ABSTRACT
This chapter regards configurations of closure within the overall architecture of digital games. In order to evaluate the relation of the medium’s specific affordances to the prototypical narrative sense of an ending, it focuses on structural phenomena that distinctly deviate from the Aristotelian prototype of beginning, middle, and end.
The analysis begins with comparatively rare phenomena, such as procedurally implemented circularity and premature “fake” endings, which are noteworthy for their arguably anti-closural effect and their clear relation to the medium’s affordances.
The chapter’s three main sections concern phenomena that are equally interesting and, moreover, outright conventional in digital games, namely the post-ending phase of open world games, narrative branching that results in multiple endings, and the “game over”, i.e. sequences triggered by player failure. As they clearly are the structurally most complex form among these, the discussion of multiple endings, their implementations, hierarchies, and functions make up the bulk of the chapter. Their potential for ludonarrative synergy is examined in a detailed example analysis of the “multiple ending excess” in Zero Time Dilemma.
The chapter concludes with an evaluation of its initial hypothesis that common deviations from the Aristotelian prototype in digital games entail a pluralisation of the ending that contrasts with its traditional singularity in narrative.
