CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 37Digital Games and MediaNarrative Theory and AnalysisArtificial Intelligence in Games

Waiting for Something to Happen: Narratives, Interactivity and Agency and the Video Game Cut-scene

Open access
Cheng, Paul·2007·DiGRA Digital Library
DOI 10.26503/dl.v2007i1.357
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Since the appearance in 1978 of Adventure on the Atari 2600, the cut-scene (alternatively cutscene or cut scene) has been a key component to many video games.Often, the cut-scene gives narrative shape to the game experience, moving the player along through a series of events culminating in the story's end.Cybertheorists such as Hayles, Murray and Frasca have explored the ways in which digital interactive media and the video game introduce new paradigms of narrative and storytelling, as well new conceptions of interactivity and agency.However, in many ways the inclusion of cut-scenes raises many of the problems concerning the theoretical structures with which to investigate video games.Since cut-scenes often follow cinematic codes of representation, current theory often renders the cut-scene as passive and non-interactive, as opposed to the interactive nature of gameplay.Yet as film theory has shown, especially in the effects of suturing and such, cinema offers a kind of psychic interactivity that blurs the hard boundary often drawn between cinema and gameplay.The cut-scene then becomes the locus of the tension in video games between cinematic representation and gameplay, and subsequently, an investigation of the cut-scene and its role in the video game can offer substantial insight into the nature of agency and interactivity within the video game.Using the release of Capcom's Resident Evil 4 and Ubisoft's Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, both of which challenge the traditional definitions and uses of the cutscene, this paper will study the different ways in which the cut-scene operates within the video game.It will not only discuss current conceptions of agency and interactivity within the video game, but also offer an transmedia framework, after the work of Marsha Kinder, with which to explore the relationship between narrative and gameplay, cinema and simulation in the video game.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.26503/dl.v2007i1.357

Cites

13 of 13 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • In a scene in King Kong in which the player character is tied at a stake, the interaction afforded to the player is limited to a single button instead of the usual ten-twelve.

    “Cheng, (2007) provides an example of this, found in the game King Kong (Ubisoft Montpellier, 2005): in a scene in which the player character is tied at a stake, the interaction afforded to the player is limited to a single button instead of the usual ten-twelve.”

    From Interactive Digital Narratives as Complex Expressive Means (2022) · cites this paper as Cheng, 2007

    In “Watch as Man, Play as Kong: King Kong” (page unavailable), Cheng describes Jack tied to a stake with only minor left-right movement and a limited ability to look around. The section supports the claim that interaction is restricted, but it does not say the player is limited to a single button or that the usual number is ten to twelve. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • In that situation, one would expect the player to feel constrained by the game mechanics, but the exact opposite occurs instead.

    “In this situation, Chang maintains, one would expect the player to feel constrained by the game mechanics, but the exact opposite occurs instead.”

    From Interactive Digital Narratives as Complex Expressive Means (2022) · cites this paper as Cheng, 2007

  • The limitations imposed upon the player are not due to any arbitrary reason of game mechanics, but arise from a situation that makes logical sense in the game world.

    “The scholar justifies it saying that “this occurs because the limitations imposed upon the player are not due to any arbitrary reason of game mechanics, but arises [sic] from a situation that makes logical sense in the game world” (Cheng, 2007).”

    From Interactive Digital Narratives as Complex Expressive Means (2022) · cites this paper as Cheng, 2007

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

4 of the 17 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Newman, James. Videogames. London: Routledge, 2004.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Cheng, P.
Affiliations
University of California, Riverside (US)
Corresponding author
Cheng, Paul
Venue
DiGRA Digital Library
Publisher
Digitial Games Research Association DiGRA
Published
2007-01-01
Volume
4
ISSN
2342-9666
DOI
10.26503/dl.v2007i1.357
OpenAlex
W2135025551
Cited by
37
References
17
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 2 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 3
FWCI
1.53
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Locations
Digital Games Research Association Conference
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Narrative Theory and Analysis
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Artificial Intelligence in Games
Keywords
interactivity, player agency, video game narrative, gameplay, film representation, suturing, transmedia, simulation, interactive digital media

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review