Publié par I currently see two promising ways in which narrative game research could productively bridge the contents/expression, object/process divide: 1) by studying particular narrative figures or tropes, such as the fail/retry cycle in games, or a phenomenon I recently coined “pandiegetic conspiracies”, where it seems like the entirety of the fictional world conspires against the player to “keep them on track”; 2) by developing an approach of narrative aesthetics. These aesthetics are tailored to some specific corpus, whether a genre, historical period, or individual game developer. Game studies have for a long time required researchers to specialize in some theoretical approach, subject or topic. It’s now time for game scholars to embrace some form of specialization as to the objects they study as well. Because we all have a backlog of games we need to play for our specific subjects of study, and that backlog is increasingly getting as tall as the books we need to read.
ARSENAULT, Dominic (2013). « Post-narratology: A case for object-oriented narrative game studies ». Invited blog post for MediaCommons, November 22 2013. https://mediacommons.org/fieldguide/question/what-are-intersections-digital-media-and-narrative-studies/response/post-narratology-case-o