Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place

Abstract

During the last few years, a debate took place within the game scholars community. A debate that, it seems, opposed two groups: ludologists and narratologists. Ludologists are supposed to focus on game mechanics and reject any room in the field for analyzing games as narrative, while narratologists argue that games are closely connected to stories. This article aims at showing that this descrip- tion of the participants is erroneous. What is more, this debate as presented never really took place because it was cluttered with a series of misunderstandings and mis- conceptions that need to be clarified if we want to seri- ously discuss the role of narrative in videogames.