Back from a mini hiatus in Japan, which is great but I have some good news. I am a presenter at the upcoming DiGRAA conference in Melbourne. I'll be presenting on paratext, here's the abstract of it, but I'll point out the main thrust of the argument afterwards.
Paratext
This paper examines paratext as an active
element of video games. Through a brief exploration of paratext’s history in
both literature and games, this paper will reveal a need for closer analysis in
video game studies. Focusing on In-game, In-system and In-world types of
paratexts this paper will attempt to formalise the unaddressed issue of
paratext in video games.
Not much to go on huh? Getting more wordy about paratext in videogames involves going to where paratext actually came from, and how in videogame studies its use as a term, and methodology has reduced it to something else. Which I'll do in about a weeks time, for the time being here's a quick rundown.
Basically paratext, taken from Gerard Genett's Paratext involves looking at everything within and surrounding the text (that's not strictly part of the story), as an element that influences a readers perception of the text.
What video game studies have done is briefly looked at paratext, used it in a very loose manner (a sentence or two here), and suddenly that's reinterpreted the entire notion of Genett's paratext into whatever influences a readers perception. This 'whatever' ignores the actual text of the game and instead chases after franchised works, or fan based communities (which are probably better left alone to the sociologists/anthropologists) - the surrounding parts of the text. This is especially worrying because for most of Genett's Paratext he's concerned about the effect of what's in the book (so in videogames, the game), and how the author (and I'll concede to a certain extent the publisher) has been able to control that. In this there's a very deliberate shift from looking at elements that exist on the fringes of story or gameplay, and instead looks at completely external elements that have an impact on a text (if you're looking at Genett still you could argue that this is intertextuality, or old school hypertext).
So there you have it, my little bit that explores a big hole in how we approach paratext in games (I also go on to say why we need it - but I'll save that for the conference).
Hopefully I'll change a few minds and meet new people, perhaps even some faceless members of the internet, such as yourselves.
