Connie Veugen; Computer Games as a Narrative Medium Doctoral Dissertation / PhD Thesis

Computer Games as a Narrative Medium

Doctoral Dissertation / PhD thesis

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I have always been fascinated by stories, thus I love to read, watch TV-series and films and play narrative computer games. But each medium 'tells' stories in a different way. In my dissertation I explore how games tell stories and how this differs from narratives in books and films. As I have found, existing narrative theory is too much geared towards non-interactive media. Therefore, I propose that a new narrative theory should be developed, one that also addresses gameplay skills, genre affordances and gamer preferences.

For convenience, the dissertation has been divided into separate parts. All links point to PDF files.

Summary
Table of Contents
Introduction
Genre and the Computer Game
Here be Dragons: the (pre)history of the adventure game
Thinking Out of the Box and Back in the Plain: Concepts of space and spatial representation in two classic adventure games
Computer Games as a Comparative Medium: A few cautionary remarks
Character: Aragorn seen through different media
Computer Games as a Narrative Medium: discussion and conclusions
Appendices A-C
Bibliography

Note that, although some of the chapters are based on previously published articles, these articles have been (in some cases greatly) expanded and adapted to better fit in with the dissertation as a whole.