is that the term is about conflict not just between the story and the gameplay, but between the theme and the gameplay.  This is the view of blog Errant signal, covered in this [[http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=143 video]] and this [[http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=543 post]]

I'm a fan of the latter idea.  However, "Ludonarrative Dissonance" is a ''terrible'' word for it.  First of all, it's SesquipedalianLoquaciousness to a fault.  Second of all, it is interpreted differently by many different people.  Worse, regardless of interpretation "Ludonarrative Dissonance" is always considered bad in context; it should be thought of more in terms of TropesAreTools.  Finally, and most importantly, theme is not the same thing as narrative, and mood is not the same thing as narrative, whereas "ludonarrative" literally means "play and narrative."

So yeah, "Ludonarrative Dissonance" is bad, though we might want to put an aside in the text that says "Also called ludonarrative dissonance by some critics," but I didn't really know if that was a can of worms since that would put it into conflict with the GameplayAndStorySegregation page that already equated LND with segregation.