Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 165)

Trigger Happy
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action. For instance, the back story of Blade Runner is
the invention, programming and rebellion of the
replicants; the “present” story is Deckard’s attempts to
find and kill them. Some movies in fact are all about
attempts by the characters in the present to find out
what the back story actually is—for instance,
Hitchcock’s Vertigo, or The Usual Suspects (What went
on at the wharf? Who is Keyser Soze?).
For the purposes of talking about videogames, the
“back story” is the diachronic story, and the story that
happens in the fictional present is the synchronic
story—an ongoing narrative constituted by the player’s
actions and decisions in real time.
21
Now synchronic and diachronic modes of story in
other media are very often combined in the same
narrative. For example, in the Oedipus Rex of
Sophocles, the synchronic (present) story is about
Oedipus as the King of Thebes trying to find out why
his city is cursed. The diachronic (background) story,
gradually revealed through Oedipus’s dogged
investigations, is that in the past Oedipus himself killed
his father and slept with his mother. (This is the
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21 Of course, even what I am calling a “synchronic” story unfolds over
time, but since that period is far shorter—usually, in the fictional videogame
universe, a few hours or days—I will let the term stand.