Bonus Stage - Super Monday Night Combat

When I began studying narrative and gameplay I considered whether genre affected the importance of narrative, I even asked Ben and Steve their thoughts on this point. However I started thinking multiplayer is another element which greatly affects the narrative within the game. Games with intense and enjoyable multiplayers are often popular regardless of their narrative, which stands as proof that narrative isn’t necessarily vital in video games. 

 One game which I thought effectively exemplified this is Super Monday Night Combat, a first person shooter which is free to play on the PC. Through my genre observation I noted first person shooters as a genre which often does include a tangible narrative, Super Monday Night Combat however doesn’t particularly tell a story. The game takes place in a future where various clones are constantly reborn to take part in a violent game of capture the flag, something which in the games reality is a sport with sponsors, commentators and cheerleaders. This back and forth between the two teams and the victory or defeat in each match is all the narrative which this game uses. To this end even the levels of intrinsic narrative within the game are limited as the player essentially progresses no further then each individual match.

Though it could be said that a similar paradigm exists for sports games such as FIFA or UFC Undisputed, I would question whether it was so simple. Though the multiplayer in those games is very comparable to this, such games also have a single player career mode which is the equivalent to a narrative in such games. The rise (or indeed fall) of an athlete or team through the years/seasons are story which those games weave, the same cannot be said for Super Monday Night Combat where there is no continuation between games. Though perhaps it could be said the narrative element of Super Monday Night Combat is what happens in each individual game; which player succeeded and failed, which players defeated one another. That being said regardless of this narrative theory, Super Monday Night Combat is a game which is both enjoyable and successful based entirely on its gameplay.

Super Monday Night Combat is a great example of what I studied in first semester, whether a game can succeed with little to no narrative and it is also fascinating as it exists within a genre which I considered to be more prone to using narrative.