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The Replay
One common tool designed for retelling play is the in-game replay mode. Many sports games such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 or NBA Courtside offer this function, which allows players to watch a recording of their game play. Players can usually save replays, giving them a chance to review their greatest moments many times over. In NBA Courtside, for example, the Instant Replay mode affords players the opportunity to look at the action from any vantage point. A zoom function allows for a close-up look at players' faces, which can be enjoyable in a game where NBA greats such as Karl Malone have lent their faces for digitization. The Instant Replay mode also offers seamless, frame-by-frame slow-motion advancement of the game footage by interpolating between key frames in a move. The design of the replay mode can heighten the drama of the retelling by offering players dramatic camerawork or shifting points of view. In the XBox driving game Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions, the sophisticated replays involve shifting cameras, changing filmic styles, and dramatic pacing. Players watch the replay unfold from a variety of perspectives, as the camera quickly shifts from a wide overhead shot to a racing view from under the chassis to an extreme close-up of the car's battle-dented hood. There are quick cuts and jittery camera work, and the program simulates a constant shifting of "film stock," moving between shots that look like they were taken on 35mm film, 16mm film, a home video camera, and grainy black and white surveillance footage, with the occasional wireframe rendering thrown into the mix. The resulting narrative flavor produces a high-powered feeling of immediacy, increasing a player's connection to the "reality" of their game play. The replays become short films to watch, enjoy, and share. The driving game Gran Turismo 3 offers several different types of replay modes, giving players multiple incentives to view their victories and defeats. The Standard replay mode follows a player's own car around the track, useful for reviewing the events of a race. Race mode skips around to any of the cars on the track, greatly increasing the narrative drama of the play-back.The strategically helpful Training mode overlays a glowing line on the track to show the most efficient racing path. Video mode synchronizes the replay to any song on the game's soundtrack, from Snoop Dog to Lenny Kravitz and Jimi Hendrix, employing a variety of video effects to make the replay look like a music video. Lastly, the incredibly detailed Analyzer mode is available when there is only a single car in the race. This form of replay allows players to see telemetry data at each segment of the track, illustrating where a player hit his or her brakes, where the player should have hit them, and just what caused the player's car to go skidding into the wall.
All three of these game replay examples, NBA Courtside, Wreckless, and Gran Turismo 3, use retelling play not only to recall recent game actions, but to recast and extend them in a particular narrative light. In each case, the retelling play creates its own narrative experience appropriate for the particular game. The replays of NBA Courtside replicate the language of television sports coverage, narrativizing the context of the player's TV as if the game just played was a televised sports event. In the action game Wreckless, the replay serves to retell the play of the game not as a sports show but instead as a fast-paced sequence from an action film. The flurry of filmic styles, camera angles, and rapid-fire editing references Hong Kong action films that also inspired the game's settings, characters, and missions. Although this kind of shifting visual style would be too disconcerting to include in the real-time game play, the replay mode allows the cinematic underpinnings of Wreckless to reach full fruition. Lastly, the diverse replay options of Gran Turismo 3 suit the game very well. As a racing series known for its detailed simulation of driving physics, it is appropriate that some of the replay modes emphasize the minutiae of racing strategy (although the Video mode is always available as a lighter counterpoint). The act of replaying a game, although not formally part of the game experience proper, is still part of the overall designed interaction. These three games demonstrate how retelling play can be used to wonderful narrative effect.
