Lost in Transmediation. Transmedial Adaption of Videogames and GDNA Theory Sven Dwulecki Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen, Germany DOI: https://doi.org/10.7358/ijtl-2018-002-dwul
[email protected] If you have any interest in the history or future of video games, it’s almost a set text: the videogame equivalent of Breaking Bad, James Joyce’ Ulysses or The Wire. [Metal Gear Solid is] an action adventure series, a stealth game, a once-in-a-console-generation technical showcase, an ul- tra-budget AAA game, an idiosyncratic, medium-defin- ing work reflecting the personality of its creator and au- teur Hideo Kojima […]. (Dawkins 2015, 9) ABSTRACT – Videogames and their transmedial adaptations share common persua- sive messages. Their rhetoric is diverse, encompassing political as well as economic messages for the players. Yet, the possibilities to analyze the translation from video- games towards other media is so far limited. Without a systematic approach to address all circumstances behind videogame-rhetoric, the resulting insights for their transmedial satellites are difficult to compare. Therefore, this paper introduces the GDNA model. The Game Dynamic Narrative Analysis is crafted as a holistic ap- proach. Based upon the notion of videogame as artificial orator (homunculus digital- is), it compares videogames analysis with DNA sequencing. Identifying rhetoric sequences within a game’s genome is marked by the interplay between those ele- ments specific to games (like procedural rhetoric) and those transferred from other fields (like speech act analysis or visual rhetoric). Thereby, the GDNA model unifies narratological and ludological perspectives of game studies through incorporating both positions into every rhetorical analysis of games.