How to analyze NES games from a literary point of view

[Anonymous No.21349571]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYNFWm4sJO8

How would you classify this video according to current literary storytelling theories?

Because that video tells a story, not saying is a masterpiece.
But the video tells a sucession of events, there's a dramatic conflict between the player/hero and a villain, until there's a sucesful victory in the end.

So, It's clearly some kind of story that follows an arc structure.
but how do we define it using current theories of narrative?

Not a shitpost, I'm really curious to see academia opinions on this question.
If there's a book from a literary teacher, about videogame as narrative devices, and how it relates to game design.
pls share.

[Anonymous No.21349665]

>>21349571
based

[Anonymous No.21350493]

So a useful basic distinction here would be between the "literary" and "storytelling". "Literary" refers to literature, the art form that uses a natural language as its medium. "Storytelling" means presenting a narrative (a succession of (usually causally) connected events, usually with particular actors, in a particular space, etc.), and not saying anything specifically about the medium yet.
Not all literature is storytelling. Lyric poetry frequently lacks any coherent narrative, it is (in what is usually seen as the most fundamental form of it) a still image.
On the other hand, one can analyse storytelling in a novel, play, theatrical performance, film, opera, oratorio, ballet, comic. Probably video games as well. This is studied by narratology, and that's the key term you're looking for. However, to my knowledge, narratology isn't especially focused on "defining" narratives, or classifying them.
Studying video games in the academic world is still in its infancy, and I'm not familiar with the stuff that's going on in the field, but I've seen many people online asking questions similar to yours.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/8uq9lc/not_sure_where_to_ask_this_question_literary/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/4p8ttw/narratology_and_videogames/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/yxobdg/narratology_in_video_games/
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskLiteraryStudies/comments/n6vuqs/video_games_as_literature/

Personally, I'll be conservative and say that video games as such can't be truly analysed as narratives, because that defeats their purpose. Video games are open-ended, loose, their tempo, development and outcome is tied to the audience's actions directly, unlike any other traditional art. When you watch a movie, you can go to the toilet and the movie will continue playing down its pre-defined route regardless of that; when you watch it again, the screen will show you, for all intents and purposes, the exact same shots and play the same sounds. But a video game aren't happening if they're not actively played, and they can't really be repeated, in fact even getting the most basic level of acquaintance with the narrative material requires some concrete physical and mental skill and active effort, you must not make any significant mistakes to even see how the story ends. E.g. you say that the video has "a sucesful victory in the end", but that's only because this particular player got to that point
So, a lot of what is taken for granted in analysis of e.g. literature, and which could be transmitted well to other art forms such as film, even if seemingly substantially different, will just not work for games. If you treat that game recording you linked as a movie, it would be dogshit and clearly much less fun than the actual game. In fact, pretty much every video game would be dogshit if you played it like a movie, even though they are formally quite similar (visual, temporal, characters, voices)

[Anonymous No.21350499]

>>21349571
Okay.

[Anonymous No.21350547]

>>21349571
Don't do literary analysis over something that's not literature. You need to take the principles of critical analysis and apply them to what makes games unique.

Here's the basic structure of all criticism: here is a specific part of the work -> here is how that part influences the whole -> here is how that whole affects the audience or something like that