Title: Books vs Video Games: A Gestalt Approach to the Future Narrative
Stream: Humanities - Language/Linguistics
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Authors:
Iryna Morozova, Odesa Mechnikov National University, Ukraine
Olena Pozharytska, Odesa Mechnikov National University, Ukraine
Abstract:
The present investigation is dedicated to the problem of representing the original literary text created by the author through the communicative means of a video game. Understanding the communication process as a totality of different ways of information and energy exchange, we inevitably face the question of how “human-to-human talk through the machine” is carried out. In this paper, we restrict our investigation, made within the framework of “man − computer quasi-communication”, to the intellectual “quest” genre of video games. A video game gives a player a multi-dimensional perspective and presupposes gradual progress. This fact permits treating a literary work behind the gameplay based on it as a motivated interactive process, more or less predictable in its analytic capabilities. The author’s narration and characters’ literary dialogue give birth to the ludonarrative, i.e. a combination of game and story. On the other hand, the presented paper shows the appliance of Gestalt theory to language empirical research and develops George Lakoff’s ideas as to the striking potential of Gestalt analysis for linguistics (1977). Having compared the verbal Gestalts of the characters’ parties and their non-verbal input into the quest, we have made conclusions about the player’s (and the characters’) more active communicative and social roles in the video game narrative and disclosed a number of regularities in the supposedly “free” choice made by the players. There being opportunities to take different pathways through the ludonarrative, the stories in the book and the game follow a common algorithm.
Conference Comments & Feedback
Place a comment using your LinkedIn profileShare this Presentation
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress