Lesson 11 - PoMo Videogames - Intertextuality

8/7/2019 Lesson 11 - PoMo Videogames - Intertextuality

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Learning Objectives

1. To be able to identify and discussintertextuality in postmodern videogames

Year 13 OCR Media Studies

Postmodern Videogames:

Intertextuality


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What makes

videogamespostmodern?


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What makes a videogame

postmodern?1. Fragmentation of representations

- characters, settings, events

2. Intertextuality- genre hybridity, media interdependence, immersion and rabbit holes

3. Lack of Verisimilitude- machinima, shifting contexts, temporal mastery

4. Open-endedness

- micro-narratives, sandbox style vs. linearity

5. Interactivity- player agency and emergent gameplay


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Intertextuality

The videogame blurs boundaries between itself

and other media texts. Genre hybridity implies

interdependence rather than uniqueness

between videogames and other media texts.The video game may borrow character, phrases,

situations, narratives etc from another media

text.

What intertextuality examples in the videogame

industry can you think of?


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Terminology

Horizontally Integrated Entertainment Industry:Economic structure where by a single company mayhave roots across all the different types of mediaindustry.

Rabbit Holes: Entry points for audiences to accessalternate reality gaming experience.

Synergy: Two or more agents working together toproduce a result that neither could do independently.

Genre Hybridity: The blurring and combing of morethan one genre and their respective conventions.


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Enter the Matrix (2003)


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Intertextuality Examples

Resident Evil (1996)

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009)

Lego Batman (2008)

Tombraider: Underworld (2008)

The Blair Witch Project (2000)


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While pastiche and intertextuality are more suitedterms for literature, many examples appear within

interactive gaming entertainments. Lets take thegame Grand Theft Auto: Vice Cityas our archetypalexample. Indeed one of the more comical aspects ofthe game is that much of its cutscene storylinesborrow from references to popular culture. These

include but are not limited to Taxi, Red Dawn, Heat,Pulp Fiction, Scarface, and Carlitos Way. The titleVice City alone implies not only that the setting is aplace of vice but also makes fun of the populareighties television show Miami Vice.

So how can we apply this to video games?The answer is genre hybridity.


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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

- Indeed, the actions of the player include the third-person over-the-shoulder elements of shooting games; the combat systemof traditional fighting games like Double Dragon and Streetsof Rage; the driving elements of classics like San FranciscoRush, Crazy Taxi, and Road Rage; as well as the open-endedworldliness of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-PlayingGames like Everquestand World of Warcraftthat allow the

participant to explore a fully flushed out gaming environment.

- This genre hybridity, however, is not strict to video gamesgenres but can indeed cross mediums altogether. Take theMax Payne series and examine what formats construct thegame. Max Payne combines the traditional tropes of hardboileddetective fiction, sketch drawings as cutscenes typically seenonly in comic books, the voiceover monologues of the leadprotagonist during actual gamplay (a technique normally suitedfor cinema), and the use of flashbacks as entire levels, acommon technique used in television.


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Since there are only a limited number ofstorylines to tell, our only method of

inventing new styles of gameplay is toresurrect dead genres and reconstruct

them to make something new. Narrationevolves, gameplay evolves. Hardwaremerely progresses. Long gone are thedays of two-dimensional side-scrollers

and linear gameplay. The future ofgaming is here and now.

David Halpert 2008

Lesson 11 - PoMo Videogames - Intertextuality

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