Okay, so I’ve heard that you guys talked papers while I wasn’t there last week and that for this week we’re supposed to be coming up with ideas for paper topics. Great. I can do that.
My first idea is actually to do an extension of my project for class. My project, when we get to it, will be an exploration of video game literature. My idea for a paper is how video games have become a form of storytelling in and of themselves. It would probably be a close analysis of the Final Fantasy Series, a group of games near and dear to my heart, and how an entire sub-culture has grown up around these games and their stories. How, in the late ’80’s, early ’90’s, more children, teens, and many adults, read the text of these games than read novels. I want to delve into how the games have become full-scale movies and novels combined, with both reading and watching as the player also gets to interact with the world of the game. Therefore, it becomes a completely immersed reality. The player is the reader, the audience, and the actor of the piece.
I am also debating that old debate Movie VS. Book. I want to write a paper on the transitory state of text in this day and age. It used to be that good books were turned into movies. Now mediocre books are turned into mediocre movies. Good books are turned into movies of various levels. And sometimes, rare but true, bad books make good movies. I want to explore this. Why does our culture feel the need to create a visual/audio medium of every written word? What does this do to the book? Does it change it at some sort of primordial level? Do covers featuring the newest big name actor and with a sticker saying, “Now a Major Motion Picture” somehow change a book? I, for one, know that I prefer NON-Hollywood covers on my books. I actually go out of my way to buy older editions. After all, Beowulf was a poem for 1,000 years prior to Neil Gaiman and his Beowulf. So why is an electronic rendering of Ray Winstone pasted all over every damn copy of that poem? Why is it on the famous Heaney translation? Heaney had nothing to do with that movie. Indeed, if he saw it, he was probably horrified at the vast number of changes in it. Which is my point. Movies alter books to fit the wishes of the audience. They bastardize the text. What does that do to the creative culture? Is a book just the non-diluted movie but in words or is it something more? Does the making of a movie somehow enhance a book? Are they intertwined or are they very different things all together?
As you can see, I have two topics that fascinate me verily… dropping Ye Olde English… Let me know what you think, please.
March 18, 2008 at 1:38 am
Hey Ryan,
I think your idea of video-game literature sounds interesting. Since video-games have become so popular, it would be worth exploring their effects/benefits/problems. This also ties into our discussion about how reading now has to compete with many other forms of entertainment. Also, I think is shows how literature has had to “adapt” to stay alive, as we discussed in class a while back. Were you in Megan Fulwiler’s class last year when Michael wrote that paper about the benefits of using video games in the classroom? He discussed the educational benefits of video games and what skills people can learn from them. I don’t know if that would help at all…but just a suggestion
March 19, 2008 at 2:41 am
Ryan,
I’m on Audrey’s bandwagon in my support of your first endeavor, investigating the video-game literature. (I don’t think I was conciously aware of anything like that existing). Your second idea, while I can tell that it is something that definitely rankles you, might be an awful lot to bite off and chew on for this paper. With the video-game thing I think you might be better able to utilize some of the discussion we’ve had in class, especially when we talked about the Matrix and how that functioned as a transmedia form of storytelling. Questions it might be useful to think about might include: To what degree do these games blur the lines of fantasy/reality for users, what age groups are participating in these games, what implications might that have for larger social impacts, does one have to read the novel/play the game in order to get the full benefit of the other, what level of popularity does game/novel hold over the other, what kind of novels are these (largely plot driven?), how is reading the novel a different experience from playing the game, and what advantage/disadvantage is that for the novel. I hope I didn’t send you off your train of thought, and I’m really excited for your presentation and to see what comes of this paper!
Esther
March 24, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Since everyone’s voting for the first topic, I’ll throw my hat there as well, although simply because I think you’ll be capitalizing on your research for the expertise project. There are a good many people talking about what’s at stake in understanding video games as lit. I’ve name dropped Noah Wardrip Fruin and Pat Harrigan’s books elsewhere, but I think they’re crucial sources for this. You can also check out the group that Noah writes with on the Grand Text Auto blog.
Those might give you some very specific terms with which to begin your analysis of Final Fantasy. Ryan’s books have to do with this as well, as do some of Katherine Hayles’ works. So, lots to read in order to center your ideas here.
The question, of course, is how to discover what’s at stake in this analysis. Are you arguing that these “games” provide a superior experience for the “player”? Implicit in your discussion above is the assumption that FF is novel and a movie combined. I’d like to see some careful thinking about how particular elements of these media appear in FF, and why it isn’t the case that the game is a new medium in and of itself.
There’s also a different question that you mention, wherein you’re talking about the game driving its audience to a novelization of the experience, which starts to sound a bit like transmedia storytelling, and one that runs counter to a lot of our assumptions about the trajectory of narrative (usually from novel to other medium, not vice versa). This is a smaller, more compact topic, and one that would also be interesting to investigate, but would require research on how markets and taste cultures shift and why.
As to the novel/film idea—Eric’s thinking about something similar. You might check out his blog for ideas and comments.