Comments on: What’s your thought of… (Paper Ideas)

By: kmiddleton

kmiddleton — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:15:22 +0000

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.

By: estherspace

estherspace — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:41:37 +0000

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

By: audreyamos

audreyamos — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:38:14 +0000

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