Walkthroughs are definitely narratives, probably

A riff on that most helpful of second-level gaming artifacts, the walkthrough — in vernacular, a “cheat sheet” of sorts, but for our purposes let’s call it a retelling of an ideal gaming experience.

I’ve been reading a little bit this morning about ongoing debate regarding ludology and narratology in game studies (one of the issues under debate being whether there is a debate). Without getting into that just yet, I do think it’s useful to consider the genres that emerge to narrate the experience of playing a game, and how something like this Ikea walkthrough can comically shed light on the mechanisms of these gaming narratives.