Article:
Playing for the Plot: BLADE RUNNER as Paradigm of the Graphic Adventure Game

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dc.creatorTosca, Susana Pajares
dc.date.accessioned2022-01-04T10:32:39Z
dc.date.available2022-01-04T10:32:39Z
dc.date.issued2000-05-31
dc.description.abstractAdventure games form a genre of their own, and are direct descendants of the first text-based adventures that can be said to have inaugurated digital narrative. The puzzle solving and plot development were afterwards combined with the powerful visual element evolved from action games and others, first incorporating moving images and then videos and 3D landscapes to the story-driven games. These games present a new challenge to literary studies, as their acknowledged aim is to let the user "live" a story. She solves enigmas, participates in dialogues and makes the argument advance, so that the result is very similar to a traditional genre fiction (mystery, sci-fi or fantasy) story, where the user has played the main character. (Game developer Jane Jensen makes this explicit by writing books that follow her adventure games in the Gabriel Knight series word by word). But adventure games are not only narratives at the end, because the player is aware of the storytelling process unfolding before her all along. What kind of stories are these? What are their conventions? Are they really interactive? This article takes one of such games, Blade Runner, to explore the relationship between adventure games and narrative, and to see how the genre could evolve towards a more participatory exchange between the reader and the text. Blade Runner is at the same time a paradigm and a contradiction, as it draws on some of the more explicitly marked genre conventions and at the same time wants to go a "step beyond" towards narrative interactivity providing a "constantly changing plot" (from the gameĀ“s package). How does it try to achieve this? Does it succeed? Is this a revolution in storytelling?en
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/17355
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/18292
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherRoberto Simanowski
dc.publisher.placeCambridge
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:1617-6901
dc.relation.ispartofseriesDichtung Digital. Journal fĆ¼r Kunst und Kultur digitaler Medien
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
dc.subjectvideo gameen
dc.subjectInteractive Fictionen
dc.subjectnarrativeen
dc.subject.ddcddc:791
dc.subject.workBLADE RUNNER
dc.titlePlaying for the Plot: BLADE RUNNER as Paradigm of the Graphic Adventure Gameen
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2022-01-04T11:36:22
local.source.epage16
local.source.issue4
local.source.issueTitleNr. 11
local.source.spage1
local.source.volume2
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q881018

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11 | 2000