The IRMA Community
Newsletters
Research IRM
Click a keyword to search titles using our InfoSci-OnDemand powered search:
|
Video Game Framings
Abstract
This chapter discusses the applicability of the concept of ‘paratext' (as coined by Gérard Genette) to audio-visual media in general and to video games in particular. In the first section, some potential elements of a video game's ‘paratext' are singled out by means of ‘auto-ethnographic' description of the introductory sequence(s) of the first-person shooter game BioShock Infinite. Several segments of the game's ‘threshold' are differentiated employing a rather tentative ad-hoc terminology. In the second section, Genette's definitional stipulations, posing the point of reference for everyone actually using the term ‘paratext,' are reconstructed, clarified and constructively criticized. Here, the author also discusses potential objections to Genette's definitional criteria and briefly touches upon some media-theoretical constraints of his approach. Ensuing from these meta-terminological considerations, the author turns to the questionable use of ‘paratext' in video game studies. As critical examination reveals, the terminology in this field of research is rather vaguely connected to, and sometimes even completely detached from, Genette's definition. As an objection to such redefinitions of the term, the chapter suggests (1) that its use be restricted to communicative signals meeting the following criteria only: (a) functionally subservient to (which obviously implies specifically referring to) ‘the game proper,' (b) authorized by entitled members of the game's production collective, (c) verbal, (d) (at least partly) extra-diegetic. Additionally, (2) the chapter proposes supplementing ‘paratext' as an analytical tool with the higher-order umbrella term ‘framings' (as coined by Werner Wolf).
Related Content
|
Ricardo Alexandre Peixoto de Queiros, Mário Pinto, Alberto Simões, Carlos Filipe Portela.
© 2023.
13 pages.
|
|
Preety Khatri.
© 2023.
17 pages.
|
|
Mehmet Kosa, Ahmet Uysal, P. Erhan Eren.
© 2023.
31 pages.
|
|
Kaila Goode, Sheri Vasinda.
© 2023.
22 pages.
|
|
Helena Martins, Artemisa Dores.
© 2023.
21 pages.
|
|
Ali Ben Yahia, Sihem Ben Saad, Fatma Choura Abida.
© 2023.
15 pages.
|
|
Baris Atiker.
© 2023.
23 pages.
|
|
|