Aesthetics of play : narrative experience and the production of meaning in video games -

Abstract

This thesis will attempt to place the video game as a contemporary narrative medium within the historical tradition of how institutionally accepted narrative mediums were received by audiences at the time of their conception. This juxtaposition will allow a contextual framework for the critical study of video games to emerge. Narrative theory, reader response theory and modes from experimental drama will be used to provide a theoretical basis for looking at video games. This thesis will attempt to show that rather than being a break from conventionally accepted mediums, the genre of the video game perpetuates those narrative traditions while retaining its own unique formal properties. In contemporary video games, players have agency to create and direct their own stories and direct plot progression outside of a central linear narrative. Narrative is therefore created and shaped by the player’s assimilation of ideological and cultural world views to the activity of play and the game world. In Chapter 1, the medium of the video game will be contextualized in the history of traditional narrative forms, namely theatre, radio drama, film and television. The characteristics for the categorization of narrative role-playing games will be defined and a theoretical framework for analysis will be laid out. Chapter 2 will examine player agency and the scope of choice in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda 2011) and Fable: The Lost Chapters (Microsoft Game Studios 2004) in relation to dynamics of interactivity in modern theatre and open-world digital environments. Chapter 3 will explore the ways in which players “fill in” the narrative “gaps” during gameplay in Skyrim, the war-themed survival game This War of Mine (11 Bit Studios 2014) and sandbox survival game Minecraft (Mojang 2011) in an attempt to show how gameplay is synonymous with the act of interpretation, and in some cases creation. Finally, in the concluding chapter, the contributing factors to a player’s overall narrative exp