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Burn, A., & Schott, G. (2004). Heavy hero or digital dummy? Multimodal player-avatar relations in Final Fantasy 7. visual communication, 3(2), 213–233. 
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard (15/08/2006, 14:39)   Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard (15/08/2006, 15:13)
Resource type: Journal Article
BibTeX citation key: Burn2004
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Categories: Game Design
Keywords: Agents, Narrative
Creators: Burn, Schott
Collection: visual communication
Views: 12/765
Abstract
This article analyses the player-avatar relation in Final Fantasy 7, drawing on multimodality theory to analyse textual structures both in the game and in the discourse of player-interviews and fan writing. It argues that the avatar is a two-part structure, partly designed in conventional narrative, and partly as a vehicle for interactive game-play. The former structure is replete with the traditions and designs of Japanese popular narrative, oral formulaic narrative and contemporary superhero narratives, and is presented to the player as an offer act -- a declarative narrative statement. The latter is a construct of evolving attributes and economies characteristic of role-playing games; and is presented to the player as a demand act -- a rule-based command. Though these two functions separate out in the grammar of player and fan discourse, it is their integration which provides the pleasure of gameplay and narrative engagement.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard  Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
Notes
The multimodality and cross-modality here refers to textual and narrative modalities (seen through the lens of semiotics) and is not to be confused with cross-modality between the senses, particilarly that which relates to the visual and auditory systems.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard  
Quotes
pp.221–222   "One reason for comparing the playing of a computer game with a performance of oral narrative is that it foregrounds text as event, rather than as object. [However] the playing of games is iterative -- it is many text-events, all different, with a dynamic relation between the computer-game as textual resource or text in potentia, the player as a dynamic textual element, whose fingers and skills become no less a part of the game-system than the avatar's strings of code, and the player as cultural resource, interpreter and adapter of the game's resources in the production of fan art and writing."   Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
Keywords:   Drama Narrative Performance
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