Thesis
Back to basics, an evolution of narrative and community in popular role-playing games
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2012
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/102074
Abstract
This work examines the narrative foundations behind multi-player role-playing games (RPG) and those foundations' ties to community formation. It develops a framework for understanding the multiple, competing narratives within the text of the game: a public narrative known by all participants, a secret narrative known only by the Game Master, and an occluded narrative that emerges through interactive storytelling. The framework rests upon bonding social capital between the participants of the game and provides an avenue for discussing the bridging social capital formed with newcomers. The work uses four RPG narratives: The Temple of Elemental Evil, published for the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game; the meta-plot of Vampire: The Masquerade, published by White Wolf; the Paladin epic-quest in the PC game EverQuest; and the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj quest and server event in World of Warcraft. Each narrative was chosen for its commercial staying-power and apparent response to real-world narratives external to the games. Although it is clear that social and economic climates dictate demands of consumers and success of products, I discovered that a game-narrative's rigidity and intrusiveness upon the player is dependent on society's apparent values of individuals and groups. I posit that an occluded narrative is the trait with the power to attract and keep players in a community.
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Details
- Title
- Back to basics, an evolution of narrative and community in popular role-playing games
- Creators
- Matthew Jay Frye
- Contributors
- David A. Menchaca (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525035201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis