Bug Strategy:Unnatural Narrative In Metagames

As storytelling in video games is rapidly evolving--and the technological advances in gaming platforms advances,the need for experimentation is growing.Recent years have seen an increasing number of metagames that focus on the trend of "unnatural narratology" by reflecting on the unique narrative perspective of the game mechanics themselves,which contain fake bugs,as in The Stanley Parable,deliberately leaving fake bugs to override the player’s expectation of finding them.This kind of fake bug is a common tool for creating criticism and subversion in metagames.This paper attempts to categorize this technique as "bug strategy",which is a common tool for creating critical and subversive metagames,based on the cases of metagames in China and abroad.This paper takes the cases of domestic and foreign postulated games that use the "bug strategy" as the starting and ending points and combines it with the unnatural narratology(unnatural narrative means anti-imitation,i.e.,the construction,artificiality,and inherent fictionality of work,with the ultimate goal of constructing a "non-natural narrative poetics")is dissected to consider whether the unique interstitial space(additional narrative space components)derived from the "bug strategy" can serve as the main part of the narrative rather than an additional game.The paradigmatic possibilities,transition mechanisms and unsustainability of the interstitial space are discussed,and the narrative limitations of the "bug strategy" are illustrated.Finally,taking individual works as an example,trying to jump out of the conventional creation of general games and explore the parts that can be improved,to create a critical game artwork and make a little effort for new possibilities of game works in the context of art space.