Architextuality and Video Games

Even though literary genres are instrumental for the study and analysis of video games, we should also take into consideration that, nowadays, the boundaries of literature have been crossed and we have to deal with a broader transmedia reality. Approaching it can be quite challenging and, in addition to the already existing genre theory, it requires the implementation of appropriate analytic tools, both adaptable to different languages and media and able to reconstruct and motivate the isotopies woven into the net. In the authors' opinion, semiotics is particularly suitable for this task, for many reasons. The aim of this chapter, then, is to propose a semiotic methodology, oriented toward the analysis of the architextual aspects of video games. Two case studies will be taken into consideration, in order to shed some light on the inner working of architexts featuring video games, as one of their most relevant components: the horror genre and the high fantasy genre.

Exploring Complex Intertextual Interactions in Video Games

This chapter explores the intertextual nature of video games. Video games are inherently intertextual and have utilized intertextuality in profound ways to engage players and make meaning. Youth who play video games demonstrate complex intertextual literacies that enable them to construct and share understandings across game genres. However, video game literacy is noticeably absent from formal education. This chapter draws from bi-monthly meetings with a group of youth video gamers. Video game sessions focused on exploring aspect of video game play such as learning and civic engagements. Each session was video recorded and coded using You Tube annotation tools. Focusing on intertextuality as an organizing construct, the chapter reports on five themes that emerged that were then used to help explore the use of video games as teaching tool in a grade 11 Language Arts class. A critical concept that emerged was the idea of complex intertextual literacy that frames and enables adolescents' engagement with video games.

A Different Kind of Monster

In many respects, Alan Wake reminds of a typical postmodernist text: it draws on various sources, integrates other texts into its textual body, and is highly self-conscious both about its construction and the recipient's role in generating meaning. However, Alan Wake is not a postmodernist novel, but a video game. This chapter explores the ways in which this video game incorporates other cultural artifacts and argues that its cannibalistic incorporation of other media transforms Alan Wake's textual body into the game text's true, Gothic monster.

The Inescapable Intertextuality of Blade Runner: The Video Game

The video game adaptation of Blade Runner (1997) exemplifies the challenges of adapting narrative from traditional media into digital games. The key to the process of adaptation is the fictional world, which it borrows both from Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner (1982). Each of these works provides different access points to the world, creating an intertextual relationship that can be qualified as transmedia storytelling, as defined by Jenkins (2006). The game utilizes the properties of digital environments (Murray, 2001) in order to create a world that the player can explore and participate in; for this world to have the sort of complexity and richness that gives way to engaging interactions, the game resorts to the film to create a visual representation, and to the themes of the novel. Thus the game is inescapably intertextual, since it needs of both source materials in order to make the best of the medium of the video game.

Weaving Nature Mage

This chapter is based on the analysis of previous cross-media game adaptations, on empirical research, and on reflection on practice with the design of a game concept for a fantasy book. Book-to-game adaptations are particularly interesting examples of cross-media adaptation. They not only weave the literary source text with intertexts from the game medium, but also require a modal transposition from the realm of words to a visual, interactive, multimodal medium where narrative and ludic logics intersect. This study proposes to look at different layers of cross-media intertextuality in the process of adaptation - at the level of specific texts, at the level of medium conventions, and at the level of genre conventions. It draws on crowd-sourcing research with readers to demonstrate that collaboration operates through multi-layered processes of collective intertextuality through which the intertextual repertoires of individuals meet to weave a final text.

“You Can't Mess with the Program, Ralph”

This essay posits two crucial elements for the representation of digital games in film: intertextuality and player control. Cinematically, the notion of player-agency control is influenced greatly by this intertextuality, and player control has been represented in a number of films involving video games and digital worlds. This essay looks at the use and representation of player-agency control in films that focus on action within digital games. There are three elements that are essential to this representation: 1) there is a separation between the virtual and the real; 2) the virtual world is written in code, and this code is impossible for player-agents to change, though they can manipulate it; 3) the relative position of the player to the player-agent, is one of subservience or conflict. I argue that the notion of player-agency control is essential to the cinematic representation of video games' virtual worlds.

BioShock and the Ghost of Ayn Rand

This chapter examines the popular 2007 video game BioShock and its relation to the work of Objectivist author Ayn Rand. Using Jacques Rancière's model of emancipatory learning and Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, the authors explore how video games can instill transferable skills and knowledge by forming intertextual connections to other media. Including an interview with BioShock creator Ken Levine, the authors discuss how players may learn about works such as Rand's Atlas Shrugged, forming opinions, criticisms, and applications of her philosophy, without ever receiving explanations of it in the game. They conclude the chapter by demonstrating the potential for such forms of learning to become more prominent in video games, while also acknowledging the inherent limitations of the medium.

Gamers (Don't) Fear the Reaper

Given the pervasiveness of popular music in the contemporary media landscape, it is not unusual to find the same song in multiple soundtracks. Based on theories of intertextuality and communication, this chapter seeks to define the relationship which develops between two or more narrative and/or interactive works that share the same song, and to understand the effects of such recontextualizations on the gamer's experience. The media trajectory of Blue Öyster Cult's “Don't Fear the Reaper” is mapped as a network to categorize the many complex intersections between video games, films and television series which feature the song. Three video games are analyzed to propose that the song's previous associations with other works may positively or negatively interfere with the music's narrative and ludic functions within the game.

“Footage Not Representative”

This chapter provides a revised framework of paratextuality which deals with some of the limitations of Gérard Genette's (1997b) concept while keeping its focus on the relationship between a text and socio-historical reality. The updated notion of paratextuality draws upon Alexander R. Galloway's (2012) work on the interface effect. The proposed revision is explained in a broader context of intertextuality and textual transcendence. Regarding Genette's terminology, this chapter rejects the constrictive notion of a paratext and stresses that paratextuality is first and foremost a relationship, not a textual category. The new framework is then put to the test using four sample genres of official video game communication – trailers, infographics, official websites of video games and patch notes.

Paratext

This chapter examines paratext as an active element within video games. Paratext, as taken from Gérard Genette's works has often been cited within the context of video games, but not examined in detail. Current scholarship focuses on epitext, but not peritext, which is Genette's primary focus. Mia Consalvo and Peter Lunenfeld's work discuss the epitextual importance of paratext within video games, with only a hint towards the importance of peritext. Through a brief exploration of paratext's history in both literature and games, this chapter will reveal a need for deeper analysis within video game studies. Focusing on in-game, in-system and in-world types of paratexts this paper will attempt to formalise the unaddressed issue of paratext in video games.