The zone of "becoming": game, text and technicity in videogame narratives

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Mukherjee, S, 2008. The zone of "becoming": game, text and technicity in videogame narratives. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

Videogames have emerged as arguably the most prominent form of entertainment in recent years. Their versatility has made them key contributory factors in social, literary, cultural and philosophical discourse; however, critics also tend to see videogames as posing a threat to established cultural parameters. This thesis argues that videogames are firmly grounded in older media and they are important for the development of the notions of textuality, technicity and identity that literary and cultural theories have been debating in recent years. As its point of departure, the thesis takes the contested role of videogames as storytelling media. Challenging the opposition between games and narratives that is posited in earlier research, the framework of the Derridean concept of supplementarity has been adopted to illustrate how the ludic and the narrative inform each other's core, and yet retain their media-specific identities. It is also vital to consider how the technicity and narrative of games inform their perception as texts. Videogames provide a direct illustration of this but they develop on similar principles in earlier media instead of doing something entirely 'new'. The multitelic structure of videogames tends to be looked upon as symptomatic of novelty; in reality, however, they illustrate more clearly the inherent nature of telos in all narrative media.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Mukherjee, S.
Date:	2008
Rights:	This work is the intellectual property of the author, and may also be owned by the research sponsor(s) and/or Nottingham Trent University. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, of if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed in the first instance to the author.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Arts and Humanities
Record created by:	EPrints Services
Date Added:	09 Oct 2015 09:34
Last Modified:	09 Oct 2015 09:34
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/152